1 of 500 DOCUMENTS
The Guardian
March 27, 2015 Friday 2:46 PM GMT
Ipso proves impotent at curbing the Mail's climate misinformation;
Independent Press Standards Organisation lets the Mail on Sunday's misleading and incorrect climate claims stand
BYLINE: Dana Nuccitelli
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 1057 words
David Rose is a writer for the UK tabloid Mail on Sunday, and is known for his inaccurate and misleading climate change coverage. Rose is particularly fond of cherry picking data to hide the rapid decline in Arctic sea ice. In August 2014, he published a piece focusing on the fact that at the time, there was more sea ice in the Arctic than during the record-breaking summer of 2012. Rose's misguided focus on noisy short-term data is underscored by the new record low winter Arctic sea ice extent we experienced this year, less than seven months after his piece was published.
Bob Ward, policy and communications director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at London School of Economics and Political Science, filed a complaint with the Independent Press Standards Organisation ( Ipso ) about Rose's piece. Ipso is intended to police the UK print media. It replaced the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) in this assignment after the latter was roundly criticised for failing to take action in the News of the World phone hacking affair. Ipso describes itself as,
the independent regulator of the newspaper and magazine industry. We exist to promote and uphold the highest professional standards of journalism in the UK, and to support members of the public in seeking redress where they believe that the Editors' Code of Practice has been breached ... IPSO is here to serve the public by holding publications to account for their actions.
The first clause in the Editors' Code of Practice deals with accuracy of the Press and includes the following provision.
i) The Press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information, including pictures.
Bob Ward's complaint alleged that Rose and the Mail had violated this section of the Code on several points, for example by giving the impression that the long-term decline in Arctic sea ice had reversed and by claiming that polar bear populations aren't declining. On each point, Ward was correct that Rose's piece is at best misleading, and often factually incorrect. Nevertheless, yesterday Ipso ruled in favor of Rose and the Mail.
On the Arctic sea ice decline, Rose covered himself by quoting contrarian climate scientist Judith Curry, who allegedly told him,
The Arctic sea ice spiral of death seems to have reversed.
This claim is entirely false, as the data in the following video illustrates.
Rose also quoted climate scientist Ed Hawkins saying, in understated fashion,
I'm uncomfortable with the idea of people saying the ice has bounced back
So Ipso ruled that by including these comments from two climate scientists, Rose " had made clear that scientific opinions regarding the significance of the most recent data varied. " In this specific case, most of the fault lies with Judith Curry for providing Rose with a misleading and scientifically indefensible quote.
However, on several other points, Rose's piece was simply factually wrong. For example, it claimed,
Yet even when the ice reached a low point in 2012, there was no scientific evidence that bear numbers were declining
As Ward pointed out in his complaint, the Polar Bear Specialist Group has reported that several polar bear sub-populations are declining. Specifically, in the group's latest report, they found that three sub-populations are declining, six are stable, one is increasing, and nine lack sufficient data. For example, one recent study found that the number of polar bears in the southern Beaufort Sea has declined by approximately 40% over the past decade.
Polar bear survival is strongly tied to the abundance of sea ice, which they rely upon to hunt seals. While Arctic sea ice as a whole is declining rapidly, in some areas it has remained stable, depending upon local geographic conditions. In areas with stable sea ice, polar bear sub-populations have also generally remained stable.
However, sea ice in other regions has declined, and the local polar bear sub-populations along with them. The long-term outlook is bleak for both Arctic sea ice and polar bears, including in most regions where the ice has so far remained stable. Uncurbed global warming will eventually melt the ice, even in currently stable regions.
In any case, there was scientific evidence in 2012 that several polar bear sub-populations had declined. Ipso ruled in Rose's favour because he wrote,
the main international bear science body, the Polar Bear Specialist Group, admits it has no reliable data from almost half of the Arctic, so cannot say whether numbers are falling or rising.
However, this is different from claiming that there is no scientific evidence that polar bear numbers are declining. The data show that three sub-populations are declining, and some very rapidly. In short, Rose has confused a lack of data from some sub-populations with "no evidence" of population decline. The latter is simply untrue. The available data are very concerning, which is why polar bears are listed as a threatened species.
Rose also took comments by Al Gore out of context, and plotted Arctic sea ice extent data for the period 2004-2014 while claiming the "melt has slowed over 10 years". Ward raised issue with both points, in the latter case noting that if we consider the long-term data, the Arctic melt has actually accelerated over the past decade (as illustrated in the above video).
In both cases Ipso ruled that because Gore was quoted correctly and the data were plotted correctly, the fact that they were cherry picked and taken out of context did not violate the code. Given that the editor's code prohibits the publication of misleading and distorted information, this ruling seems incorrect and indefensible.
In short, Rose has cracked the Ipso code. In order to publish misleading articles without repercussions, British tabloids need only to include scientifically indefensible quotes from contrarian scientists, and to accurately represent the information that they've misleadingly cherry picked. Sadly, Ipso seems as toothless to curb climate misinformation as the PCC before it.
LOAD-DATE: March 27, 2015
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2 of 500 DOCUMENTS
The Guardian
March 27, 2015 Friday 2:39 PM GMT
In vast swaths of rural New South Wales, there's only one election issue: coal seam gas;
CSG is a big vote swinger in the country, with many communities declaring themselves 'gasfield free'. This is not just about the environment, writes our reporter: it's also about people wanting to be heard
BYLINE: Gay Alcorn
SECTION: AUSTRALIA NEWS
LENGTH: 4063 words
Bruce Shearman has handed out how-to-vote cards for the National party for 50 years. It has been a big part of his life, a big part of his identity. He has a certificate proving his 40-year party membership. He was the president of the Lismore branch on New South Wales's north coast, until he quit a few years ago, and a personal friend of local MP Thomas George. When he and his wife, Nola, built their dream home three years ago on their cattle property, George and his wife gave them a rose to plant in their new garden.
"I have known Thomas for 50 years," Shearman says. "We used to play cards together and one thing and another, but good friendships sometimes disappear. It's been a sad time for us."
On Saturday, Shearman, still a farmer at 78, won't be encouraging voters to stick with the Nationals. He is too old-fashioned to disclose how he will vote himself, but he believes the Greens will get most support in Lismore, held by the Nationals by a normally impenetrable margin of 24.3%. One issue has shaken Shearman's entire political outlook and is defining this election in large swaths of country NSW: the fight to stop coal seam gas.
Before Shearman resigned as president at Lismore, he and Nola drove to Chinchilla in Queensland to look at its CSG operation. He decided that gas wells and water treatment ponds and endless trucks and dust didn't suit the lush green hills of Lismore, with its small farms and bad roads. He came home and reported what he had seen to the Nationals, but says the party didn't want to listen.
"I'm very much against CSG. I don't want them invading our land and transforming our land whatsoever. I went to see the local member, spoke at meetings, but all he would do is change the subject." Nola, also a Nationals member for more than 40 years, adds: "We've got to stop it from coming here, once it's here it's here."
The Shearmans' story can be interpreted in several ways. Maybe they're "nimbys" - they have a CSG exploration licence over their 130-hectare property just outside Lismore. Maybe CSG is not right for the far north coast - the northern rivers, as it's known, with its beauty, tourism, farms, and history of environmentalism - but might be better suited elsewhere. Maybe the Nationals got caught between backing miners and farmers and lost support of even diehard supporters because they didn't pick up early enough how big this was getting.
The bigger picture
Maybe there's something else going on. The prominent climate change activist Naomi Klein writes in her new book This Changes Everything that "resistance to high-risk extreme extraction (such as CSG) is building a global, grassroots, and broad-based network the likes of which the environmental movement has rarely seen ... suddenly no major new project, no matter how seemingly routine, is a done deal".
Klein argues the big picture - that sustained and successful local revolts are not really about the environment, but about democracy, where people of vastly different backgrounds insist on having a real say about the crucial resources of air, land and water where they live. She outlines examples all over the world, including protests against Whitehaven Coal's mine at Maules Creek in northern NSW.
The state election has barely touched on Klein's thesis, of course. Nor is it caught up with the now routine reports concluding that that 80% of the world's fossil fuels will need to be left in the ground if the world is to avoid warming more than two degrees by mid-century (although gas gets off more lightly than coal, with half needing to stay in the ground, according to one report.)
This is a parochial state election about the privatisation of poles and wires, health, education, jobs, the aftermath of corruption scandals and the unpopularity of the Abbott federal government.
Related: Leave fossil fuels buried to prevent climate change, study urges
But the regional uprising over CSG is more about an unconventional gas source where the gas is held tightly in coal seams saturated with water and where sophisticated technology is used to release it. Large numbers of wells are drilled, and water is pumped out to allow the gas to flow. The process was first used commercially in Queensland in 1996 and in the US since the 1970s - but it is still relatively immature in Australia.
There are all the implications of what that technology might mean practically for regional communities, but there are bigger issues here, too: the urgency of climate change compared with the short-term necessities of politics, and the growing demand of people to be listened to.
A watershed moment
The immediate goal for those against CSG is to stop it before it takes hold in NSW. "We are at a watershed with CSG," say Paul Spooner, local councillor, general manager of the Byron Bay community centre, and Labor's candidate for the far north coast seat of Ballina. This is a seat first contested in 1988 that has been held by one man since for the past 27 years - the retiring member Don Page.
A recent poll says that, despite its 24.6% margin on paper, it could fall to Labor with Green preferences on this issue - even though there are no known CSG reserves in Ballina and only a small slice of the electorate is covered by an exploration licence. Nearby Lismore and Tweed, both held by the Nationals with margins of more than 20%, are also vulnerable to Labor and Green challenges and do have exploration licences over big chunks of them.
Spooner hands out his literature at a local farmers market at the town of Bangalow, beautifully green and hip. He compares the intensity of the mood to the battle to save Tasmania's Franklin dam in the early 1980s. "This election is a referendum on CSG on the north coast."
Now that the election is almost here, everyone seems to be willing to listen hard to what people think about CSG, which leaves those who have been fighting for years sceptical.
"The people of the Lismore electorate have continually made it clear to me that they do not want CSG here," George said a few days ago. Nationals Ballina candidate Kris Beavis says he will fight the Coalition if it supports CSG in his electorate. "I've basically said from day one that I don't think it's appropriate for our area ... if that makes me distinctive from the party, so be it."
Tweed Nationals MP Geoff Provest told the ABC the Coalition had a "plan to make the north coast coal seam gas-free", a statement that surprised many. These Nationals suddenly face serious resistance - with a concerted campaign, and lots of posters - urging people to "put the Nationals last".
Across the state, there is barely any CSG production now, and nothing at all on the north coast. Only the Camden project in western Sydney is in full swing, accounting for 5% of the state's gas needs. In Queensland, the industry is huge, with CSG providing 90% of domestic gas needs, with the NSW government warning of possible gas shortages in the state as Queensland gas is diverted to the Asian export market. There's nothing happening in Victoria, with a moratorium in place since mid-2012 and the new Labor government pledging a parliamentary inquiry before any change.
Regulations changes and community resistance
On this issue, NSW is the national battleground to see whether this industry's retreat will accelerate. The government has pegged back explorations that covered close to half the state when Labor was in power to about 11%, although critics say the buybacks have been mostly in non-active areas. Two big projects have been declared strategically important for energy needs, but have been plagued by delays, regulations changes and community resistance. AGL's Gloucester gas project north of Newcastle has approval to begin, and Santos's Narrabri gas project in the Pilliga forest in the north-west is at the appraisal stage, soon to submit its environmental impact statement.
Until very recently, these two projects appeared to have broad bipartisan political support, although both are controversial. The state government in January suspended AGL's operations near Gloucester after the company detected banned chemicals in two wells and a water storage tank. Its operations are under review.
Related: NSW election diary: parties face hostile environment in fight for green vote
The spiritual heart of opposition to CSG in NSW is in the northern rivers region, centred in Lismore. Up here, people are obsessed, with daily coverage in newspapers, and street stalls, fund-raisers and ubiquitous anti-CSG posters. The biggest of all is against Metgasco's licence 15km from Lismore. In May last year, this was the site of the anti-CSG movement's most significant stand, and most significant victory, and a dawning sense that an unlikely group of farmers, locals, Aboriginal elders and activists could win against a mining company with political support.
Hundreds of protesters who had camped out to block Metgasco's drilling operation were due to be confronted and removed by about 800 police. Instead, there were hugs and cheers when the confrontation was avoided - the minister for energy and resources, Anthony Roberts, suspended Metgasco's drilling licence for lack of community consultation, a decision that infuriated the company, which is now challenging it in court.
Among the crowd that day was Adam Guise, who grew up on a farm, has worked as an adviser for the Greens MP Jeremy Buckingham, and was then a spokesman for Gasfield Free Northern Rivers. Guise was heckled a little at a candidates' forum last week - one questioner demanded why the Greens wanted non-human animals designated as "beings" and declared that farmers who voted Green would be "putting a noose around your neck'' - but nobody takes his candidacy lightly.
Only the Greens would ban CSG entirely in the state, and have always objected to it on the north coast, even when the issue was dismissed as a fringe concern. "The Greens are the only ones that have stood up for our farmland," Guise said. "The others are playing catch-up now a week from the election."
And so they are. "Sink the Nats and that's the end of coal seam gas forever," NSW Labor's leader, Luke Foley, told a crowd at the site of the blockade this week. "It won't take riot police, it will take the power of the ballot box."
Gasfield free
Aidan Ricketts is a law lecturer at Southern Cross University, an environmental activist and strategist for the Gasfield Free Northern Rivers group. It got going just three years ago, and pioneered surveying communities to see what they think about CSG.
Tiny towns and communities have declared themselves "gasfield free", attaching now-familiar yellow triangles to their gates. It's a little disingenuous - the one question asked is: "Do you want your road and property to remain gasfield free?" Few people would say no to that - 95% of communities in the area have agreed - but it has proved a potent tactic.
The whole strategy is based on devolving everything to locals to run their own campaigns and to conduct their own surveys. Gasfield Free Northern Rivers helps with strategy and support, and is in turn backed by umbrella group Lock the Gate, which began in Queensland, where CSG is well established.
Ricketts believes the campaign has rattled and confused political parties and left established environmental groups behind. "One thing Lock the Gate did, it didn't worry about parliamentary lobbying," Ricketts says. "It just said we're going to build a giant social movement and when we have, you'll come to us, and if you look at this election that's what you're seeing. The politicians are now falling over themselves to make concessions, and if you look at the NSW election, it's absurd: 'I'm more against coal seam gas than you are'."
Ricketts is right. The political shifts have been dramatic. Labor was the party in government that issued CSG exploitation licences "like confetti" as the premier, Mike Baird, likes to put it. All but one licence in the northern rivers were issued by Labor, for as little as $1,000 each, some to small companies with little experience or resources. According to Lock the Gate, there remain 28 licences that Labor approved while in office.
Related: NSW election: National party faces losing heartland seats in the bush
Now, Labor says it has changed. It supports a moratorium on the industry across the state until the recommendations of NSW's chief scientist, Mary O'Kane, are fully implemented and the industry is "proven to be safe". It will declare "no-go" zones, including all of the northern rivers, which cover the three seats it is targeting. It says it will cancel the licences of companies such as Metgasco, insisting that no compensation is needed. Unsurprisingly, Metgasco is furious, saying it has spent $120m on the project so far under licences approved and renewed by both sides of politics, and that it would demand compensation.
The state government is furious, too, because it has it has done far more to rein in the industry than Labor. The Nationals leader, Troy Grant, has acknowledged that "people are yelling at each other" over this issue, "probably one of the most difficult things we've had to grapple with in government". It has tightened regulations, bought back more than a dozen licences, and on Friday said it would insist on buying back the Dart licence covering most of the seat of Lismore. But it won't cancel licences - which opponents want - saying that to do so would end up in costly legal battles. That means, say opponents, that companies won't hand over lucrative licences, just ones in areas where there is little gas.
The moratorium on issuing new coal seam gas licences remains, but at some point after the election the Coalition says it will identify strategic areas for CSG development. There's no doubt the government believes CSG is necessary. "It will remain a big part of the economy, yes, and it is part of our overall solution," Baird told the Australian Financial Review recently.
Dean Draper, the co-ordinator of Gasfield Free Northern Rivers, says the government's policy is all "smoke and mirrors" and it couldn't just keep blaming Labor for the old cowboy days. "The government renewed these CSG licences - they didn't have to renew them - and they're saying once they're in you can't get rid of them. Labor and Greens talk about cancelling licences whereas the Nationals don't have that policy."
Great Artesian Basin feeds argument
In the northern rivers, it can seem as though CSG has no friends, but that's not true across all NSW. Drive 600km from Byron Bay and you get to the north-western town of Narrabri, population 7,500, surrounded by cotton, wheat and cattle farms. This is also coal country - Whitehaven Coal's contentious Maules Creek mine is in this shire.
Santos's $2bn CSG project is proposed in the Pilliga state forest 25km from town. It has government support, including that of the local Nationals MP and water minister, Kevin Humphries, who told a candidates' forum that "if someone comes into your community and wants to spend $2bn ... give them a go and see what they have to offer". It has the backing of the local council and many businesses. Santos is confident most residents support it, too, although that's not a universal view.
The Narrabri gas project would be the largest CSG operation in the state, with 850 gas wells drilled over 20 years. The company estimates it could provide half of NSW's gas needs when fully operational, at a time when the government is warning of looming shortages.
Until a few days ago, Santos believed it had Labor's support, too, at least tentatively, and was confident that it would meet Labor's condition that the chief scientist's recommendations be implemented. It might have been sitting out the election, but that idea was upended when Foley announced Labor would ban CSG in the Pilliga and would refuse to allow Santos to proceed with production should Labor win the election. No compensation was mentioned for a project that has already cost Santos more than $1bn.
Foley said: "The risks CSG poses to the natural assets of the Pilliga, particularly the underground water storages, are unacceptable."
Labor cited CSIRO modelling indicating the forest was an "important recharge area from the Great Artesian basin" and quoted the federal government's environmental assessments team which acknowledged "the Pilliga region (in general) is recognised as an important recharge area for the Great Artesian Basin, [and] the potential for high-level impacts to a water resource presents a real possibility".
Foley said: "There's some parts of the state that must be off limits to coal seam gas permanently, and the recharge zone for the Great Artesian basin has to be one of them."
Related: Battle for Liverpool Plains: Chinese coal project tears at fabric of rural NSW
The announcement flabbergasted Santos's NSW general manager, Peter Mitchley, who was "at a loss" to understand it "given we have not yet released our environmental impact statement which will explain in detail how we will manage any impact from our work". It stresses that Santos's coal seams are hundreds of metres below the Great Artesian basin.
"We don't affect the recharge of the Great Artesian basin," Mitchley told the ABC. "It's an entirely safe and sustainable project." Foley's announcement also stunned the government, and alarmed business groups in NSW.
Mitchley is frustrated with the whole debate, although he acknowledges the industry is partly to blame, with loose practices on some projects and a lack of real community consultation on others. Santos's project has had its troubles, too, with the company in 2013 detecting elevated levels of uranium and other heavy metals in an aquifer below one of its wastewater ponds that was leaking. It was fined $1,500.
Its share price has dropped and in February it slashed $808m off the value of its holding, now standing at $543m, citing a reduction in reserves and delays.
Mitchley insists "we're nowhere near that point" of giving up because it's all too hard in NSW. If the project gets approval, he is confident of finding investors, and gas could be flowing in a little over two years.
The project has some advantages. Unlike those in the northern rivers, it is mostly on state-owned land designated for these sorts of industries. Santos is bending over backwards to support the town financially and will take anyone who asks out to the Pilliga to have a look at its trial wells and water storage ponds.
Its policy is not to search for gas on private land without permission - there are a number of private landholders who have given access to Santos, although it will not reveal how many. He says there are no plans to frack - the controversial process involving pumping fluids and chemicals into a well to fracture the coal seam to allow it to flow more easily. Earlier work had showed the coal had already fractured naturally through earth movements and the idea was "redundant".
The environmental impact statement is not yet complete, but Mitchley says all the evidence to date is that the project would not affect groundwater, the big fear of locals and farmers and the stated reason for Labor's new policy. For that he cites the chief scientist's report, which said the risks of CSG were manageable and that the industry was no more or less risky than other extractive industries.
As for water, Mitchley says Santos won't be taking it from the same source that townspeople and farmers use. It will remove water - a relatively small amount, he says - from "much deeper down, a completely unconnected source".
Mitchley believes in climate change, and the company has made much of its green credentials: that the greenhouse emissions from burning gas are half that of burning coal. That, like much in this debate, is ferociously contested. The argument is about how much gas - basically methane - is unintentionally leaked during the CSG process. Methane has 20 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide, and if too much is leaked, gas's advantage over coal is reduced.
Mitchley says the argument is "unbelievable" and shakes his head. "It's one of the ironies of this current debate. Imagine for a minute a scenario where the development of gas is prohibited by green activism. There is a thirst for energy and that energy deficit is met by increased coal. What an ironic outcome. What an absolutely bizarre, twisted outcome."
Mitcheley says what is missing in the debate in NSW is a discussion about how we balance the environmental cost of providing much-needed energy with the lifestyles most of us want to live. "We don't have technology today at a cost we can afford where we can go magically we're all green and renewables."
'We cannot afford to lose any industry'
Russell Stewart , 58, boasts that he was "born in Narrabri and I will die in Narrabri". He's a local businessman and the president of the Narrabri chamber of commerce. He is "$100% comfortable" with the Santos CSG project and says most locals agree with him. He does volunteer that he worked for Santos as a community consultant for a time, and that the company leases some commercial properties he owns. "I'm bloody pleased they do otherwise they would have been empty otherwise."
"If it wasn't for Santos and CSG at the moment, that street would be dead, I'm telling you. Look around you, we haven't had rain in three years. [Opponents] say: 'You're only in it for the money' and I say shit yeah, I want people to stay in the bush."
This is the other side of many country towns. Their populations are declining and ageing. They want jobs, and local businesses need contracts. Already, Santos spends $350,000 a year on supporting local groups, everything from the Rotary club to the men's shed.
Stewart talks of outsiders, particularly the Wilderness Society, coming to town and assuming people are opposed. There is a local group supporting the gas project and another one opposing.
"The public feeling is that they're sick and bloody tired of people speaking for them. The feeling is that we cannot afford to lose any industry.
"Have a look at country towns falling apart, why aren't we?"
It is hard to tell the public mood in Narrabri. It is in the huge National-held electorate of Barwon, which makes up nearly half the state. An independent candidate, Rohan Boehm, is running largely in opposition to CSG, arguing it is just too risky "until we can be absolutely certain that there won't be a depletion of our natural resource, our air and water quality."
A ReachTel poll conducted by Boehm found 87% of the electorate - broader than Narrabri, but still significant - were either very concerned or concerned about their risks to water supplies and food-growing areas from CSG mining. More then half of Nationals voters said they were very concerned.
Just outside Narrabri lives grain and cattle farmer Ron Campey, aged 70. The Santos project won't come near his farm, but he's fighting hard against it anyway. "It's for the next generation, it's basically the water quality, or the damage to our water aquifers, and the escaped gases as far as health is concerned," he says.
As for those supporting the industry: "The town's been bought by Santos. It's as much money as you want to everyone in town."
Far away in Byron Bay in the northern rivers, the mood is much more united. CSG is not wanted here. A group of 100 or so people gather at dawn on the main beach, to mark one year since the Bentley blockade victory, which people still talk about as though it were yesterday. There are children and adults, some wrapped in blankets against the chill.
Meg Nielsen, a farmer from Bentley who protested a year ago, grabs me for their signature song. The crowd sways as one with the music. "Let's walk gently / on the hallowed ground of Bentley / let's stand arm in arm / for our neighbour's farm."
Related: Frackman's accidental activist: 'There's blood in the water and I'm the shark'
Nielsen says the whole thing has brought the community together. "Hippies, Nimbin people, professional people, tradies, farmers, right across the community. We've never had so many friends in our lives," she laughs.
Nielsen, 66, is a National party member. A year ago, she quit her full-time job with an accountancy firm to work on this protest. On her T-shirt is printed: "Vote for a gas free Northern Rivers. Put the Nationals last."
LOAD-DATE: March 27, 2015
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS
Copyright 2015 The Guardian, a division of Transcontinental Media Group Inc.
All Rights Reserved
3 of 500 DOCUMENTS
The Guardian
March 27, 2015 Friday 1:03 PM GMT
Rockefeller family tried and failed to get ExxonMobil to accept climate change;
Founding family of the US oil empire Exxon, begged the company to give up climate denial and reform their ways a decade ago - but attempts at engagement failed
BYLINE: Suzanne Goldenberg in New York
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 920 words
Members of the Rockefeller family tried to get ExxonMobil to acknowledge the dangers of climate change a decade ago - but failed in their efforts to reform the oil giant.
In letters, lunch meetings, and shareholder resolutions, the descendants of John D Rockefeller, founder of the oil empire that eventually became Exxon, sought repeatedly to persuade the company to abandon climate denial and begin shifting their business towards clean energy.
"We were really begging the company to look harder at what they were doing. They were still into climate denial and funding deniers and really against any positive steps," said Neva Rockefeller Goodwin, a co-director of the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University, who helped lead the reform effort.
The outreach effort, led mainly by Rockefeller's great grandchildren, began with a lunch meeting in 2004 with Exxon's then head of investor relations.
"This was the family trying to get into a friendly conversation with ExxonMobil, feeling we have a strong historical connection with that company," said Goodwin. "We wanted to start talking with the company about their view of the future and how they could be a constructive player as well as part of the problem."
The company was blindsided. David Henry, then head of investor relations, was "stunned" at the family's concern about climate change, according to Goodwin's recollection of events.
"The head of investor relations was really surprised to find we didn't love Exxon as it was but thought changes might be a good idea," she said.
Over the next few years, Goodwin and about a dozen other Rockefellers launched three separate shareholder resolutions pressing Exxon to recognise climate change and invest in renewable energy. The cousins also sought an independent chairman, believing it would make the company more responsive.
At the time the oil company was the main funder of dozens of front groups and researchers rubbishing any link between the burning of fossil fuels and climate change - or denying climate change was occurring at all.
Among the recipients was Willie Soon, the Harvard-Smithsonian researcher who received more than $1m (£0.7m) from industry, according to documents obtained by Greenpeace through freedom of information filings.
In a report released on the eve of their 2008 annual general meeting, the oil company pledged to stop funding groups that promote climate denial.
However, the company continued funding Soon for three more years. The documents show that Exxon gave Soon an additional $76,106 from 2008 to 2010, despite claiming to have stopped.
The shareholder resolutions were easily defeated.
The US environmentalist Bill McKibben says the failure of the family's efforts is telling and signals the limits of shareholder engagement with some fossil fuel companies. "It makes a very clear point that engaging with fossil fuel companies to somehow get them to change their ways is unlikely to work if the family of the founder can't get Exxon to shift."
The Rockefeller heirs also tried private and public pressure. Nearly 100 direct descendants also signed a letter expressing concern as investors and begging the company to stop funding climate deniers, Goodwin said.
In 2006, another cousin, Senator Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, and Senator Olympia Snowe, a Maine Republican, wrote a letter to the incoming Exxon chief executive Rex Tillerson, urging the company to stop funding climate deniers.
"ExxonMobil's longstanding support of a small cadre of global climate change sceptics, and those sceptics' access to and influence on government policymakers, have made it increasingly difficult for the United States to demonstrate the moral clarity it needs across all facets of its diplomacy," the letter said. "It is our hope that under your leadership, ExxonMobil would end its dangerous support of the 'deniers'."
Most of the Rockefellers' personal fortunes are held in trusts set up in the 1930s.
The family retains only a tiny fraction of shares in Exxon. But the stand taken by the Rockefellers - at a time when Exxon was under attack from campaign groups for its support of climate denial - rankled company executives who had expected family members to be allies, Goodwin said. "They were shocked to find this family that had a strong link with them, and that they expect to find a great friend and admirer... had such a negative view."
But even with the weight of that historical connection Exxon was still not persuaded to change.
"I was pretty discouraged. Exxon has an extremely strong culture of believing that they are right and know what they are doing and really don't need to listen to anybody else," Goodwin went on. "It was clear that we didn't have an ability to make more of a dent in that."
When the Guardian asked for a comment on the Rockefellers' attempts to engage with the company it issued this statement. "ExxonMobil will not respond to Guardian inquiries because of its lack of objectivity on climate change reporting demonstrated by its campaign against companies that provide energy necessary for modern life, including newspapers."
Ken Cohen, ExxonMobil's vice president for public and government affairs has previously been dismissive of the concept of fossil fuel divestment, saying that it is "out of step with reality".
"There are no scalable alternative fuels or technologies available today capable of taking the place of fossil fuels and offering society what those energy sources provide," he wrote in a blog in October.
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The Guardian
March 27, 2015 Friday 12:45 PM GMT
United Reformed Church of Scotland divests from fossil fuels;
United Reformed Church of Scotland commits to move assets out of oil, gas and coal companies and to not invest in fossil fuels in the future
BYLINE: Emma Howard
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 533 words
The United Reformed Church (URC) of Scotland, which represents 1,472 churches, has committed to pull out its investments in fossil fuel companies.
The resolution was passed with "overwhelming support" on Saturday at a meeting of their General Synod at the Scottish Police College in Fife. The URC has about 60,000 members.
A spokesman for the synod says about 4% of its total portfolio is invested in oil, coal and gas companies, including Shell and Total. They have committed to divest from all such companies and to not make any future fossil fuel investments. Eco-Congregation Scotland, the environmental movement for Scottish churches, estimate that their current assets amount to £70,000.
On March 16 the Guardian began a campaign calling on the world's two largest charitable foundations - the Wellcome Trust and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation - to divest from fossil fuels. The campaign, which has attracted more than 144,000 signatures, is part of a new climate change project introduced by editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger.
There are s everal times more fossil fuel reserves in the ground than can be burned if the world is to reach international targets to keep global warming within a 2C rise and avoid catastrophic climate change. Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England has said that "the vast majority of reserves are unburnable" which would mean that the assets of fossil fuel companies would become "stranded" or worthless.
Reverend John Humphreys, moderator of the church's Synod in Scotland said: "I'm delighted that the synod has shown a clear commitment to ethical investment. They have taken affirmative action against climate change and put people and the planet at the heart of their decision making. We hope and pray that other churches will feel able to respond ethically to the growing threat of catastrophic climate change."
The URC joins a fast-growing divestment movement, begun by the global climate organisation 350.org. Since its beginning in 2010, more than 220 institutions have committed to divest including universities, pension funds and philanthropic foundations.
The divestment campaign targeting the URC emerged from a small group of its members. They say it was prompted by a recommendation from the World Council of Churches, which ruled out fossil fuel investments in July 2014. The umbrella organisation represents half a billion Christians and 345 member churches worldwide.
Mark Letcher, campaign co-ordinator for the faith-based divestment campaign at Bright Now, said the decision by the URC "marks a huge step forward for the UK church divestment campaign, which is gathering momentum as churches around the world disinvest. This decision demonstrates the church's commitment to lead the urgently needed transition away from fossil fuels. We call on other UK churches to follow them".
The Church of England (C of E) has set up a group to take advice on climate change and investment and has been reviewing their strategy for 18 months.
The diocese of Birmingham passed a motion on Sunday calling on the C of E to divest, following a similar motion passed by the Oxford diocese in November 2014. The C of E is due to report back later this year.
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The Guardian
March 27, 2015 Friday 12:02 PM GMT
Earth hour: millions will switch off lights around the world for climate action;
Annual switching off of lights in homes, businesses and landmarks on Saturday evening holds extra significance ahead of this year's climate talks in Paris, says the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon
BYLINE: Karl Mathiesen
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 618 words
The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, has said hundreds of millions of Earth hour participants around the world will demand a strong global climate agreement by switching off their lights for an hour on Saturday night.
Many of the world's brightest lights will go dark at 8:30pm (GMT) as Earth hour marks its ninth year. In a video address, Ban said the symbolic switching-off held more significance than ever, just nine months before a pivotal UN meeting on the climate crisis in Paris.
"Climate change is a people problem. People cause climate change and people suffer from climate change. People can also solve climate change. This December in Paris, the United Nations is bringing nations together to agree a new, universal and meaningful climate agreement. It will be the culmination of a year of action on sustainable development," said Ban.
Related: Earth Hour around the world - in pictures
More than 7,000 cities in 172 countries are expected to take part in the world's largest ever demonstration, which has grown from a single World Wildlife Fund (WWF) event in Sydney in 2007.
"Earth Hour shows what is possible when we unite in support of a cause: no individual action is too small, no collective vision is too big. This is the time to use your power," said Ban.
Organisers said this year's demonstration would be the biggest yet. Sudhanshu Sarronwala, chair of Earth Hour global said: "Climate change is not just the issue of the hour, it's the issue of our generation. The lights may go out for one hour, but the actions of millions throughout the year will inspire the solutions required to change climate change."
Some the world's most famous landmarks will turn their lights out. The UN building in New York will join London's Houses of Parliament, Rio de Janeiro's Cristo Redentor (Christ the Redeemer) and the Eiffel Tower in Paris. In Bulgaria a giant Danube sturgeon fish will be drawn in fire in the capital, Sofia. Millions of other, more humble, participants will take part by simply switching from electricity to candlelight for an hour.
Colin Butfield, director of campaigns at WWF-UK said the mass participation was a demand for climate action and politicians should take heed. "The fact that such a huge number of people are taking part in Earth Hour across the world and are using it as a moment to inspire action on sustainability in their own communities sends a really clear message that the public is ready to tackle climate change - we now need politicians to show the same drive," he said.
Britain's energy and climate change secretary, Ed Davey, who has been heavily involved in the climate negotiations at the UN, called for a response to climate change that was commensurate with its threat. "It's time for everyone to recognise that climate change will touch just about everything we do and everything we care about. Earth Hour is an excellent opportunity for millions of people across the world to take one simple step to show they're serious about backing action on climate change," said Davey.
Ban said the focus on climate change should not distract from Earth Hour's other key mission: introducing clean energy to the most remote and impoverished communities on Earth. "By turning out the lights we also highlight that more than a billion people lack access to electricity. Their future wellbeing requires access to clean, affordable energy," he said.
In 2014 Earth Hour used a crowdfunding platform to raise money and deliver thousands of fuel-efficient stoves to families in Madagascar and solar kits to remote villages in Uganda. The organisation also supplied islands in the Philippines with solar power for the first time and raised money for victims of Typhoon Haiyan.
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The Guardian
March 27, 2015 Friday 7:12 AM GMT
Wouldn't it be better to say that your business has purpose?;
Large companies are starting to realise that when it comes to introducing ethical practices into their day-to-day operations, small is still beautiful. David Benady reports on a recent Guardian seminar on systems thinking
BYLINE: David Benady
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 1596 words
Grappling with the burning environmental issues of climate change, resource scarcity, poverty and population growth, it's easy to feel powerless. However, one approach gaining popularity in the world of sustainability is systems thinking. This looks at systems in their entirety and seeks holistic remedies, rather than concentrating on discrete problems.
It is an approach that businesses are beginning to embrace as they look to transform their organisations and embed environmental and ethical practices into their everyday activities. It requires businesses to change their corporate purpose. But where do they start?
To discuss how systems thinking can help business leaders transform their organisations, the Guardian, in association with PwC, brought together about 50 company bosses, leaders in sustainability and academics to discuss the issue. They split into four working groups to share best practice and debate how systems thinking offers a practical way of introducing environmental and social thinking into business activities.
Each group then reported back to the conference; this was followed by a panel discussion.
One of the biggest problems for any large organisation looking to transform its approach is overcoming silos and power bases - different departments tend to work independently and resist outside change. Jane Clark, climate change adviser and head of learning at the Department for International Development, said: "The problem is with silos - system thinking is the antithesis of that."
Clark gave an example of how systems thinking had changed approaches to forestry. Thirty years ago this was simply about planting trees, measuring them and cutting them down. "Now if we define a forestry project it's about governance, it's about markets, it's about partnerships, it's about working with the EU on trade law around timber. That's an example of where the development world is shifting from the technocratic view towards a much more holistic way of thinking," she said.
A significant challenge for businesses is deciding how to start a transformation programme. PwC's global corporate responsibility leader Lisa Greenlee told a working group discussion that a few years ago the company began training about one quarter of its staff in sustainability issues to create a "tipping point".
"If you get enough influential people in your organisation starting to think in a new way then they can start to be the change agents," Greenlee said.
Estelle Brachlianoff, director for the UK and Northern Europe at waste management company Veolia, said the business had identified 40 employees as change agents, not for their expertise in sustainability, but because they were influencers who would carry other employees with them.
Brachlianoff explained that Veolia has transformed its corporate purpose away from being simply a waste-disposal company to become a mining and chemicals business working in the circular economy. It has created a project producing energy for 5,000 homes in Southwark, south London, using black bin bag refuse.
Veolia has also found ways of extracting minerals from street sweepings, such as palladium emitted by car exhausts, and has manufactured plastics made from human waste.
"We are not solving the whole circularity of the entire world, but I have a list of examples of real business cases that are happening now in the UK. We want to show our customers that it is possible," she said.
Collaboration and participation were strong themes in the discussion, as business transformation requires partnerships between organisations that would often never work together. Chris Cook, global sustainability director at paint manufacturer AkzoNobel, said the company was looking at recycling the paint left over after decorating that tends to sit in cans in sheds and garages.
AkzoNobel went into partnership with a small business that had the same goals, because it would have struggled to achieve its aims had the project been carried out internally. "We are working with small companies - something we normally never do -because we're beginning to realise that there are too many barriers due to our own systems," Cook said.
A prime opportunity for implementing change is when businesses relaunch their processes after a change in market conditions or when introducing new technology. But as Baran Osmanoglu, a business transformation consultant working in France, told the discussion, companies she has worked with have been resistant to introducing sustainable practices. "Usually the answer is: 'Yes, but the cost will be higher.' Or: 'I'm so used to doing my job that way. What you say is nice, but maybe later.'"
A positive outcome of taking a system-wide approach to transforming businesses is that the usual blame game associated with environmental lobbying could become a thing of the past. As Nadine McCormick, programme officer at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, said: "It's not about blaming people, but looking at the systems and why they failed."
McCormick said that it would be helpful if the Guardian "stopped pointing fingers" at people and corporations, and instead outlined the system issues that had gone wrong and how they should be addressed. The discussion heard about attempts to transform the way business leaders and their customers view the purpose of organisations. Jan Levy, managing director of consultancy Three Hands, described how he had liaised with business leaders from British Gas to help them work with an affordable warmth group in Birmingham.
"We exposed business leaders to the social issues surrounding people's need for warmth, health, affordability and safety and the relevance that had to their business. It gave them an understanding of what life is like if you are living in fuel poverty." Levy said that the aim was "to make it more real for them".
Picking up on this, PwC's partner for sustainability and climate change, Geoff Lane, told the panel: "How do you get more people to think along these lines? In my opinion, there isn't any substitute for first-hand experience. You can do the theoretical bit online, but you've got to immerse people into systems situations."
Meanwhile James Tiernan, energy and environment manager at Unite Students, a provider of accommodation for 43,000 UK students, said his role was to get these residents to act more sustainably, something that would save energy and water costs for the company. Tiernan said the company had tried to embed a system-wide approach to sustainability by stealth. "What we've ended up with is a flexible tool kit that can be given to 140-odd buildings across the country locally, in a way that is right for them."
Floor tile company Interface, which has strong ethical and environmental policies, was considered by the panel to be a good example of a company that had made an effective transformation to sustainability.
Nicola Millson, managing director of sustainability consultancy 6heads, who has done consultancy work with Interface, said: "[Interface] stands out because, in some ways, it is not as process-driven. It really doesn't like process, which allows a lot of space for people to explore and experiment."
John Hutton, head of sustainability at construction giant Bam Nuttall, added that it is important to remember in any review of corporate purpose that sustainability is about humanity. "It is about bringing more humanity to work if we want our businesses to be more sustainable. It's about embracing that emotion," he said.
Prof Stephen Martin, honorary professor at the University of Worcester, told the panel that there is so much complexity in organisational systems that they can appear to be beyond change. Finding ways to cut through this complexity is the great challenge of systems thinking. "This is a huge dysfunctional mess that systems thinking can help clean up," he said.
Richard Spencer, head of sustainability at accountancy body ICAEW, said that the accountancy profession needed to look at the core purpose of business and how this is accounted for. Ultimately, businesses need to move away from a profit-first approach.
"Wouldn't it be better to say that as a business you have a purpose - for example, a pharma company's is to make people well - and that to fulfill that purpose we have a socially constructed model that is a profit model?" Spencer said.
This would put social purpose before profit and ensure that businesses take into account their wider responsibilities to the world. Such a system-wide approach could be just what's needed to change the practices of companies so they can help solve humanity's problems.
Related: Six things we learned about business and sustainability policy
On the panel
Jo Confino (Chair) Executive editor, the Guardian
Estelle Brachlianoff Director, UK and Northern Europe, Veolia Environment
Geoff Lane Partner, PwC
Stephen Martin Honorary professor, University of Worcester
The systems thinking series is funded by PwC. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled advertisement feature. Find out more here .
Join the community of sustainability professionals and experts. Become a GSB member to get more stories like this direct to your inbox.
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The Guardian
March 27, 2015 Friday 3:48 AM GMT
Great Barrier Reef protection zones help boost fish stocks 'to pre-European times';
Long-term study in the reef's marine park finds an 80% difference in the biomass of coral trout between areas where fishing is allowed and no-go zones
BYLINE: Oliver Milman
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 399 words
The expansion of no-fishing zones across the Great Barrier Reef has allowed fish numbers to rebound in some places to levels not seen since European arrival in Australia, a long-term study of the ecosystem has shown.
Data taken from underwater surveys of about 40% of the reef's marine park between 1983 and 2012 found that biomass of coral trout more than doubled in protected areas.
A separate analysis of two comparable reefs, one where fishing was allowed and one where it was banned, found an 80% difference in coral trout biomass.
Biomass is measured not only in the numbers of fish but also their size, demonstrating that coral trout, a popular species for fishers, grow much larger in no-fishing areas, allowing them to spawn more offspring.
About a third of the Great Barrier Reef's marine park is off limits to any kind of fishing. These "green zones" were vastly expanded to their current size in 2004 - previously, only 5% of the marine park was fully protected.
The research, conducted by the Australian Institute of Marine Science (Aims) and James Cook University and published in Current Biology, found that not only have fish numbers rebounded, they are more robust, coping better with natural events such as cyclones.
Researchers said the analysis vindicated the then-contentious decision to expand no-fishing zones in 2004.
"It was a politically bold move at the time and we needed monitoring to show it has worked - and we now know it has," said Hugh Sweatman, a scientist at Aims. "The zoning has done exactly what it intended to do. Fishermen seem to be guardedly in favour of the zoning, too."
Sweatman said the Great Barrier Reef was well managed compared with other reefs around the world, which have suffered from over-fishing where top predators have been removed, leading to negative effects flowing down the food chain.
"Obviously fishing does still have an effect on the Great Barrier Reef but these green zones have taken the fish community back to pre-European times," he said.
While the green zones appear to have boosted fish numbers, marine life on the reef also has to cope with warming, acidifying waters due to climate change, as well as pressures from pollution and coastal development.
"The reef's outlook report states that climate change is the biggest long-term threat and it's safe to say that climate change is not going to be affected by zoning," Sweatman said.
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The Guardian
March 26, 2015 Thursday 4:26 PM GMT
Large fall in UK greenhouse gas emissions of over 8% last year;
The biggest fall in emissions since 1990 saw carbon dioxide output drop by almost a tenth while energy from renewable sources rose to a record high of almost 20% of electricity, government figures show
BYLINE: Fiona Harvey, environment correspondent
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 646 words
The UK's greenhouse gas emissions plunged by 8.4% last year, as household energy consumption slumped, the use of coal for electricity generation fell, and policies on climate change took effect, according to government statistics released on Thursday.
Carbon dioxide output fell by almost a tenth, as renewable energy generation rose to a new record high, accounting for nearly a fifth of electricity.
It was the biggest fall in emissions since 1990. Over the last five years, following a sharp fall in 2009, emissions appeared to have reached a plateau, with slight rises in some years owing to increasing coal use. The price of coal has dropped on world markets, as shale gas has sapped demand in the US, leaving a glut.
Green campaigners welcomed the fall, but they warned that more must be done to reach targets.
Related: UK households used 14% less energy last year but still paid more
In part, the slump in carbon output was down to record average high temperatures across the UK in 2014, which drove down demand for heating and led to a big drop in household energy consumption - even though bills rose over the year.
The emissions fall was a boost to Ed Davey, secretary of state for energy and climate change, ahead of a difficult general election for the Lib Dems. The party has traditionally relied on its green credentials with voters, but this has been a harder sell when in coalition.
Davey said: "2014 was truly record-breaking year for low carbon generation. Our plan to decarbonise the economy while it grows is working - we've reduced our emissions by 8%, increased the amount of electricity we're getting from renewables and seen the economy grow at the same time. It is crucial we continue to build a low carbon energy sector based on home grown sources, as it is crucial to improving our energy security, as well as stimulating economic growth and reducing emissions."
The fall will also strengthen the UK's position at the Paris climate talks this December, where world governments are expected to agree to greenhouse gas targets to take effect beyond 2020, when current pledges expire. By 31 March, all countries are expected to submit their proposals on how far they will cut emissions, in the case of developed countries, and on proposed curbs to their emissions growth, in the case of poorer nations. Some may miss the deadline, but the EU, the US and China have already made public their pledges.
These pledges will then be considered to decide how fair they are and how far they take the world to the cuts in greenhouse gases needed to prevent global warming from exceeding 2C, regarded as the threshold of safety, beyond which climate change is likely to become catastrophic and irreversible.
Emma Pinchbeck of WWF said: "Falling carbon emissions from the energy sector is welcome news and shows that action on carbon emissions gets results. While this drop is positive, we must remember that more ambitious carbon emissions reductions are required across different sectors to meet our climate change commitments."
Green groups pointed to the rise in renewable energy generation, which hit 19% last year, as a key factor in the emissions fall. However, the future of onshore wind - the biggest and cheapest generator of large-scale renewable power - is in doubt as an incoming Conservative government would end subsidies for the technology and might bring in tougher regulations on the building of new wind farms.
Doug Parr, chief scientist at Greenpeace UK, said: "This is further evidence, if it was needed, that efforts to cut carbon and boost our economy can go hand in hand. Since a reduction in coal use was a crucial factor in bringing down carbon dioxide emissions, these figures give us a taste of what could be achieved if our political leaders got serious about phasing out the dirtiest of all fossil fuels and gave proper backing to clean energy."
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The Guardian
March 26, 2015 Thursday 4:18 PM GMT
How much of the world's fossil fuel can we burn?;
The much-quoted three numbers of climate change have raised awareness of the simple fact there's far more fossil fuel than we can burn and the more we extract, the greater the risk of climate catastrophe - but they don't tell us the whole story
BYLINE: Duncan Clark
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 1287 words
The world is gradually waking up to the true nature of the climate change conundrum, and not a moment too soon. The situation boils down to this: fossil fuel is immensely useful, valuable and politically important, yet if we want to avoid taking unacceptable risks with the planet we need to leave most of that fuel in the ground - either forever or at least until there's an affordable and scalable way to stop the exhaust gases building up in the atmosphere.
Many of us have been saying this for years (I co-wrote a book about it) but much of the credit for the increased awareness of the need to 'leave the fuel in the ground' goes to Bill McKibben, whose brilliant and much-read article in Rolling Stone clarified for many readers the simple and crucial fact that there is far more carbon in existing fossil fuel reserves than we can safely burn.
So far so good, but McKibben's article has been so influential that the very specific numbers it contains are now often cited as a kind of unchanging gospel truth. Those numbers are as follows. Limiting global warming to the agreed global target of 2C means staying within a 'carbon budget' of 565 GT (gigatonnes or billion tonnes). That is a fifth of the 2,795 GT that would be released if all the world's proven oil, coal and gas reserves were burned. Therefore four-fifths of the fossil fuel must stay in the ground.
But other estimates differ. For example, a recent paper in Nature stated that although we'll need to leave most of the coal in the ground, we can burn half the gas and two-thirds of the oil - a major difference given oil's key role in the world economy. So whose figures should we believe?
The short answer is that all such numbers need to be taken with a pinch of salt. For a start, most of them are out of date. The 565 GT budget in McKibben's piece, for instance, was first published in a 2011 report by Carbon Tracker, which in turn based it on research by the Potsdam Institute. The figure therefore excludes the last four or five years of emissions, during which time I'd estimate we've eaten through about a quarter of the 565 Gt budget. Moreover, all such figures are based on a set of assumptions that are worth being aware of. These relate to four key factors:
Evolving climate science No one knows precisely how much warming will be caused by any given build up of CO2 in the air, nor how much of the carbon we emit will stay in the atmosphere, as opposed to getting soaked up by oceans and plants. Instead, the estimated impact of each tonne of CO2 increases or decreases as scientific knowledge improves. A couple of years ago, the last major IPCC report slightly reduced the range of estimates for the climate's 'sensitivity' to CO2, increasing the size of any given carbon budget. The science will continue to evolve.
Acceptable risk Given the inherent uncertainties, the best that scientists can do is tell us the likelihood that any given carbon budget will cause any given level of warming. Picking a budget therefore involves choosing how much risk we're prepared to take of overheating the planet.
This is unavoidably a value judgement as it entails weighing up the cost and inconvenience of reducing fossil fuel use against the risks of exceeding 2C (which itself splits scientific opinion: some experts think exceeding even 1.5C could be disastrous, while others are less nervous about overshooting 2C a little). The Carbon Tracker/Bill McKibben numbers are based on accepting a 20% chance of exceeding 2C. By contrast, the Nature paper is based on 50/50 odds, while the most recent IPCC report shows a 33% chance of failure. Changing the acceptable odds can make a big difference to the budget.
Fuel reserves and emissions data The world's fossil fuel reserves are just a tiny slice of the total fuel resource that we know exists. To count as a reserve, the fuel has to have a good chance of being profitably extracted. Reserves in turn break down into proven reserves (usually defined as those with a 90% chance of eventually being taken out of the ground) and much bigger probable reserves. Fossil fuel being a finite resource, you might assume that proven reserves would shrink each year as we all fill up our cars and heat our homes. In reality, though, in recent years these reserves have stayed flat or even increased slightly as ever more unconventional sources such as tar sands and shale gas get upgraded to proven status thanks to new technologies, such as fracking, and (until recently) high fuel prices. But as carbon emissions continue, our remaining budget does get smaller every year - and therefore the proportion of fuel we can burn.
Beyond fossil fuels Although CO2 is the main driver of global warming, there are plenty of others, such as soot, methane, nitrous oxide and even aeroplane vapour trails. Tackling these other warming agents quickly would increase the CO2 budget for any given odds of 2C, whereas allowing them to increase would have the opposite effect. As the last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report shows, success or failure on these other fronts could make a big difference to our carbon budget. And that's not all: although fossil fuel combustion is the main source of CO2, we also release the same gas by clearing forests and producing cement. The more of our carbon budget we eat through in these other ways, the less will be left for burning fossil fuels.
With all these factors at play, there is plenty of scope for conflicting, confusing and out of date estimates. If I had to run the numbers myself (as I did for the Guardian's new interactive fossil fuel counters) I would start with the IPCC stat signed off last year by almost every government in the world: a carbon budget of 1,000 GT of CO2 from 2011 to give a 66% chance of staying under 2C. Subtract the roughly 150 GT we've already burned since then and that leaves about 850 GT for all sources of CO2.
If we rapidly stopped deforestation and pushed down hard on the other drivers of global warming, we might be able to stretch our fossil fuel budget to 1,000 GT - which would let us burn around a third of proven reserves. Let deforestation and other warming agents run amok, however, while also aiming for better odds of staying below 2C, and we might have as little as 300 GT left for fossil fuels - which would be closer to a 10th of proven reserves.
In other words, while the familiar Bill McKibben/Carbon Tracker numbers are within the sensible range, nothing is written in stone. Everything from our view of risk to our efforts to reduce nitrous oxide emissions from cars and methane emissions from cows will determine how much of the world's fossil fuel we need to leave in the ground. And that's not to mention any disruptive carbon capture technologies that might come along to help us burn more of the fuel without cooking the climate.
For now, however, all of this detail remains academic. Political leaders negotiating at the UN have failed to even discuss a total global carbon budget, while fossil fuels companies (both state owned and private) continue to pump huge sums of money into finding and developing yet more reserves.
So while it is good to understand what factors will determine our carbon budget, it is much more important to call on politicians and investors alike to get a grip on this issue and face up to the simple and incontestable reality: there's far more fossil fuel than we can burn, and the more of it that we take out of the ground, the greater the risk of an irreversible climate catastrophe.
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The Guardian
March 26, 2015 Thursday 2:02 PM GMT
Bean breakthrough bodes well for climate change challenge;
Scientists have hailed the emergence of heat-tolerant beans, but there are fears corporate interests in Africa's seed sector will wrest control from local farmers
BYLINE: Mark Anderson
SECTION: GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT
LENGTH: 856 words
Scientists are hailing a new breed of bean seed as a breakthrough, thanks to its ability to grow amid rising temperatures and yield more nutritional value, qualities they believe can thwart the anticipated destruction of nearly half of all bean production.
The new seed was launched on Wednesday by scientists from the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) in Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa. As well as being more resilient to heat, the bean has a higher iron content.
About 400 million people rely on beans for subsistence, according to CGIAR. But by 2050 nearly half of the world's bean production could be wiped out by rising temperatures if new seed varieties are not rolled out immediately.
"Beans are not very well adapted to high temperatures because they originated in the cool hills and mountains of central America, Mexico and South America. So pushing them down into the warmer areas has always been a challenge," said Steve Beebe, a researcher at CGIAR, based at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture in Colombia.
In 2012, CGIAR researchers began to test more than 1,000 types of beans in a bid to find "heat beater" beans able to grow amid high temperatures and drought. Scientists cultivated test plots on Colombia's Caribbean coast and in greenhouses, before eventually discovering 30 heat-tolerant bean types that can withstand a 4C increase in temperature. CGIAR said it used natural breeding to discover the seed.
"In the short run, [bean production in] central America is going to be up against the wall, in terms of high temperatures, droughts and hurricanes. In east Africa currently, the bean production is at mid to higher altitudes, so - in the short-term - Africa won't be under quite as much threat. But by the end of the century, east Africa will be under serious, serious threat from climate change," said Beebe.
Beebe believes seeds should be distributed in small, affordable packages that farmers can test before committing to more.
"When you sell seeds in very small packets it gives the farmer the option to invest in a very small amount - it's the cost of a cup of tea - and then test it in their back yard. If they like it, they can buy more," he said.
"Otherwise you might have NGOs giving seeds away, which is not sustainable, or you have private sector firms selling 50kg bags, which farmers can't afford."
Rising temperatures and ambitious food security targets have created an urgent need for better seeds that can grow in warmer climates and yield more nutritional value to farms in the world's poorest countries. But how this is done, and how farmers access the seeds, is hotly debated.
Earlier in the week, protestors gathered outside the London office of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to demonstrate against a meeting they said would promote corporate interests in Africa's seed sector.
Dangling a cage full of seeds in front of passersby, they yelled, "Come and free the seeds!" before smashing open the cage, which they said symbolised the corporate takeover of Africa's seed markets.
As seeds spilled on to the pavement, the meeting, hosted by the Gates Foundation and the US Agency for International Development (USAid), promoted production and distribution in Africa's seed sector. The attendees were listed as key donor organisations, private seed companies and agricultural research centres, but did not include any groups representing farmers, according to a leaked document seen by the Guardian.
The Gates Foundation and USAid have said they are working to improve food security in the world's poorest countries. USAid's flagship programme, the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, has been criticised for requiring African governments to change laws and policies in favour of businesses.
The Gates Foundation said the meeting would focus on "[encouraging] the development and promotion of appropriate models for the production and delivery of early generation seeds of improved varieties for a diversity of food crops in sub-Saharan Africa".
Attendees are understood to have discussed seed markets for maize, rice, sorghum, cowpea, cassava and sweet potato in Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.
African agricultural groups said the conversation around improving Africa's seed sector needs to involve groups that represent small-scale farmers.
The Gates Foundation was not immediately available for comment.
Mariam Mariet, director of the African Centre for Biodiversity (ACB), said: "Public-farmer partnerships that integrate farmer and scientific knowledge will generate a more accountable process, and produce longer-lasting and more meaningful solutions for African agricultural production, than these profit-driven, exclusive and narrow processes," she said.
Ali-Masmadi Jehu-Appiah, chairman of Food Sovereignty Ghana, added: "This meeting will push this corporate agenda to hand more control away from our small farmers and into the hands of big seed companies."
· This article was amended on 26 March to clarify that Ali-Masmadi Jehu-Appiah is the chairman of Food Sovereignty Ghana and not chairwoman as previously reported
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The Guardian
March 26, 2015 Thursday 1:58 PM GMT
'Green' dam linked to killings of six indigenous people in Guatemala;
Indigenous people are being 'terrorised' after protests against a mega-dam backed by European development banks, whose carbon allowances will be tradable on the EU's emissions trading system
BYLINE: Arthur Neslen in Brussels
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 1006 words
A planned mega-dam in Guatemala, whose carbon credits will be tradable under the EU's emissions trading system, has been linked to grave human rights abuses, including the killing of six indigenous people, two of them children.
Several European development banks and the World Bank's International Finance Corporation (IFC) have provided funds for the $250m (£170m) Santa Rita dam.
But human rights groups back claims from the Mayan community that they were never consulted about the hydro project, which will forcibly displace thousands of people to generate 25MW of energy, mostly for export to neighbouring countries.
The issue has become a focus of indigenous protest in Guatemala - which has led to a march on the capital and severe political repression.
"At the moment our community is living under the same conditions as they did during the war," Maximo Ba Tiul, a spokesman for the Peoples' Council of Tezulutla´n told the Guardian. "Our civilian population is once again being terrorised by armed thugs."
Around 200,000 Mayans died or were "disappeared" during the civil war of the early 1980s, leading to the conviction of the country's former president, Efraín Ríos Montt, in 2013 on genocide charges.
Augusto Sandino Ponce, the son of a local landowner who community leaders allege worked as a contractor to Montt's junta during the civil war, is at the centre of new accusations of human rights violations. Last April Ponce and his bodyguards allegedly opened fire on a Mayan community ceremony in which families asked the Earth for permission to plant their crops. One local man, Victor Juc, was killed and several were injured. Ponce reportedly claims he was acting in self defence.
The incident took place two months after the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change's (UNFCCC) clean development mechanism (CDM) executive board registered the plant, allowing its future carbon allowances to be traded on the EU's emissions trading system.
In a letter to the UNFCCC's CDM executive board, the People's Council of Tezulutla´n outlined a litany of human rights abuses in the region, including kidnappings, evictions, house burnings, attacks by men wielding machetes and guns, and the arrest of community leaders.
The council also says that an environmental impact assessment for the dam suggests that it would create a 40ft-high wall, flooding local communities and depriving them of access to water, food, transport and recreation.
In approving projects, the CDM board pursues a narrow remit focused on emissions reductions. The reign of terror in the Alta Verapaz region, falls outside it - as did similar events in Honduras.
The situation in Guatemala deteriorated further last August, when 1,500 police were sent into the Q'eqchi' communities of Coba´n, Chisec and Raxruha´, partly to evict residents of Monte Olivo for dam construction work. Community representatives say that police fired tear-gas at villagers who had set up a peaceful blockade, and proceeded to occupy the area.
Locals allege that officers stole animals, food, property and money from peoples' homes, forcing families to take refuge in the mountains. Three indigenous people were killed in Semococh, a nearby town during the operation, according to the People's Council of Tezulutla´n.
"When a government criminalises opposition to such projects, it creates an atmosphere where this kind of violence against protesters - including extra-judicial killings - is more or less legitimised," Heidi Hautala, a Finnish Green MEP, told the Guardian.
Perhaps the most shocking incident took place on 23 August 2013, when two children were killed by an allegedly drunken Santa Rita hydroelectricity company worker looking for David Chen, a community leader in the Monte Olivo region.
Chen was meeting with the rapporteur of the Inter American Commission on Human Rights at the time. When the worker could not find him, he is said to have lined up two of Chen's nephews, David Stuart Pacay Maaz, 11 and Haggai Isaac Guitz Maaz, 13, and killed them with a single bullet to one child's head that continued through the throat of the other. The killer has since been killed himself.
The annual report of the UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights implicitly blamed the approval of the dam project for the killings.
"These allegations are well-documented and it is outrageous that the UN's CDM can register such projects that are clearly violating the human rights of indigenous peoples," said Hautala, a member of the European Parliament's development committee. "There has been a great lack of respect of the legal rights of people who want to express their well-reasoned resistance to this mega-dam."
A spokesman for the IFC told the Guardian that the project had only been green-lighted for funding on the understanding it was a popular "run-of-river" project that would increase access to local, affordable electricity. Currently "the project is on hold, as the fund manager discusses further with the local communities," the spokesman said. "Without strong local support, the project will not proceed."
Eva Filzmoser, the director of Carbon Market Watch said: "We want the CDM board to take responsibility and establish a grievance and redress mechanism for local communities to appeal, ask for problematic decisions to be rescinded and gain redress. We will be pushing for this at the Paris climate summit to apply to all forms of climate finance in the future."
Efforts to reform the CDM were boosted last month, when 18 countries signed a "Geneva declaration" calling for human rights norms to be integrated into UNFCCC climate decisions.
"We cannot overlook the injustice faced by the poorest and most vulnerable people, who are disproportionately affected by the effects of climate change," the declaration says. "In a transition to a low-carbon economy, we want to ensure that no one is left behind. We will promote and respect human rights in our climate actions."
Signatory countries to the declaration include France, Sweden, Ireland, Mexico, Uruguay and Peru.
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The Guardian
March 26, 2015 Thursday 10:19 AM GMT
On 15 September, while President;
When Prince Charles becomes king, will he be able to stop his compulsive 'meddling'? And if he can't, what will it mean for the monarchy and the United Kingdom?
SECTION: UK NEWS
LENGTH: 5132 words
On 15 September, while President Obama was meeting with his advisers in the White House and deciding how to unleash the world's most powerful military machine on the Islamic State in Iraq, his ambassador to Britain, Matthew Barzun, was spending the day in a field in Gloucestershire, learning about nitrogen-fixing plants and the dangers of sub-clinical mastitis in cows' udders. The reason was simple: Barzun was visiting Prince Charles's organic Home Farm. Wearing boxfresh Hunter wellies, Barzun picked his way around some cowpats to take a close look at a field of organic red clover. He snapped a photo on his smartphone.
For the past 34 years, the farm has been one of Charles's chief passions. It has become the agricultural embodiment of his beliefs about everything from the natural world to the globalised economy. On winter weekends, he can be found - wearing his patched-up tweed farm coat - laying some of the farm's hedges to keep alive one of his beloved traditional farming techniques. (Charles is such an enthusiast that he hosted the National Hedgelaying Championships here in 2005.) The farm closely reflects Charles's likes and dislikes. In one field, there is a herd of Ayrshire cattle. Charles bought them after he declared that he didn't want yet more common "black and whites".
That morning, the ambassador was not the only influential figure invited for a private tour of the royal farm. Alongside Barzun was Professor Ian Boyd, the chief scientific adviser at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), George Ferguson, the elected mayor of Bristol, and Sir Alan Parker, the chairman of Brunswick, the public relations company that advises Tesco. They were accompanied by civil servants from Defra and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, and shown round by the Prince's friend, Patrick Holden, an organic agriculture campaigner, and Charles's farm manager, David Wilson.
The day was organised by Holden's Sustainable Food Trust, but the talking points faithfully echoed Charles's view that industrialised agriculture is a big, dangerous experiment with our environment and a threat to the livelihoods of small farmers. Here was a branch of Prince Charles's power network in action. Away from the public glare, issues that matter intensely to him were being discussed in front of some of the most powerful people in Britain. In an echo of his famous comment of 1986 that he talks to his plants - he joked more recently he actually "instructs them" - there was even a brief exchange on whether oak trees communicate with their relatives through the soil. Holden and Wilson raised a few eyebrows with some of their scientific claims, not least about the danger of antibiotics in meat. On the whole, though, the guests seemed receptive.
Over the past four decades, Charles has carved out a unique position for himself as an elite activist, tirelessly lobbying and campaigning to promote his concerns. From farming to architecture, medicine to the environment, his opinions, warnings and grumbles are always heard. He spreads his ideas through his writings and speeches, his charities and allies and, behind the scenes, in private meetings and correspondence with government ministers. His interventions matter. Peter Hain, the former cabinet minister who lobbied with Charles for NHS trials of complementary medicine, summed up his influence in this way: "He could get a hearing where all the noble, diligent lobbying of the various different associations in the complementary medicine field found it hard."
Letters, written in black inky scrawl, are a key part of his lobbying arsenal. His carriage on the royal train is fitted with a desk, blotting paper and a stash of red-crested HRH notepaper on which he scrawls his "black spider memos". He writes the memos whenever he can - late at night, after dinner guests have left, even at 35,000ft on the royal jet. "I have travelled with him and within five minutes of takeoff, he is doing his letters," said Patrick Holden. "[At home] he goes back to his desk after dinner. How many of us do that?" Sometimes, the late-night letter writing is so exhausting that the prince, who turned 66 last week, is found asleep at his desk.
It is a habit that has put him in a precarious position. On 24 and 25 November, the supreme court will be asked to decide whether Charles's letters to ministers should remain private. This may be the final chapter of a nine-year legal battle between the Guardian and the government over freedom of information laws. In 2005, this newspaper asked to see letters Charles had written to ministers in 2004 and 2005. The government refused but revealed that Charles had sent 27 letters to several departments over eight months. In October 2012 Dominic Grieve, then attorney general, again vetoed release of the letters, arguing that the public might conclude Charles had been "disagreeing with government policy", which "would be seriously damaging to his role as future monarch because, if he forfeits his position of political neutrality as heir to the throne, he cannot easily recover it when he is king".
A former high-ranking government official, who is experienced in handling the prince's interaction with ministers, described the risk to Charles's kingship posed by publication as "quite large". There are, he said, "quite a lot of letters and they say some things that are quite zany".
One letter from February 2002, which was leaked to the Daily Mail, revealed Charles's strident approach. Writing to Lord Irvine, then lord chancellor in the Labour cabinet, he rubbished the Human Rights Act, suggesting that it was "only about the rights of individuals (I am unable to find a list of social responsibilities attached to it) and this betrays a fundamental distortion in social and legal thinking". In another letter to Lord Irvine, written in June 2001, he expressed his worry that the act "will only encourage people to take up causes which will make the pursuit of a sane, civilised and ordered existence ever more difficult", and added that "I, and countless others, dread the very real and growing prospect of an American-style personal injury culture becoming ever more prevalent in this country."
Friends admire him as intelligent and conscientious but, perhaps unfairly, the death of the Queen is a day many dread
Even if the letters remain private, many are concerned at the prospect of Charles continuing his activism as king. His record suggests that he will find it hard to abandon his campaigning approach. Charles has used the phrase "mobilising" to describe his activities; his critics call it "meddling". They view his involvement in political matters as an abuse of the unspoken understanding that the royal family should merely symbolise power, not wield it. Charles has waited longer to succeed than any previous heir to the throne. As his wait reaches its final stages, the question of how he will channel his political instincts when he finally becomes king is becoming a matter of debate in his court, in Whitehall and among his friends. Preparations are being made for a very different monarchy to that of Queen Elizabeth, who has secured acceptance of the constitutional monarchy in part through her strict silence on political affairs. Charles's friends admire him as intelligent, caring and conscientious, but, perhaps unfairly, the death of the Queen is a day many dread.
"A quiet constitutional revolution is afoot," his friend and biographer Jonathan Dimbleby said last year. "I predict that he will go well beyond what any previous constitutional monarch has ever essayed."
* * *
Charles's life, up to now, has been about how to carve meaning from his seven decades of waiting. "The defining question of his life has been, 'What good can I make of this ill-defined role?'" said one well-placed source. But this project has also created a dilemma over how he should reign, once the wait is over.
Charles gained a place at Trinity College Cambridge in 1967 after passing two A-levels (B in History and C in French). He graduated with a 2:2 in archaeology, anthropology and history. By 1970 he had met Camilla Shand (later Parker-Bowles). Over the next decade he had several girlfriends and by the time he became engaged to Lady Diana Spencer in 1981, Camilla had married the cavalry officer, Andrew Parker-Bowles. The royal soap opera soon cranked up into a Hollywood blockbuster: the wedding at St Paul's, the babies, infidelities on both sides, divorce, Diana's shocking death in Paris, national mourning, Elton John at the funeral. The royal family's reputation collapsed under an avalanche of negative press coverage.
I predict that he will go well beyond what any previous constitutional monarch has ever essayed
Jonathan Dimbleby
All this time, Charles had been fashioning a parallel intellectual life, immersing himself in the world of ideas and spirituality. "I was born in 1948, right in the middle of the 20th century, which had dawned amid the gleaming Age of the Machine, the very engine of colossal change in the western world," he wrote in his 2010 treatise Harmony: A New Way of Looking at Our World. "By the mid-1950s, a frenzy of change was sweeping the world in a wave of postwar modernism ... By the 1960s the industrialised countries were well on the way to creating what many imagined would be a limitless Age of Convenience. Even as a teenager I felt deeply disturbed by what seemed to have become a dangerously short-sighted approach." By the 70s, this feeling had hardened, and Charles began to speak out: "I could see very clearly that we were growing numb to the sacred presence that traditional societies feel very deeply."
The ideas Charles set out in Harmony are dizzyingly eclectic, and, at times, verge on a kind of mysticism. He cites the "grammar" of Islamic art "that underpins the whole of life", the "magical" rhythms of gardens and nature, the timelessness of Christian iconography and the symmetry of 16th-century German astronomy, Thomas Aquinas's "eternal law", the Vedic traditions of India, and Chinese Daoism. He is interested by the idea of "a duty to try and achieve an attunement between human nature and the greater scheme of the cosmos".
"He is smarter than you think," said one well-placed source. "He reads widely and deeply all the time at night, when he takes time off, when he travels. It is not so much books. He reads papers and is sent them all the time. If a new paper comes in from the University of Georgia on agriculture in the 21st century he'll read it, understand it and send someone a note about it."
In 1984 Charles launched a lifelong war on modern architecture by publicly criticising proposals for an extension to the National Gallery that he said was "like a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved friend". The plans were dropped. Five years later, he wrote a loftily titled book, A Vision of Britain, in which he explained how the urban reconstruction of the 1960s prompted in him a belief that it was "crazy ... to destroy so much of value and by the dictates of fashion throw the baby out with the bathwater". He quoted GK Chesterton in his call to the quiet majority who, he felt, shared his views: "We are the people of England that never have spoken yet."
From the mid-70s onwards, Charles began setting up charities - not as a patron like his mother, but as president, leading meetings and directing them from St James's Palace under the auspices of his charitable foundation, which he launched in 1979. Promoting his beliefs in the fields of health, work, the environment and architecture, his network of organisations came to handle £100m a year in funds. Friends such as the hedge-fund billionaire, Michael Hintze, donated money and the government provided grants. Charles began appointing experts to advise him, such as the former Friends of the Earth leader, Tony Juniper.
St James's Palace became a kind of grand salon for convening the powerful. Charles's "rainforest summit" in 2009 - where he proposed schemes to limit deforestation and reduce climate change - attracted the then French president Nicolas Sarkozy, then US secretary of state Hillary Clinton and UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon. Charles had established his court as a kind of thinktank, a model that may well follow him to Buckingham Palace. According to a source who has known Charles for many years, the charity network, which employs experts on architecture, regeneration, business and the environment, will be slimmed down but will remain "proactive and entrepreneurial".
Some say Charles's activism reflects not just his personality but the era he was born into. He will be the first British monarch to have gone to school - Gordonstoun in Scotland, which he later described as like "Colditz with kilts". The Queen was brought up in an Edwardian household where the women withdrew after dinner so men could talk among themselves, whereas Prince Charles reached adulthood in the late 1960s, and seized the opportunity provided by his unique role to cultivate relationships with the powerful.
Charles has not spoken publicly about how he might approach kingship, and even privately, aides always imply it is a highly delicate issue because it involves talking about a matter of deepest family sadness - the death of his mother. Yet his desire to think of the long-term consequences of human actions, coupled with the ideas expressed in his writings and many public interventions, offer a clue. In 2010, he told an NBC news crew that he felt "born into this position for a purpose". He explained: "I don't want my grandchildren or yours to come along and say to me, 'Why the hell didn't you come and do something about this?'"
* * *
It sometimes seems that Charles is pushing against the limits of his position, testing what is possible for a constitutional monarch in the 21st century. It is an approach that has alarmed many onlookers. "The main difference [between Charles and his mother] is that the Queen is frightfully discreet about these things and will mention them in private meetings with the prime minister," said a former senior government official. "Prince Charles is much more pushy and writes letters about his views which are on the edge of the mainstream. He pushes them hard and takes a risk. He is much more activist."
Since the beginning of 2012, Prince Charles has held 27 meetings with government ministers. The agendas are kept secret by both the palace and Whitehall, but we know that he has previously lobbied ministers over NHS policy, foxhunting, farming policy, grammar schools and human rights laws. Clarence House says the meetings are essential to the Prince "understanding the workings of government, its departments and its senior members". This knowledge will be necessary, it suggests, when he becomes king.
Over the years, Charles has adopted a number of like-minded politicians as allies. He got to know the former anti-apartheid campaigner, Peter Hain, after he became secretary of state for Wales in 2002. At the time, Hain used to send the prince short briefings twice a year to let him know what was happening in Wales. Later, he began meeting Charles on-on-one at Highgrove, his Gloucestershire mansion, and at his London palace, Clarence House. They discovered a shared enthusiasm for complementary medicine and forged an alliance to introduce it into the NHS. "We just got talking about it," said Hain. "And, as a result, I tried to get the Welsh health minister to run a pilot where GPs could use certain recognised and established complementary therapists, whether osteopaths, chiropractors, nutritionists, homeopaths and acupuncturists." The attempt failed, but in 2007, when Hain was Northern Ireland secretary, he launched a trial, which "absolutely thrilled" the prince.
Prince Charles on his tour of Chester. Photograph: David Levene
Charles took a close interest in Hain's progress. He listened to Hain's interviews on Radio 4's Today programme and gave feedback on his performances. "He wanted to persuade, as I did, the secretary of state for health and colleagues in government to do the same kind of pilot study [on the effectiveness of complementary medicine]," said Hain. "I would speak to colleagues and he would approach it in whatever way he chose. I think it involved letters and meetings. He encouraged me and I encouraged him." During this period, the pair shared a dinner with their wives in the upstairs dining room at Clarence House. Despite the formality of the protocols, Hain said that Charles was "full of humour" and "easy to talk to". Charles sipped a soft drink while the others enjoyed wine from the royal cellar.
Whether it was due to his alliance with Hain or his effort through other channels, the prince's campaign worked. In 2005 his charity, the Foundation for Integrated Health, began receiving £1.1m in Department of Health grants to advise on the regulation of massage, aromatherapy, reflexology and other complementary therapies.
From 1997 to 2003, Michael Meacher, MP for Oldham West and Royton, who was then environment secretary, became another of Charles's cabinet allies. At that time, a debate was raging over whether the UK should allow genetically modified crops to be grown commercially in the UK. In 2008 Charles told the Daily Telegraph that the development of GM crops would be "the biggest disaster, environmentally, of all time". Tony Blair was in favour of GM crops and complained to Peter Mandelson that Charles's lobbying was "unhelpful". (Mandelson later described it as "anti-scientific and irresponsible in the light of food shortages in the developing world".)
Meacher, who was sympathetic to the prince's views, soon received an invitation to Highgrove. "As we went through the Highgrove gardens, I found myself alone with him when we got to a particular place and I think that was probably arranged," Meacher said. "On climate change and on organic farming, we had shared views. We had agreed objectives and we were both going to do what we could to achieve them." At receptions with the prince, Meacher would sometimes "get a message from one of his aides" saying the prince wants to have a word with him. Meacher said he was "obviously pleased" with such invitations. During his time in the cabinet, Charles wrote him eight or nine "encouraging" letters about climate change and the environment.
There is no sign that Charles has let up in recent years. Since the beginning of the year he has held meetings with nine ministers in the UK and Scottish governments including David Cameron, George Osborne and Alex Salmond. In just three days in September he met Liz Truss, the environment secretary, Brandon Lewis, housing minister and John Hayes, transport minister. Then there are the dinners at Highgrove, the prolific letter-writing, and campaigning by the 15 charities of which he is president. It is clear that Charles's "mobilising" machine is running at a high voltage. Will he be willing to step away from the controls when he becomes king? Paul Flynn, a member of the commons political and constitutional reform committee, has predicted that unless he does so, there will be "a big confrontation between the monarchy and parliament".
* * *
On a warm September day, Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall stepped out of a Bentley on to a council estate in Chester, having hopped over from RAF Northholt in a private jet that morning. On the back seats of the car were "his and hers" cushions in case the creamy leather upholstery was insufficiently comfortable. Charles had come to Chester for a day of walkabouts.
Charles at a primary school in Lache, which he last visited in 1972, on the outskirts of Chester. Photograph: David Levene
Within seconds of arriving at his first stop, a primary school in the suburb of Lache, Charles was burbling greetings in a husky baritone to a line of dignitaries who wore pinstripes and fascinators. For a man who is supposed to worry a lot, Charles seemed relaxed - his skin was tanned and his suit immaculate. Somehow alert and detached at once, he skilfully picked people out from the crowd and spent a little time with each of them. He looked for moments of humour and broke into an infectious laugh as often as he could.
Every day, Charles must negotiate some extraordinarily banal conversations, which is inevitable when you initiate small talk with 20 people in 15 minutes, as he did here.
Charles: "What are these bulbs?"
Teacher: "Spring bulbs".
Charles: "Oh, well done."
If he was bored (and he mostly didn't look it), he could be forgiven. A plaque commemorates his last visit to the school. It was 1972. He has been a long time in the same job.
Outside the school gate I asked locals about his impending accession to the throne. Suddenly we were back in the 1990s, the royal family's lowest ebb in recent memory. John Schofield, 74, a retired local government officer was talking to his neighbour Bryan Williams, 47, a gas fitter, before the royal motorcade arrived. Schofield said he liked the family "but I don't think he should be king because of the divorce". Williams agreed. "The crown should go down a generation," he said. "I think Charles is a bit too old and he has been in his mother's wake so long. And a lot of people thought so highly of Diana and her sons have taken on everything she stood for."
A popularity poll in June for ComRes suggested there could be a profound slump in public affection for the monarchy when Charles takes the reins. He scored 43% approval against the Queen's 63%. One former cabinet minister I spoke to agreed with the widespread view that Charles's relationship with Diana was the biggest factor in public antipathy towards him.
"People outside the metropolitan bubble, the people who really care about the monarchy, are still quite upset about what happened," said Catherine Mayer, an editor-at-large of Time Magazine, whose biography of Charles will be published next year. "They are inclined to believe a fiction which sees him as a cynic, an experienced older man who married a much younger bride and then treated her badly."
Even so, Charles strongly believes he has a public mandate to engage with the political side of public life. His allies argue that his right to engage with government is rooted in a profound connection with the British people - not least through hundreds of public engagements each year. He is, they say, "well-placed to relay public opinion [to ministers] on a number of issues".
In 2010 he successfully blocked Richard Rogers's £3bn modernist redevelopment of the Qatar-owned Chelsea Barracks site by complaining to the prime minister of Qatar that it was another "brutalist" development of the kind responsible for "the destruction" of London. At that time, Charles's then private secretary, Sir Michael Peat, said it was his "duty to make sure the views of ordinary people that might not otherwise be heard receive some exposure". Rogers, among others, disagreed. Mr Justice Vos, presiding over a related high court case, criticised Charles's intervention as "unexpected and unwelcome".
But how far should he go in speaking out? On his trip to Canada in May this year, he waded into the Ukraine crisis, telling a 78-year old Jewish woman who had fled the Nazis that Vladimir Putin was "doing just about the same as Hitler". Putin said the statement was unacceptable and "not what kings do". Foreign Office diplomats might have been alarmed, but 51% of British people polled by YouGov said the comments were appropriate and only 36% disapproved.
Many of those who know Charles well believe that, as king, he will not adopt the same discreet style as his mother. As one source put it: "The man the public has seen for the last 40 years is the man the prince is." "He will be true to his beliefs in his contributions," said another source, who has known Prince Charles for many years. "Rather than a complete reinvention to become a monarch in the mould of his mother, the strategy will be to try and continue with his heartfelt interventions, albeit checking each for tone and content to ensure it does not damage the monarchy." Another source spelled out the possible new rules of engagement: "Speeches will have to pass the following test: would it seem odd because the Queen wouldn't have said it - or would it seem dangerous?"
His allies offer assurances that there is no cause for concern. Firstly, they argue that Charles and his officials already have a close working relationship with government and that Charles's team at Clarence House usually shares with ministerial aides any speeches that touch on policy, so that they are ready to iron out problems in advance. Yet it is hard to believe, for instance, that Whitehall cleared Charles's comments about the "tragedy" of the government's slow response, in February, to the floods in southern England.
He will have very firm advice when he comes into office to overcome the habits of a lifetime
What's more, they say, King Charles simply won't have as much time to "mobilise". The monarch's schedule is weighed down by the daily red box of state papers, investitures and formal meetings with incoming and outgoing diplomats and clergy. That, too, sounds a little unrealistic, given the plentiful evidence of the prince's appetite for activism. But one source, who has known him for years, dismissed such concerns: "In private moments, at the end of the day and talking freely, he gets frustrated that people don't think he doesn't understand it is a completely different job being head of state."
"He fundamentally gets the role that the monarch plays in our constitution," one source said. "What politicians are, the monarch is not. Politicians are inherently divisive because they are not standing for the nation. Politicians think in five year cycles, but the monarch thinks long-term."
Meacher said he believes Charles wants to influence politicians when he is king. But, Meacher argued, there should be more transparency, and the public has "a right to know if the king has taken an interest in [an issue] and has written to the relevant minister". Others think Charles must desist altogether. "He will have very firm advice when he comes into office to overcome the habits of a lifetime," said a former top Whitehall official.
* * *
The night before Charles's trip to Chester, four members of Republic, the national campaign for an elected head of state, were plotting the end of the monarchy over carrot cake and tea in a neat suburban house on the outskirts of Altrincham. The area around Manchester and Liverpool, two cities with radical political histories, is a relative stronghold for Republic, but the group still has only 15 regular local activists. Inside the house, flyers and #bornequal badges covered the dining room table, while a banner demanding a republic flopped over a toy. The republicans were preparing to run stalls at Wigan Diggers, a festival celebrating the life of Gerard Winstanley, a Cromwell-era political reformer, and at the Live a Better Life vegan festival, where they planned to focus on the royal family's love of hunting.
Republicanism is still a taboo, the activists said. (In polls over the past decade, support for Britain becoming a republic has remained at only 10 to 20%.) They spoke about embracing their beliefs as if they were coming out of the closet. "I've had feelings along these lines for a long time without knowing where to go with it," said Terry Bates. "And then 30 years later I find out I am not alone in feeling like that." For Bates, the moment of truth came at a packed rugby league stadium in Wigan, when he decided to stay seated as the national anthem was played. "I realised this needed to be my protest in front of 32,000 people in the ground," he said. "Now if I hear it on TV I walk out of the room."
With the Duchess of Cornwall - and Grace the golden eagle outside Chester cathedral. Photograph: David Levene
Charles, said Bates, is a useful "recruiting sergeant" in the republican cause. "Are people going to be singing 'God save our gracious king' with quite as much enthusiasm?" agreed Helen Guest, 36, a former nursing sister. "I don't think so."
But if the middle-aged, beige-clad crowd pressed up against the fence of Chester Cathedral at the royal couple's second event of the day is any indicator, then the answer is yes. Charles and Camilla shook hands, posed for photos and accepted gifts. According to Charles's allies, talk of William and Kate "eclipsing" the prince underestimates his popularity with the baby boomer generation, which remains a key constituency for Charles. In Chester, he seemed to be shoring up support with every handshake.
Inside the cathedral, the strangeness of Prince Charles's life came into focus. Around one corner a choir performed a piece by Charles's favourite composer, CMH Parry. Some modernist choir stalls, installed 15 years ago, caught his disapproving eye. "Doesn't quite go," the prince announced, locking eyes with the senior churchman. "It may be time for a review." Around the next corner were members of the Mercian regiment of soldiers, waiting to shake hands with the prince. Behind them was a group of earnest amateur dramatists, who were poised to enact part of a mystery play. They wore what looked like M&S pashminas as biblical headdresses. Finally, in the cloister, Charles was invited to hold Grace the golden eagle, a magnificent bird who, moments earlier, had evacuated her bowels explosively onto this reporter's notebook.
The day ended with a trip to see a plane wing being assembled at the Airbus factory at Broughton and a reception for the industrial cadets programme, which Charles supports as part of his aim to encourage more young people to take up engineering. Improbably, the meticulously planned cocktail of engagements reflected his interests. Charles had done his bit for the nation's education, youth, faith, heritage, and industry - all in the space of three and a half hours, before his jet roared off into the sky to take him back to London. About an hour's flight - long enough perhaps, for three or four more black spider memos that the rest of us may never see.
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What kind of King will Charles III be? The long read: When Prince Charles becomes king, will he be able to stop his compulsive 'meddling'? And if he can't, what will it mean for the monarchy and the United Kingdom? 35 false The Guardian true http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/About/General/2014/11/19/1416400893972/Prince-Charles-004.jpg 5083 true 452164206 82056 false 546b7310e4b018fc4f4afbfb 9650798 false Robert Booth 2014-11-20T00:00:00Z 2194794 UK false 2014-11-22T17:30:00Z
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The Guardian
March 26, 2015 Thursday 8:49 AM GMT
Leaders of European cities make pledge to tackle climate change;
Representatives of 30 cities gather in Paris to sign declaration that will also commit them to use their (EURO)10bn purchasing power to buy eco-friendly
BYLINE: Kim Willsher in Paris
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 267 words
Leaders and representatives of 30 European cities will gather in Paris on Thursday to declare their commitment to "clean" policies to fight climate change.
Officials will also sign a declaration agreeing to use their collective purchasing power - estimated at around (EURO)10bn (£7.4bn) a year - to buy eco-friendly.
Related: Full text of climate change statement signed by 26 European mayors
The gathering comes eight months before Paris hosts the United Nations climate change conference, known as COP21, aimed at achieving a binding, universal and international agreement on climate for the first time in more than 20 years of UN negotiations.
In a joint statement signed by 26 European mayors, including London's Boris Johnson, city representatives said they hoped combining forces to favour green and low-carbon industries for procurement contracts would have a "leverage effect on the private sector that very often aligns its own requirements with the public sector".
"[The] time has now come for European capitals and metropolises to pool our efforts to tackle climate change. This requires a closer dialogue between cities through a more regular exchange of expertise and good practices," they declared.
The mayors will arrive at Paris' city hall in electric Autolib' cars, from the city's car-sharing service, decorated in the colours of their country.
The summit comes a week after Paris was declared the most polluted city on the planet after a choking cloud almost obscured its most symbolic monuments including the Eiffel Tower and left the city of light looking more like the capital of smog.
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The Guardian
March 25, 2015 Wednesday 8:06 PM GMT
Climate change: farmers urge Coalition to restore emissions trading scheme;
Failure to acknowledge the problem is 'doing the industry a disservice' and harming Australia's international standing, says farming group
BYLINE: Gabrielle Chan
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 872 words
A delegation of farmers has called for the Abbott government to act on climate change by restoring an emissions trading scheme, maintaining the current renewable energy target and spending on rail infrastructure to improve inland transport and reduce carbon emissions.
The farmers have spent two days lobbying the Coalition to start implementing a suite of policies to deal with the effects of climate change, warning of dire consequences for the agriculture sector if the threat was not addressed.
They have told the government MPs, including John Cobb and the staff of the treasurer Joe Hockey, that the Direct Action policy, which provides incentives for polluters to reduce carbon emissions, will not work to ameliorate climate change, "but if the government wants to give away money, people will keep taking it".
The delegation said the lack of climate policies was being exacerbated by the cuts to research and development funding for applied climate science and the Bureau of Meteorology.
The visit came as intense negotiations between the government and Labor continued over the RET, which currently requires the government to source 41,000 gigawatt hours of energy from renewables by 2020. The latest government offer to Labor is 32,000GWh.
It also follows a report by University of Melbourne researchers called Appetite for Change, which charted the detrimental effects of climate change on Australia's food production.
The farmers, organised by Earth Hour Australia, said the Abbott government needed to show leadership on the issue and it could start by using the term climate change, rather than "climate variability".
John Pettigrew, who has an irrigation property at Bunbartha north of Shepperton, said calling climate change "variability" was "doing everyone a disservice".
"We are not going to revert to where we were 10 years ago," said Pettigrew. "There will be highs and lows, but the trend is there. We saw it through the millennium drought and failing to acknowledge the problem is only adding to it.
"It's doing the industry a disservice. It's about how the industry is perceived by overseas buyers. Already in dairy, large multinational companies are demanding environment and carbon emission recording to show it's been factored in.
"The Australian government's international perception is not good [on climate change] and that is an impediment to us being able to get into high-value markets."
Peter Holding, who runs a 1500-hectare farm at Harden west of Canberra, said the science indicated that climate change was a bigger issue than the weather and Australia needed to protect its international reputation.
"We want to see some leadership, we are tired of platitudes and saying it can't happen, we are losing markets because Australia's reputation is slipping on being clean and green," Holding said.
"Climate change going to have impacts right across the budget from dislocation of whole rural communities to drought assistance.
"We need infrastructure spending and new industries in the renewable energy sector. Governments have to start thinking on policies that last a bit longer than a three year term."
Holding said while some carbon farming initiatives such as methane capture in piggeries were effective, Direct Action was generally rolling out slowly and farmers and researchers remain unconvinced the policy will meet any targets.
"People will be more than willing to accept the funding but we - and the research - are not convinced you can make a difference to climate change by doing it and therefore it is a waste of precious government funds, but if the government wants to give away money, people will keep taking it" said Holding.
Sid Plant, a grazier on the Darling Downs in Queensland, would like to see an emissions trading scheme, like the one first negotiated in 2009 by Kevin Rudd, Malcolm Turnbull and Ian Macfarlane.
Plant said he was hopeful that "something sensible" on emissions trading was proposed because he believes it would allow farmers to benefit from increasing organic carbon in the soil, which had added benefits for the farm as well as turning a profit.
"I hoped to position myself to have carbon to sell and it might not pay a lot but there will be benefits for increasing organic carbon, such as retaining more moisture," he said.
Plant's family has farmed for seven generations and he first had to study weather patterns to get his pilot's licence. He first noticed the El Nino pattern in 1973 and learned to apply the science to better manage his cattle. Under a changing climate, Plant no longer keeps a breeding herd so that he can sell down as soon as the weather turns dry. He is convinced he will not see much rain from now until Christmas.
"The most significant part of climate change is declining rainfall, which applies to most of Queensland," Plant said.
"Australian farmers are feeling climate change as early as anybody in the world, and significantly, we have the world's highest year to year rainfall variability.
"Climate change is coming over the top and when the UN sees our farmers as leading the world, we seem to be running out of bright ideas without the right policies. I want to save world for my grandchildren.
"I find it very difficult to find someone to vote for."
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The Guardian
March 25, 2015 Wednesday 4:44 PM GMT
Keep it in the Ground campaign: six things we've learned;
It's been a few weeks since we launched our major climate change project. Here's what we have learned so far
BYLINE: Emma Howard
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 775 words
1. It would be catastrophic to burn most of the fossil fuels in the ground
This was the consensus reached by the collection of journalists that met in January to plan the project. It's also the consensus reached by many of the world's most prolific scientists, economists and statesmen.
Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England has warned that "the vast majority of reserves are unburnable" while Desmond Tutu has called for an apartheid style boycott of fossil fuel companies. Barack Obama has said simply: "We're not going to be able to burn it all".
To avoid catastrophic and runaway consequences, the increase in global temperatures must be kept to 2C above pre-industrial levels.
Yet the oil, gas and coal reserves that companies plan to burn will emit quantities of carbon that will take us well beyond that target. If we continue on our current trajectory, international scientists estimate we will exceed the 2C rise by mid-century. We need to keep the fossil fuels in the ground to avoid this.
2. The international climate negotiations are silent on the issue
"You've been negotiating all my life," said Canadian student Anjali Appadurai as she stood on the podium at the 2011 international climate conference in Durban, South Africa. In the 23-year history of these negotiations, there has as yet been no mention of keeping fossil fuels in the ground. The focus has been on regulating emissions, not on regulating production.
"Breaking such silences requires a conscious and painful effort," writes George Monbiot in his piece on the issue. "It seemed so obvious, so overwhelming, that I couldn't understand why it wasn't on everyone's lips. Before writing about it, I circled the topic like a dog investigating a suspicious carcass. Why, I wondered, is no one touching this? Is it toxic?"
3. But there is hope - and it doesn't depend on Paris
In December, representatives from 196 countries will meet to negotiate an international agreement on climate change. As important as this will be, the climate fight won't wait for Paris, argues environmental campaigner Bill McKibben.
He is the founder of 350.org, a global climate movement that has founded the fastest growing divestment campaign in history. It targets institutions - from universities to pension funds to faith organisations - and asks them to move their investments out of the fossil fuel industry.
4. The Gates Foundation's fossil fuel investments run into the billions
According to a Guardian analysis of their most recent tax filings, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have a minimum of $1.4bn (£1bn) invested in oil, coal and gas companies. These endowments are held by 35 of the top 200 fossil fuel companies, according to rankings of their reserves.
Despite declaring that climate change demands that the world "moves much more aggressively - right now", the world's largest charitable foundation refused to comment on fossil fuel investment. A spokesman for Bill Gates' private office said: "We respect the passion of advocates for action on climate change, and recognise that there are many views on how best to address it. Bill is privately investing considerable time and resources in the effort [to develop clean energy]."
5. The Wellcome Trust will not divest despite excluding some fossil fuel companies
At least £450m worth of the Wellcome Trust's £18bn endowment is invested in Shell, BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and BP. The foundation has refused the Guardian's call for it to divest, arguing that the campaign is only a "grand gesture" and that engagement with the companies "offers a better prospect for change than divestment". However, last week the Guardian revealed that Wellcome disposed of $138m (£94m) it had invested in ExxonMobil, the oil company that has funded climate change denial.
6. You care (so does Tilda Swinton, the minister for energy and climate change and some of the world's most senior scientists)
In the past 10 days, more than 140,000 of you have signed our petition asking the Wellcome Trust and the Gates Foundation to commit to divesting from fossil fuels and to immediately freeze any new investments.
Tilda Swinton, Yotam Ottolenghi and Bianca Jagger have added their support to the cause. Ed Davey, minister for energy and climate change has given the campaign his strong backing, while calling for divestment from "very risky" coal assets.
Some of Europe's most senior scientists have also spoken out. Professor Anne Glover, former chief scientific adviser to the European commission said:
These are leaders. These are people that others look to. So they have enormous responsibility. That's why for me it is important that they react to this.
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The Guardian
March 25, 2015 Wednesday 3:17 PM GMT
How are Ben & Jerry's fighting climate change?;
Ben and Jerry's are taking to the streets, armed with a climate change message and free ice-cream
BYLINE: Unilever
SECTION: UNILEVER PARTNER ZONE
LENGTH: 226 words
Ben & Jerry's is calling for ice-cream fans to join the fight for a 100% clean energy future through the save our swirled climate tour.
The year long campaign, which kicked off on 18 March, aims to inspire people around the world to support the global climate movement by joining international campaigning organisation Avaaz and calling on world leaders to support the transition to 100% clean energy by 2050. This year, Ben & Jerry's wants to get 500,000 ice-cream fans involved in tackling climate change.
Related: Why eliminating landfill waste makes sound business sense
For Ben & Jerry's, climate change is not just about polar bears and ice sheets, it's also about people and it's an issue of economic and social justice. Climate change is a serious threat to the poorest and most vulnerable people on the planet, which has largely been caused by wealthy, developed nations of the global north. Now, the least developed nations of the global south are most at risk and have the least resources to adapt to a rapidly warming world.
Find out more about Ben & Jerry's work and help Avaaz deliver 3,000,000 signatures on their 100% Clean Power Petition on the eve of a historic climate summit in Paris in December 2015.
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The Guardian
March 25, 2015 Wednesday 3:17 PM GMT
'Next two decades are decisive on climate change' - video;
The next two decades are decisive for how we respond to climate change challenges, Lord Stern told TED@Unilever
BYLINE: Unilever
SECTION: UNILEVER PARTNER ZONE
LENGTH: 296 words
"Our planet is facing two fundamental changes over the next two decades which will determine whether the next 100 years will be the best or the worst of centuries," climate economist, Lord Stern, told TED@Unilever in New York.
Speaking just before the UN Climate Summit, Stern outlined how the basic structure of the world's economies and societies - both rich and poor - will change with profound implications for energy use, the availability of land and water and the planet's forests.
"Now, the first of these transformations is going to happen anyway," he said. "We have to decide whether to do it well or badly, the economic, or structural, transformation. But the second of the transformations, the climate transformations, we have to decide to do. Those two transformations face us in the next two decades. The next two decades are decisive for what we have to do."
However, these transformations also bring huge opportunities for how we design our cities, where we get our energy from and how way we manage our land if we take action and make good decisions now.
Stern said: "We need political pressure to build. We need leaders to step up. We can have better growth, better climate, a better world. We can make, by managing those two transformations well, the next 100 years the best of centuries."
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The Guardian
March 25, 2015 Wednesday 3:17 PM GMT
Change needed to build a food system fit for the future;
Ambitious targets and a common vision are needed to find solutions to fix the global food system, says Paul Polman and Marc Van Ameringen
BYLINE: Paul Polman and Marc Van Ameringen
SECTION: UNILEVER PARTNER ZONE
LENGTH: 1059 words
With the world's population predicted to reach nine billion by 2050, we collectively face a dual challenge: ensuring that everyone will have access to affordable, nutritious food without decimating the earth's natural resources in the process.
This is easier said than done. Our current food system is dysfunctional both in its impact on people and the planet. Unless we change course, we will fail to meet this challenge.
Today, millions do not have enough to eat and billions lack the right nutrients to be healthy. The UN's food organisations - the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) - have just published their annual 2014 report on global food insecurity. Their report highlights that despite some evidence of progress - 805 million people or one in nine people - still suffer from hunger.
Poor diets stunt the growth of 162 million children every year, 97% of them in the developing world, trapping communities in a cycle of poverty and ill health. The consequences for those affected can be devastating. Malnourished children tend to start school later, have poorer levels of concentration and lower scores in cognitive ability tests. Many carry these burdens through into later life.
According to the WHO, a staggering two billion people are affected by iron deficiency which contributes to anaemia. More than 250 million children suffer from Vitamin A deficiency which is a major public health challenge in more than half the countries on the planet - with half a million going blind each year. Half of these children die within 12 months of going blind.
Meanwhile, 1.3 billion of us are classified as overweight or obese, fuelled by a food system that is damaging not just our bodies but the environment too. If trends towards Western diets continue, the impact of food production alone will reach, if not exceed, the global targets for total greenhouse gases.
Our current agricultural production system is inefficient. We continue to destroy tropical forests for agricultural expansion and this contributes 12% to the total warming of the planet today. And much of the food we produce, we waste. Figures from the Institute of Mechanical Engineers show as much as 2bn tonnes of food - 50% of all we produce - never makes it on to a plate.
What is a crisis for many now could become a catastrophe for more in the future because of effects of climate change. Climate change is already making people hungry - disrupting crop yields, pushing prices up and increasing food insecurity for large numbers of the world's population. And it is not just food but nutrients that are becoming scarcer as the climate changes.
A study led by the Harvard School of Public Health found that rising levels of CO2 are stripping staple foods of vital nutrients, rendering staple crops such as wheat, rice and soya less nutritious for millions of people in developing countries. If these climate and socio-economic trends continue the number of under-nourished children in Africa alone is expected to rise ten-fold by 2050.
It is against this backdrop that world leaders are coming together at the Climate Summit in New York to secure buy-in for a global climate deal next year. In the same week, in the same city, governments meeting at the UN General Assembly will review proposals for the post-2015 development goals that aim to eliminate poverty and hunger for good.
If we fail to act, we risk a downward spiral in which poverty and climate impacts reinforce each other. It is the poorest communities that will suffer the worst effects of climate change, including increased hunger and malnutrition as crop production and livelihoods are threatened. And poverty is a driver of climate change, as desperate communities resort to unsustainable use of resources to meet current needs.
But there is an alternative path. In the face of climate change, our basic food systems have to be reimagined so that the world is producing nutritious food in a more sustainable way that increases livelihoods.
This means supporting the world's smallholder farmers so that they are able to grow, sell and eat more nutritious foods; it means converting degraded lands into productive farms; fortifying staple foods with essential nutrients like iron and zinc; and developing alternative sources of food. It also means scaling up existing sustainable interventions that we know already work extremely well like breastfeeding for infants. All can play a role in reducing malnutrition and reducing the carbon footprint of the food we eat. All will rely on ambition, innovation and leadership.
We come from very different backgrounds, but we share the belief that its only by bringing together business, civil society and governments that we will find solutions that can be scaled up for maximum impact. Countries, companies and NGOs can create a better future, leading by example and catalysing action in their peer groups or industries. But we need ambitious targets and a common vision. We cannot afford to talk about hunger without addressing climate change, food production without sustainability or growth without good nutrition.
As climate and development goals are debated this week and the months ahead, it should be with these links in mind. A healthier, more sustainable future is possible. But, the sustainability, food and health nexus must be dealt with together if we are going to fix the global food system.
Paul Polman is CEO of Unilever, a member of the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement lead group and chairman of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development
Marc Van Ameringen is executive director of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition. He is the recipient of the 2014 World Food Program Hunger Hero Award
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The Guardian
March 25, 2015 Wednesday 1:30 PM GMT
Fossil fuel firms are still bankrolling climate denial lobby groups;
BP has withdrawn support to Alec, a group known for misrepresenting climate science, but appearances can be deceptive. Oil, gas and coal companies remain firmly behind climate disinformation campaigns
BYLINE: Peter C Frumhoff and Naomi Oreskes
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 1186 words
The oil giant BP has announced that they will no longer fund the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), a lobbying group that routinely misrepresents climate science to US state legislators. It is the latest sign that some of the world's largest fossil fuel companies appear to be warming to the overwhelming evidence that the unabated use of their products poses severe risks of disrupting the climate.
Last month, BP and Royal Dutch Shell announced their support for shareholder resolutions calling on them to commit to reduce heat-trapping emissions, invest in renewable energy, and show how their current business model would hold up against the strict limits on future emissions needed to limit the risk of major climate disruption.
Shell chief executive Ben van Buerden recently stated that "climate change is real and a threat we want to act upon. We are not aligning with sceptics."
Even ExxonMobil, which spent $16m (£11m) between 1998 and 2005 to fund groups that spread disinformation about climate science, now prominently acknowledges on their website that "rising greenhouse gas emissions pose significant risks to society and ecosystems."
But appearances can be deceiving.
For one, BP still channels funds through its political action committee to climate science-denying US policymakers such as senator James Inhofe, chair of the senate's environment and public works committee. While such direct contributions to politicians are a matter of public record, companies continue to sow climate doubt and influence climate policy in ways that are far more opaque.
For instance, recently released documents show that ExxonMobil gave more than $75,000 between 2008 and 2010 to secretly support the work of Willie Soon, a contrarian climate researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, well after the company announced it would halt such funding. Soon's research has sought to downplay the human influence on global warming.
This follows revelations that Southern Company, one of the largest utilities in the US, spent $400,000 between 2006 and 2015 to fund Soon, supporting his research, Congressional testimony, and other "deliverables" while specifying that its funding be disclosed only with express company permission.
Robert Gehri, the Southern Company employee who authorised this funding was one of a dozen industry representatives who, on behalf of the American Petroleum Institute, created a $6m campaign in 1998 that misled the public about climate science. Among other strategies, he oversaw the covert funding of "independent" scientists.
Some of the largest fossil fuel companies now publicly accepting mainstream climate science, continue to support climate denial through influential lobbying groups and trade associations. Shell, Chevron, and ExxonMobil still fund Alec, which misleadingly describes climate change as "a historical phenomenon for which debate will continue over the significance of natural and [human-caused] contributions."
With their support, Alec promotes "model legislation" to repeal state renewable energy standards and roll back other climate and energy policies.
Shell, BP, Chevron, and ExxonMobil are also members and funders of the API and the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA). Late last year, a leaked presentation from WSPA revealed a stealth campaign to block climate policies in California by backing a constellation of astroturf groups with names such as the "California Drivers Alliance" and "Californians Against Higher Taxes".
Exactly how much fossil fuel companies have spent to support disinformation remains shrouded in secrecy, in part because they are not required to report their political and public relations spending. Robert Brulle, a social scientist at Drexel University, estimates that hundreds of millions of dollars have flowed from corporations, ideological foundations, and groups that oppose climate policy and often sow doubt about mainstream climate science.
Such spending is big money in politics, but it pales in comparison to the staggering costs of climate change. New York City alone estimates it will cost nearly $20bn over a decade to protect its citizens against rising seas and more extreme weather. The bipartisan Risky Business Project estimates that over the next 15 years, sea-level rise and storm surge are expected to increase damage from East and Gulf Coast storms by $2bn to $3.5bn. They also conclude that more extreme heat could cause corn, wheat, soy and cotton yields to decline 10% or more in some southern and midwestern counties.
Who will pay these and other costs of preparing for now inevitable changes? Right now, by default, this responsibility falls largely to taxpayers.
But shouldn't fossil fuel companies bear some responsibility to pay for the harms resulting from their products?
Tobacco companies were found liable for damage from cigarettes. Those companies also deceived the public about the realities of scientific research on smoking. In fact, they funded some of the same scientists and groups fossil fuel companies have relied on to spread misinformation. The tobacco companies were held accountable, in part, because they colluded to deceive the public and policymakers about the risks their products caused.
Similarly, after scientific evidence on the cancer-causing risks of asbestos was established, producers of asbestos and manufacturers of products containing it were also held liable for damages.
The magnitude of the fossil energy industry's contribution to the climate problem is enormous. Researchers have found that just 90 entities - including the world's largest investor-owned fossil fuel companies such as Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP, and Shell - are responsible for extracting the coal, oil, and gas that have produced about two-thirds of all industrial carbon pollution. For decades, these same companies have sought to obscure the risks of using their products, and sought to deny and delay regulation - increasing the risks society faces from a changing climate.
It is not too late for fossil fuel companies to take responsible action. Shell and BP's support for shareholder resolutions calling on them to invest in low-carbon energy is a first step. But investors - and society at large - should expect far more.
We should expect fossil fuel companies to stop supporting climate disinformation and distance themselves publicly from trade associations and lobbying groups that do. We should expect them to make their political spending transparent. And we should expect them to pay a fair share of the costs of limiting the damages from climate change, which a more expedited transition to low carbon economy could have - and should have - avoided.
Peter C Frumhoff is the director of science and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists and a former Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change lead author. Naomi Oreskes is a professor of the history of science at Harvard University and the author with Erik M Conway of Merchants of Doubt, which is the subject of a new documentary, and The Collapse of Western Civilisation.
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The Guardian
March 25, 2015 Wednesday 12:27 PM GMT
US museums asked to sever ties with fossil fuel industry;
Scientists and cultural figures call on science and art museums to ditch corporate sponsorships from fossil fuel companies
BYLINE: Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 1155 words
Climate scientists and cultural figures called on national history and science museums on Tuesday to sever their ties to the fossil fuel industry, singling out a major patron from the Koch family of conservative oil billionaires.
Corporate sponsorships from the fossil fuel industry threatened the credibility of important institutions and eroded the public trust, the scientists said in a letter.
"We are concerned that the integrity of these institutions is compromised by association with special interests who obfuscate climate science, fight environmental regulation, oppose clean energy legislation, and seek to ease limits on industrial pollution," the letter signed by nearly three dozen scientists and museum professionals said.
The letter explicitly targeted David Koch, a trustee and leading donor and exhibit sponsor of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington and the American Museum of Natural History in New York, who has also spent at least $67m (£45m) funding climate denial front groups.
"When some of the biggest contributors to climate change and funders of misinformation on climate science sponsor exhibitions in museums of science and natural history, they undermine public confidence in the validity of the institutions responsible for transmitting scientific knowledge," the letter said.
Koch and the Smithsonian natural history museum came under attack five years ago for an exhibit sponsored by the billionaire which failed to connect the burning of fossil fuels to climate change.
The letter - which raises similar arguments to the campaign against BP corporate sponsorship of the Tate Modern - was endorsed by a roster of leading scientists including the Nobel laureate, Eric Chivian, climate scientists James Hansen, Michael Mann, and a number of museum professionals.
In April, campaigners will ask the American Museum of Natural History to remove Koch as a trustee.
The letter represents the opening of a new front in the fossil fuel divestment campaign, which originated in college campuses and has since spread to charitable foundations, pension funds, and now museums.
The Guardian supports the campaign, and has called on the Wellcome Trust and the Gates Foundation to divest from coal, oil and gas.
Campaigners said the gravity of the climate crisis compelled museums to take a stand against the fossil fuel industry. "Beyond the need to inform and educate people about science, we have a moral obligation to get on the right side of the issue of global warming," said James Powell, a former director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, who signed the letter.
The letter is being released amid growing concern about the influence of corporate funding on academic and cultural institutions. Last month, it emerged that a Harvard-Smithsonian astronomer, Willie Soon, received $1.25m from industry sources, including the Kochs, for research denying a human role in climate change - and concealed the sources of that funding from scientific journals.
Beka Economopoulos, the founder of the Natural History Museum project and the organiser of the petition, said such associations, in the form of corporate sponsorships or board memberships, made it easier for fossil fuel companies to put off action on climate change and as such were "morally wrong".
"Regardless of whether exhibits are compromised or not - climate deniers and fossil fuel companies have no business in museums of science and natural history," she said in an email. "They green their image while they bankroll efforts to obstruct action on climate change."
Roberto Lebron, a spokesman for the American Museum of Natural History, said in an email: "Donors do not determine the interpretation or presentation of scientific content."
The Smithsonian also said patrons had no influence on exhibits. "Donors and supporters have no influence on the content or presentation of Smithsonian exhibitions, regardless of their private interests." Koch Industries did not respond to requests for comment.
In the case of the Koch family, the contradictions between the museums' missions and their sources of funding were especially stark, supporters of the letter said.
"They wouldn't accept money from Philip Morris and Atria to do an exhibit on respiratory health. They wouldn't do that," said Chivian. "So how could they accept money from someone spending tens of millions of dollars undermining the science on the greatest threat we have ever faced."
Koch Industries, the largest privately held oil company and a major investor in Canada's tar sands, has been a major source of carbon pollution. Koch Industries were also the biggest spenders of any oil and gas company in the midterm elections, outspending Exxon, according to the Centre for Responsive Politics' Open Secrets website.
The Kochs have also been leading funders of climate denial, spending at least $67m since 1997 to bankroll ultra-conservative thinktanks such as the Heartland Institute, which denies the existence of climate change and lobbies against environmental regulations, the letter says.
In 2010, the New Yorker reported that an exhibit - in the David H Koch hall of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC - minimised the role of fossil fuels in causing climate change, and suggested humans would easily adapt to a climate-altered future.
In 2006, US government scientists accused the Smithsonian of bowing to political pressure from Bush administration officials and Congress by injecting a line about "scientific uncertainty" surrounding climate change in an exhibit about the Arctic.
Robert Janes, a retired museum manager in Alberta who also signed the letter, accused museums of being "asleep at the wheel" both on the dangers of climate change, and the unseen influence of oil industry sponsorship.
"There is this magical belief in the museum world that somehow if you take money even if it comes from corporate malfeasance ... it becomes morally pure and not a problem and of course that's nonsense."
The campaign parallels the efforts against the Tate Modern in 2010, in the aftermath of the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster.
Organisers said the effort was aimed at cutting off a source of positive PR for BP.
"We thought it was a fairly obvious contradiction for an apparently progressive institution to still be taking money from oil, when it was really obvious that this company was responsible for a massive ongoing disaster and for climate change," said Anna Galkina, one of the organisers of the Divest Tate campaign.
In a victory for campaigners, the Tate was compelled last December to disclose the extent of BP funding over the years. The sums were relatively small. BP contributed just 0.5% of the Tate's budget from 1990 to 2006, according to the Tate.
However, Galkina argued BP reaped big benefits in terms of positive PR and advertising aimed at elite audiences of museum visitors.
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The Guardian
March 25, 2015 Wednesday 12:19 PM GMT
Wellcome Trust rejects Guardian's calls to divest from fossil fuels;
Director of the charitable trust, Jeremy Farrar, says retaining fossil fuel shares gives more influence over such companies - but they would not rule out divesting in the future, should engagement prove ineffective
BYLINE: Adam Vaughan
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 502 words
The director of the Wellcome Trust has rejected calls from a Guardian campaign to shift the charitable foundation's investments out of the fossil fuel industry, warning that such a move would mean less pressure on those companies to be green.
Related: Fossil-fuel divestment is not the way to reduce carbon emissions | Jeremy Farrar
However, Jeremy Farrar said that Wellcome shared considerable common ground with the Keep it in the Ground campaign and that fossil fuel producers had responsibilities to society, including protecting the environment.
The public comments are the first by a senior figure at the health charity, the second largest non-governmental funder of medical research in the world, since more than 141,000 people signed a petition calling for Wellcome to divest from fossil fuels.
Senior scientists including former chief scientific advisers to the UK and European commission have backed the call for divestment. It comes after a series of analyses that show that existing fossil fuel reserves are several times higher than the amount that could be burned if global warming is to be to kept below limits that world governments have agreed.
But Farrar, writing in the Guardian on Wednesday, said that while divestment was a "grand gesture" it was not as effective as engaging with fossil fuel companies.
"By maintaining our positions, we meet boards again and again, supporting their best environmental initiatives and challenging their worst. We would not be able to have the frank discussions we require if we published details, but we are confident that our engagement has impact," he said.
Selling its shares in such companies could undermine efforts to persuade companies to make their operations more low carbon to fight climate change, he said. "Were we to sell our holdings, it is unlikely that the buyers would exert the same influence."
In 2014, Wellcome's £18bn endowment had more than £450m invested in Shell, BP, Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton. The foundation sold a £94m stake in Exxon Mobil in January, though it has not explained why.
However, Farrar noted in his article that: "when we are not satisfied that a company is engaging with our concerns, we are perfectly prepared to sell." He added that the extent to which companies meet their environmental responsibilities was a factor in deciding whether to sell or not, and said "all companies engaged in fossil fuel extraction are not equal".
The foundation was founded with the capital left by businessman Henry Wellcome and has become a major funder of health research, most recently leading efforts to tackle the ebola virus, including co-funding the first trials of a vaccine in the UK.
The Guardian is also calling on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the world's biggest charitable fund, to commit to divesting from coal, oil and gas companies. A spokesman for Bill Gates' private office said : "We respect the passion of advocates for action on climate change, and recognise that there are many views on how best to address it."
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The Guardian
March 25, 2015 Wednesday 12:03 PM GMT
BP and Google leave Alec: are companies finally taking climate change seriously?;
BP and Google have both cut ties with Alec. Does this exodus mean climate change is finally a top business priority?
BYLINE: Kellen Klein
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 884 words
It began with Microsoft in July, then Google in September - and now Facebook, Yelp, Yahoo, SAP America, AOL and eBay have all followed suit. These companies have now ended their relationship with the controversial American Legislative Exchange Council, or Alec.
This isn't the first exodus Alec has seen. Companies such as Amazon, Coca-Cola, McDonald's and Walmart also pulled out of the group after it supported Florida's 2005 "stand your ground" gun law after an unarmed black teenager, Trayvon Martin, was killed by a neighborhood watch volunteer, George Zimmerman, in 2012.
But the recent exodus is the first that is largely attributable to the organization's views on climate change. The trend highlights a major change in business attitudes towards climate change, indicating - perhaps for the first time - that major tech companies see environmental regulation as key to business.
This tech shift has sent shockwaves through climate advocacy circles. But perhaps even more fascinating has been the simultaneous distancing from Alec by major corporations affiliated with the fossil fuel industry.
Since September, Occidental Petroleum, Emerson Electric, Wells Fargo (a major O&G investor), Union Pacific, Northrop Grumman, and BP have all announced they too are discontinuing their Alec membership. And while these companies were more elusive about the rationale for their respective withdrawals, recent campaigns and engagement by shareholders likely had them feeling the heat on climate action.
Companies across all industries would be wise to take heed of this case study. Perhaps more than any other story on this topic in recent months, the Alec climate saga illustrates the rapidly evolving landscape in which sustainable businesses are expected to play. In this new, polarized and hyper-connected world, action on climate change is increasingly framed as a moral issue on par with social causes like workers rights and racial equality. To deny climate change is to risk alienating millennial consumers and open the door to activist campaigns.
The Alec emigration is also a lesson to companies that sustainability cannot be separated into its own silo. Google, for instance, has made strong strides reducing its carbon footprint, but this progress has not been reflected in its political spending and partnerships. Businesses and nonprofits alike (see the recent Susan G Komen Foundation-Baker Hughes debacle ) committed to responsible causes must vet all departments and communications for actions that could be seen as hypocritical, and ensure that the company they keep aligns with their sustainability vision.
Lastly, the remarkably short time frame in which an entire sector shifted its rhetoric shows that lagging behind on climate change - either in action or in posturing - is increasingly likely to lead to brand damage. Campaigners are growing incredibly savvy and innovative. Companies might feel far removed from the climate change debate, but to stay silent or partner poorly is to risk going viral for all the wrong reasons (see Greenpeace's Lego-Shell campaign or Climate Parent's Radio Disney-Ohio Oil & Gas Association campaign ).
Climate change is not the only issue facing growing stakeholder concern, of course. The Alec example is just a small part of a larger trend occurring in the consumer marketplace, one that we at Future 500 call " brand politics ".
Corporate stakeholders and consumers increasingly care not only about how sustainable a company's own products and operations are, but also what that company stands for - and with whom they stand.
Consumer-facing brands are particularly compelling campaign targets in this movement, as their prominence makes it easier to garner public attention and can ultimately provide inroads to bigger, but less recognizable, corporate players up or down the supply chains. While companies shouldn't feel obligated to capitulate - or even respond - to each petition sent their way, executives should begin establishing their positions on trending topics of social consequence, and proactively identifying key stakeholders.
The majority of global brands now recognize that ignoring climate science is bad for business. In the years ahead, nearly all consumer-facing companies (and their suppliers) face the likelihood of being asked to take a clear public position on an ever-expanding group of environmental and social issues, from carbon pricing to income inequality. Encouragingly, many forward-thinking companies are seizing this momentum to proactively partner with civil society organizations, and to advocate for progressive climate policies and other mitigation strategies like renewable energy growth, forest protection, and materials innovation.
In the case of Alec, expect campaigners like Forecast the Facts and CMD to shift the pressure to remaining group members with prominent brand recognition, such as Expedia, Comcast, FedEx, Pfizer, and Shell. In the broader marketplace, businesses striving for sustainability should recognize that their influence - and therefore their accountability - spreads further than they think.
The values-led business hub is funded by SC Johnson. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled "brought to you by". Find out more here.
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The Guardian
March 25, 2015 Wednesday 12:02 PM GMT
Inside the Guardian - how we started the debate about climate change;
The Guardian's climate change campaign launched last week and already more than 100,000 readers have pledged their support. Keep it in the ground journalist Emma Howard explains what's been going on behind the scenes
BYLINE: Emma Howard
SECTION: MEMBERSHIP
LENGTH: 747 words
For most of the journalists working on Keep it in the ground, the project began with an email on Christmas Eve from Alan Rusbridger. Reflecting on his two decades as editor-in-chief, he said he had very few regrets, except one. His email read:
"Colleagues, this time next year I won't be the editor of the Guardian: indeed, well before that I'll have stepped down. I'm not at all depressed. This is the right time to be moving on. But I do have an urge to do something powerful, focused and important with the Guardian while I'm still here. And it will be about climate change.
Sometimes there's a story so enormous that conventional journalism struggles to cope with it, nevermind do justice. The imminent threat to the species is the most existentially important story any of us could imagine telling - for our sakes, for our children and for their children. But, as journalists, we also know that we sometimes tire of telling, and that people tire of reading."
Related: Our campaign puts climate change where it should be - on the front page
Alan had decided that in his time left as editor, he would do one last dramatic project to leave as his legacy, to "change the debate, wake people up and tilt the axis". Keep it in the ground will continue throughout Alan's remaining months as editor to add to political pressure in the runup to the climate conference in Paris in December.
The subject is huge. Of course, the project would rest on a bedrock of reporting, analysis and investigations, but it needed a new narrative. Thus, in the first days of the new year, a group of about 20 journalists came together to discuss what the focus should be. Two things became clear to us. First, that the scientists and environmentalists have done their job - the debate needs to move on to the politics and economics. Second, we settled on a central message: above all else, most of the fossil fuels left available needed to remain in the ground.
There were many environmental journalists in the room - George Monbiot, Damian Carrington, Fiona Harvey and Adam Vaughan - but if this was going to make a big impact, we needed people from across the organisation. We needed the investigative eyes of Felicity Lawrence and James Ball, as well as the financial insight of Larry Elliott and Simon Bowers.
We decided we would also run a campaign and it would be about fossil fuel divestment. Many of us had taken inspiration from the many successes of the divestment campaign launched by the environmental movement at 350.org. Alan had met their founder, Bill McKibben, in Stockholm shortly before Christmas.
A campaign needs targets and we spent weeks choosing them. It was the twilight of a Friday evening when we hit upon the idea of asking two of the world's most enlightened organisations to take the lead and divest: the Wellcome Trust and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Of course, at the same time, we would also urge the Guardian Media Group to do the same.
We also needed artistic vision and creative director Alex Breuer started to approach artists. Anthony Gormley offered artwork never seen before for the launch on the day of the climate march; later pieces were illustrated by art from indigenous Australian Judy Watson and images of the iconic melting ice sculptures of Néle Azevedo. The launch of the campaign on Monday was accompanied by Parliament, a poem from Carol Ann Duffy previously published in an anthology called The Bees.
This being one of the most complex stories of our time, we wanted our decision-making to be transparent. Alan asked Francesca Panetta, co-creator of the award-winning Firestorm interactive, how we could showcase the inside story to our readers. She decided to create an audio documentary series and from that point on we started to record our internal meetings. "The biggest story in the world" is a weekly podcast, which you can subscribe to here.
We want this campaign to be one that has our readers - and our members - at its heart. As well as communicating the weight of the issue, we hope we can inspire you to get involved.
I'll be editing our campaign blog and would love to hear from you. Got an idea or think your organisation can contribute? Email us at keep.it@theguardian.com or follow the campaign on Twitter @guardianeco.
You can also join us at a Guardian Live event on 13 May where George Monbiot will be talking to George Marshall about why we are in denial about climate change and what we can do to stop it before it's too late.
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The Guardian
March 25, 2015 Wednesday 9:45 AM GMT
Climate change is overwhelming - so should we focus on small steps?;
Campaigns such as Meat Free Week try to get us to change one behaviour at a time, but there are fears they disguise bigger problems. Experts discuss
BYLINE: Sarah LaBrecque
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 944 words
The challenges of our time can feel overwhelming: climate change, economic inequality, water scarcity - even the most passionate campaigner might want to pull the covers over and look away. So can single-issue campaigns such as Buy Nothing New Month or Meat Free Week help us divide important causes into manageable chunks? Or do they only distract?
Peter Burr, CEO of Meat Free Week
Single-issue campaigns are most effective when we have an emotional connection linking us directly to the cause - an aunt dying of bowel cancer; work with mistreated animals; or a concern for the world we're leaving to our children. Emotional connections compel us to support a cause because we hope to prevent others from enduring the same suffering.
We're thirsty for knowledge, so any campaign that gets a conversation started will have an impact. Even if you take away only a single aspect of the message that positively influences your life, that's got to be a good thing.
I have no doubt "wear out" means many people will not participate in a campaign for a second year. But with each year, campaigns attract a significant new audience. That coupled with the residual memory of previous years' campaigns, will start to return greater numbers. It won't happen overnight, but it will happen. We're hoping to achieve that result with Meat Free Week - it's hard to change habits of a lifetime, but they said that about cigarettes.
Tom Crompton, director of Common Cause Foundation
Stepping up to the challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss is not easy. Embracing small changes in our everyday lives is one important response - but let's not kid ourselves that this can be remotely sufficient. In the words of David McKay, chief scientific adviser to the department of energy and climate change in the UK, "Don't be distracted by the myth that 'every little helps'. If everyone does a little, we'll achieve only a little."
Anyone concerned about climate change could ask: How am I encouraging and supporting others to become more vocal in expressing concern - for example, by joining campaigns or public demonstrations, or making far-reaching changes in the way that they live?
Building this deeper concern need not require work on climate change at all. Work on a wide range of issues can be effective, even where there is no mention of anything obviously related to the environment. What's needed is a re-connection with the things people say are most important to them: friends and family, our communities, beautiful places, the poor or disadvantaged, freedom and creativity.
Conversely, urging people to reuse their shopping bags, or to switch the TV off standby, can undermine this more important work. Unless they invite re-connection with these deeper values, behaviour-change campaigns can be counter-productive if they don't invite reconnection with deeper values, and can leave people less inclined to respond in more significant ways.
David Willans, director of Will & Progress
Single-issue campaigning is effective if you're looking for change on a specific issue. It can be incredibly effective for behaviour change if people are aware of a problem, but don't know what to do about it, as campaigns such as Jamie's Chicken Run and Hugh's Fish Fight demonstrate. Traditionally, this type of campaign is akin to taking market share from a competitor. You're taking people from one behaviour to another. There are mountains of evidence out there demonstrating how to do it (pdf).
If someone's making a change out of a sense of obligation, as soon as that obligation disappears, all things being equal, so does the change. But thankfully all things are never equal. If the change becomes part of someone's sense of identity, or gives them a cocktail of personal, social and/or economic benefit that outweighs the effort, there's a good chance it will last.
Related: The problem with sustainability marketing? Not enough me, me, me
Something is effective if it delivers a desired result. If the objective of holistic environmental campaigns is holistic change, which history shows us is never the work of one action, how can you ever decide whether it's effective? There are two schools of thought about how to drive change at this level. One is intrinsically led change, where we focus on connecting with universally held values and changing societal narratives. The idea is that over time people will shift from one way of living to another. The other is extrinsically led change, where we focus on specifics such as audiences, behaviours and benefits. The idea is that specific changes build up to create more holistic change.
The evidence shows both create positive change. Therefore we need to be doing more and sharing our insights to get better at it. Pitting one against the other is playing the kind of point-scoring game you hear at Prime Minister's Questions. It's self-serving and self-defeating and actively puts people off, preventing learning and ultimately wasting precious time.
The sustainable living hub is funded by Unilever. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled brought to you by. Find out more here .
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The Guardian
March 25, 2015 Wednesday 8:43 AM GMT
Female polar bear raises hopes of birth in captivity;
Owners of Highland Wildlife Park hope Victoria, 18, will get chummy with male Arktos during her stay in the Cairngorms
BYLINE: Karl Mathiesen
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 711 words
The arrival of a female polar bear at a wildlife park in Scotland has raised the prospect of the first captive birth in Britain in 23 years.
The new arrival, Victoria, is an 18-year-old bear who has spent her life in zoos in Germany and Denmark. On Wednesday, she will be introduced to an enclosure purpose-built to encourage the delicate, potentially deadly, process of polar bear breeding. She is the only female polar bear in Britain.
She joins two males, Walker and Arktos, at Highland Wildlife Park (HWP) set amid the Cairngorm Mountains in the eastern highlands.
Her keepers plan to begin introducing her to Arktos gradually during April and May - polar bears' prime breeding season. Beside her enclosure is a special annexe with its own pool, which will house Arktos who was chosen for his rare bloodline. A strong but see-through mesh fence will allow the pair to be introduced slowly.
Douglas Richardson, head of living collections for the HWP said this was necessary because in the wild male and female bears only come together to mate. At other times the solitary animals can be territorial. A fight could be disastrous given the vast power of the male bears, which can weigh four times as much as a potential mate.
"Male polar bears can kill female polar bears so if the introduction is done inappropriately, or too fast, or at the wrong time then you could end up with a dead female. So that kind of puts the kibosh on your breeding programme. With any introduction of large carnivores it needs to be done gradually and carefully," said Richardson.
Keepers will monitor the bears' behaviour for signs that both are ready to mate. At this point Arktos will be allowed into Victoria's territory. Should a fight occur, keepers plan to scare Arktos aware with the noise and smoke of a fire extinguisher.
Polar bears breed between March and May, meaning Victoria only has a few weeks to settle if this year is to be a fruitful one for the programme. If she is not ready by the end of spring the keepers will wait until next year.
Victoria has previously given birth to a male bear at Aalborg Zoo in Denmark in 2008 amid huge publicity. The first days of the cub's life were broadcast via webcams to hundreds of thousands of viewers. HWP plans on doing the same if they produce a cub.
Richardson said hosting a successful breeding programme would attract many visitors to the park, promoting polar bear conservation and helping fund other conservation programmes.
"We will see a very significant bump in visitor numbers. Producing a polar bear cub in the UK is probably on a par with producing a giant panda cub, as far as the publicity and the desire for people to come and see it."
Polar bears are the largest land carnivore and are famously threatened by climate change. They depend on the Arctic's declining sea ice for survival. Last week it was reported that this winter was the worst on record for Arctic sea ice coverage.
Richardson said the aim of the breeding programme was not to reintroduce animals to the wild.
"The wild population is crashing and climate change is causing a lack of hunting habitat so there would be absolutely no point in doing any reintroduction at the moment."
Rather, he said, it was to maintain a genetic line that that was predicted to become extinct due to climate change.
The last polar bear born in captivity in the UK was at Flamingo Land in Yorkshire in 1992. Some wildlife advocates have battled against polar bears in captivity, arguing that it is impossible to provide their complex and particular needs in a zoo. A campaign by actvists saw Britain's only polar bear at the time, Mercedes, moved from Edinburgh Zoo to more appropriate housing at HWP in 2009.
Chris Draper from the Born Free Foundation said HWP should not breed any new bears for captivity.
"There are considerable threats facing wild polar bear habitat, but the Born Free Foundation firmly believes that breeding more bears in zoos has no genuine role to play in polar bear conservation. Furthermore, experience of polar bears in zoos the world over has shown us time and again that polar bears simply do not fare well in captivity - partly as a consequence of the restricted environment," he said.
Visitors to HWP should be able to visit Victoria in early April.
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The Guardian
March 25, 2015 Wednesday 8:39 AM GMT
Beating water and land shortages in the Middle East and north Africa;
Focusing on the nexus between scarce resources is the only route to sustainable supplies of water, food and energy
BYLINE: Holger Hoff and Tom Gill in Stockholm
SECTION: GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT PROFESSIONALS NETWORK
LENGTH: 926 words
Water and arable land are more scarce in Middle East and North African (Mena) countries than in any other region. Growing demand, population growth, a shrinking resource base, and climate change are combining to rapidly increase pressure on these resources.
Region-wide investment and collaboration in renewable energy systems could serve to address these issues, leading to a more secure future for the region's 355 million inhabitants in terms of water, food and energy. Furthermore, regional collaboration has the potential to reduce conflict.
The nexus between water and energy is among the most important inter-dependencies in Arab countries, where socio-economic development relies on the sustainable provision of these two resources. Together, water and energy are required for irrigation and separately, energy is vital to desalination, and water is critical for energy production. While water scarcity in the region increases, food price hikes and food access become grave concerns for many.
Current solutions to water and energy problems are often too narrowly focused and have unwanted or unexpected side effects. For example, seawater desalination - which is energy intensive and increasingly widespread in the region, especially in the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is almost exclusively based on fossil fuels. This not only contributes to climate change but also impacts on countries' fossil-fuel export revenues. Desalination also requires heavy capital investment and high operation and maintenance costs, and takes a heavy toll on the marine environment.
There is an urgent need for Arab countries to cooperate and invest in research and development into alternative desalination and treatment technologies. Acquiring and localising these technologies will help to reduce costs and increase its reliability as a water source, adding value to economies as well as reducing environmental impacts.
Solar energy, with its nearly unlimited availability in the region, will be critical for powering desalination plants, as well as for meeting climate goals and the broader aim of sustainable development.
But, like any solution, it has to be adapted to the regional context. Solar panels developed for a European context may not work well in the Mena region. Sand can cover or damage solar panel surfaces, the efficiency of power generation decreases with increasing temperature, and shallow coastal zones - common in the area - cannot sustain large amounts of brine discharge from desalination plants. At the moment these challenges are addressed only in a very fragmented way, within sectors and within countries.
An integrated - or 'nexus' - approach is required for any strategy or technological solution for meeting the ambitious renewable energy targetsmany Mena countries have set, as well as solutions for food security via imports or foreign direct investment in agriculture, to which many countries in the region increasingly resort.
A nexus approach can help countries use resources more efficiently, reduce the impacts of technologies such as desalination, and create synergies between sectors. There is also great potential to reduce pressure on resources by shifting agricultural policy towards multi-functionality (such as the non-trade benefits of agriculture, such as environmental protection and food security) and by the recycling and cascading use of resources. For example wastewater from cities can be used to generate energy and be re-used in agriculture.
The Stockholm Environment Institute, Texas A&M and Chatham House are the core partners in a new initiative, The Nexus in the Arab Region, which will act as a hub for knowledge and technology exchange, and for innovating, adapting and benchmarking solutions. The initiative will demonstrate the benefits and opportunities of a nexus approach, identify entry points for bringing this thinking into policy (such as national development plans and economic incentives), and will showcase innovations, best practices and solutions. Key to the success of this initiative is growing a network of experts and practitioners and its platform for dialogue and information sharing.
This year has seen momentum building for the initiative through a series of conferences, workshops and other events, such as the nexus seminar for the Arab Region at Stockholm World Water Week. The Arab Water Forum in Cairo this December will also be key for building a broad network of partners among regional institutions.
There is hardly any other region for which a nexus approach holds such great potential to reduce pressure on the environment and save on precious resources while at the same time accelerating socio-economic development, reducing disparities across countries, contributing to cooperation and conflict resolution and ensuring the region's wealth and heritage for future generations.
Holger Hoff is an environmental scientist and senior research fellow, and Tom Gill is senior editor and writer at the Stockholm Environment Institute. Follow @SEIclimate on Twitter.
Read more stories like this :
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The Guardian
March 25, 2015 Wednesday 7:03 AM GMT
Liz Truss rejects call for MPs' pension fund to divest from fossil fuels;
Caroline Flint also declines to support divestment during public debate on green policies held by Green Alliance and consortium of environmental NGOs
BYLINE: Fiona Harvey Environment correspondent
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 503 words
The Conservative environment secretary, Liz Truss, has said she would not request the MPs' pension fund to divest from fossil fuels.
She told the Guardian: "I believe the right way [to affect investment] is through carbon reduction targets."
Caroline Flint, Labour's shadow energy secretary, said she would "look into it". She declined to support divestment and said the debate over divestment should be about setting the right conditions for long-term investment in environmental sustainability.
The MPs were speaking to the Guardian on the fringes of a public debate on green policies in the run-up to the general election, held by the Green Alliance and a consortium of environmental NGOs.
The MPs' pension fund is a key target of a Guardian campaign calling for it to move away from its fossil fuel investments, reasoning that much of the world's fossil fuel reserve will need to be kept in the ground if greenhouse gas emissions targets are to be met and the ravages predicted from climate change are to be avoided.
Ed Davey, the LibDem energy secretary, told the debate that he supported divestment away from coal, but not gas as it would continue to be needed, and which currently makes up 80% of the UK's energy use. He said this move was already happening.
He said: "The way pension funds are going they are interested in placing their money in what they see as sustainable forms of investment. To give incentives we need decarbonisation targets. I would make a distinction between coal and oil and gas."
He also called for more transparency for investors. "If you look at the work of the Bank of England, the Bank of Brazil, the Bank of South Africa, you need to ensure investors have real disclosure about the assets of the companies they are investing in, [to see whether they are] building assets or long-term liabilities. Investor disclosure is one thing we can push through."
Caroline Lucas, the Green party's only MP, said she was enthusiastically calling for divestment through the MPs' pension fund and others.
The MPs were also asked about the future of shale gas in the UK, with Lucas firmly opposed while the others said they supported shale gas development with good regulation. Flint said: "We're not setting our faces against shale gas - we will need gas for years to come." She said Labour had put forward a variety of measures for environmental protection and regulation on shale drilling in the infrastructure bill. Davey said producing shale gas in the UK was greener than importing gas from Qatar.
Truss said: "We have done a lot of work on the risk. Provided we have the right protections in place, it can have minimal impact on the environment. There is already onshore oil and gas in this country [without the use of fracking technology and] which has the support of local residents. Just like other forms of energy, shale has to go through local planning protections put in place by DECC [Department of Energy and Climate Change]. It really is very heavily protected - that is right the approach."
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The Guardian
March 25, 2015 Wednesday 7:03 AM GMT
Life in the Philippines: preparing for the next typhoon Haiyan;
The Philippines is battered by some 20 typhoons a year - events that will get more severe with climate change. Yet, post Haiyan millions of Filipinos remain vulnerable and underprepared for future such disasters
BYLINE: Oliver Milman
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 1568 words
In 2013, the Philippines had so many typhoons that it ran out of letters to name them. For the first time, the country had got to the end of the alphabet for typhoon names and had to start at 'a' again.
The letter 'y' proved most devastating. Typhoon Yolanda - known internationally as Haiyan - tore through a swathe of the Philippines on 8 November 2013, leaving more than 6,300 people dead. Nearly 2,000 are still listed as missing.
The winds reached 196 miles per hour, the waves nearly 8m. Boulders the size of blue whales were dislodged. The unprecedented ferocity of Haiyan gouged wounds into the Filipino national psyche, causing apprehension about the future.
Sixteen months on from the disaster - and just days after the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu suffered a similar fate at the hands of Cyclone Pam - the typhoon-ravaged area is back on its feet with a couple of thousand people out of the four million displaced lacking at least a temporary home. But while the damage and loss of life has triggered some improvements, millions of people remain stuck in a situation where they are at acute risk from escalating climate change-driven disasters.
Richard Sandison, emergency response manager at Plan International Philippines, arrived a week after Haiyan. He says the country is now starting to get its head around the disaster.
"It was very distressing, there were a lot of dead bodies on the roads and in rivers," Sandison recalls. "People were walking around aimlessly, conveying a sense of hopelessness.
"I've seen people grow remarkably since then. Children who were afraid of the rain are now playing in the rain and in the sea. It's remarkable to see the difference in the past 14 months; it's inspiring.
"People are now a lot more aware of the need to be evacuated to safer areas, to do it early and not leave it to the last minute."
Haiyan offered a grim case study on how climate change is a live issue for the Philippines. The IPCC predicts that climate change is likely to cause tropical cyclones to become "more severe with greater wind speeds and more intense precipitation" - a nightmarish scenario for a country already battered by around 20 typhoons a year.
"We live in a new normal now and it can be hard for people to understand that things are different now," says Alexander Pama, undersecretary of the national civil defence agency.
"I used to be an officer in the navy and we would measure typhoons. Towards the latter part of my career, we were seeing a change in the patterns, the strength was getting stronger. Even the length of the typhoons is defying tradition."
Typhoons are not the Philippines' only blight. The country lies on the Pacific 'ring of fire', making it prone to earthquakes and volcanic activity. Centrally located mountains dip sharply at the coast, putting coastal communities at risk from deadly landslides.
"Here in the Philippines we are cursed by all kinds of disasters," says Pama of one of the most naturally volatile countries on Earth, which also has its fair share of human-induced strife.
Following Haiyan, the Philippines was hit with what Pama calls the "second surge" - a wave of NGOs and international aid agencies. With their good intentions and myriad acronyms, the agencies occasionally offered things the Philippines didn't really need - such as rice that was still available from the country's agricultural regions - but now appear to be co-ordinating well with each other to provide shelter, health and education to the populace, 11 million of whom were affected in some way by the typhoon. The European Union agency ECHO has provided (EURO)30m (£21m) in support, distributing food to 1.2 million people and emergency shelter to a further three million.
Individual countries from around the world also pitched in, from Russia to Saudi Arabia, Norway to Indonesia. The US government pledged $37m (£25m), the UK £77m and Australia A$30m (£15m).
Aid agencies - Plan International, Save the Children, the Red Cross and others - gathered under the UN's cluster system, which groups charities together to help in certain areas, such as shelter, health and education.
The focus has now shifted to preparing for the next disaster, a daunting task with millions of Filipinos living in flimsy wooden houses beside the coast. The rebuilding has been swift - aid agencies praise the rebound of the Philippines compared to, say, Haiti - but the process of making the country more resilient to a looming future of more Haiyans has been frustratingly slow in parts.
The city of Tacloban, an epicentre of the Haiyan disaster, has scrambled to its feet with some visible scars - the mass graves remain, as do some of the crunched roofs. Rebuilding of large public buildings bears the lessons of Haiyan - new schools have grills on windows; reinforced concrete beams and bolts in the ceiling that allow the roof to judder a little in high winds without ripping away.
But large areas of housing are still highly vulnerable. In the district on Anibong, signs declaring the coast a 'no build zone' after Haiyan have been disregarded and houses have been rebuilt in the same place, in the same way.
In an ideal world, people would move inland, away from the storm surges, into sturdy cyclone-resistant houses. But many Filipinos are dependent on fishing. Tens of thousands of boats were destroyed by the typhoon, along with millions of coconut trees - another valuable source of income.
"We thought the world was ending," says Osias Grefiel, 58, a fisherman on the east coast of the East Samar province. Locals recall huge waves, coral being washed into their houses. For many of these, their homes and livelihoods were destroyed.
"I cried, like I had lost a family member" Grefiel says of his own lost boat. "I have nine children. I was scared. I want to get transferred to higher ground, but then, there's the sap sap [the tasty local fish that is the basis of his income]."
Aid agencies, led by the UN, are helping to diversify incomes, as well as highlighting how sustainability can help alleviate natural disaster. Progress has been made, for example, on the restoration of coastal mangroves that will, come the next big typhoon, act as a crucial buffer.
There's only so much that the outside world can do about Filipino politics, however. Locals complain that political opponents of the president, Benigno S Aquino II, have been denied funds.
Tacloban's mayor, Alfred S Romualdez, nephew of famed shoe aficionado Imelda Marcos, falls into this category. So does the head of Tigdaranao, a small island barangay, or village. It's partially-built typhoon shelter needs just $20,000to finish it - money that has not been forthcoming.
In lieu of the shelter, a man runs around the village with a red flag on a stick while a metal pole is clanged to warn of an approaching typhoon. Residents then assemble in the school, one of the only concrete buildings on Tigdaranao. It feels painfully inadequate, and entirely avoidable.
Now at least people heed the flood warnings. "People were saying 'please evacuate as your area is prone to flash floods'," Pama says of one family warned of the typhoon. "The matriarch says 'I'm 70 that has never happened'. Unfortunately that did happen and practically the whole family was washed away."
Procedures have been put in place to warn and evacuate people who are in the path of typhoons. Residents now understand the term 'storm surge' is something to be concerned about and there is an impressive level of unity and co-operation among the communities that are left to deal with the worst when it arrives.
But some people are even more vulnerable than they were before Haiyan. While the focus has been on rebuilding coastal areas, those inland who were devastated have been left in NGO-built temporary homes because they are unable to afford permanent, solid structures that would fare better in high winds and floods.
"The rain water gets in here," says 58-year-old Flocertina Macabocsit, touching the thin walls of her temporary wooden home. Eight family members live in a property roughly the size of upmarket hotel's bathroom.
"We are very worried about future typhoons. I want to stay here because I grew up here, but we want a stronger house. We had typhoons every year but Yolanda was different. It was shocking.
"I never thought about the level of destruction before, but now I imagine it. We think our homes will be destroyed again."
Macabocsit has a community centre she can flee to when a typhoon strikes, but others aren't so lucky. Although each Filipino province sets aside 5% of its budget for disaster preparedness, with the national government putting more effort into better planning rather than just mopping up, emergency shelter is still lacking.
Worryingly, more than a year after Haiyan, there have been no new evacuation centres built in East Samar, one of the worst hit regions. Less than a third of citizens have somewhere to go if a typhoon strikes - with private housing making up the bulk of evacuation centres.
"I admit we still have to do more," says Jinnah Mae L Librio, of the regional government's disaster preparedness team. "What we're given is never really enough."
Travel and accommodation for Oliver Milman's trip to the Philippines were paid for by the directorate-general for Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection of the European commission. It did not have any control over the editorial content of the article.
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The New York Times
March 25, 2015 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
The Thorny Task of Advocating Good Corporate Behavior
BYLINE: By STEVEN DAVIDOFF SOLOMON.
Steven Davidoff Solomon is a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley. His columns can be found at nytimes.com/dealbook. Follow @StevenDavidoff on Twitter.
SECTION: Section B; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; DEAL PROFESSOR; Pg. 7
LENGTH: 1173 words
In the war to control corporations, the California Public Employees' Retirement System, the $300 billion pension fund, has decided that it is willing to actively press companies to emphasize the environment, diversity and good corporate governance, perhaps even at the expense of profitability. It may save the planet by changing the way companies are run, but will it lead to the returns Calpers desperately needs?
The turn came this month at Calpers's board of trustees meeting. The pension fund amended its investment policy for global governance to embrace what is called the corporate sustainability movement, the idea that companies should pay greater heed to the long-term future of themselves and society by adhering to social and environmental principles.
It represents a huge endorsement of the fledgling movement and at first blush seems like a great idea. What could be wrong with trying to improve the environment and society?
But like many things in the world of shareholders and corporations, it quickly becomes complicated.
Calpers's global governance policy reflects how it votes its shares in the more than 67,000 votes it takes part in every year at thousands of companies. The most noticeable change this year was a deletion. Calpers deleted its first principle of corporate governance, which had stated that its investment ''practices should focus the board's attention on optimizing the company's operating performance, profitability and returns to share owners.''
The deleted principle was replaced with a statement that companies that Calpers invests in are ''expected to optimize operating performance, profitability and investment returns in a risk-aware manner while conducting themselves with propriety and with a view toward responsible conduct.'' This type of vague statement often shows up in policy documents. It waters down the profitability part by adding responsible conduct and propriety, whatever that means.
Calpers then added three factors that it asserts create ''long-term value'': corporate ''governance,'' ''environment,'' including climate change, and ''social,'' which includes fair labor practices and board diversity.
Calpers said it might seek to nominate director candidates if a company fails to perform up to these principles. Calpers managers are also expected to adhere to these principles in their investments.
Some of the changes were already reflected in policies adopted over the last few years. But by consolidating them all in one place and stating its position with full force, Calpers and a governance staff of about 20 people are not only fully embracing the corporate sustainability mantra, they are that indicating the pension fund will act to bring companies along with it as it changes the way it invests. Calpers is the largest and most influential of the pension funds, so even if it doesn't assert this authority, other funds may follow its lead.
Corporate sustainability is undoubtedly becoming an increasing phenomenon in corporate America, and not just with shareholders. More and more companies have at least a vice president devoted to sustainable development if not a whole department. It's a noble effort that can have real consequences for good if it succeeds.
But corporate sustainability is also controversial, and it may be doubly so for Calpers.
The first reason is the need for those all-important returns. Calpers was estimated to be underfunded by about 33 percent at the end of 2013 and needs to meet a high annual return goal of 7.5 percent.
A careful reading of the Calpers policy shows that it is asserting that long-term value can be created by adopting these practices. The argument is that returns for companies that adopt these practices will be higher because they help the world and help themselves. This justifies the focus because Calpers, as a pension fund, should be primarily focused on returns and indeed has a fiduciary duty to act in its pension holders' best interests by earning the highest returns it can.
Yet, we just don't know if Calpers's assertion is true. It is uncertain that adopting corporate sustainability policies will in fact increase returns. They might rise, but even Calpers acknowledges the research on this is in its infancy, so they might not. Even more complicated, there is a big debate about what constitutes corporate sustainability. Does it mean disinvestment in fossil fuel companies to work against climate change or fast food chains to make Americans eat healthier? What are good practices toward the environment or employees?
To be fair to Calpers, it is in it for the long term -- it has an investing horizon of forever. And if the world is increasingly a bad place, the companies in it will be, too. Consequently, in a world it hopes to be in forever, Calpers has an incentive to consider the broad picture. This might be fine if only Calpers were advocating its concept of these principles. But companies have thousands of shareholders. As each defines its own concept of sustainability, corporations may be buffeted by competing agendas.
The last, and perhaps thorniest, problem is that corporate sustainability, when it reduces profits over the long term, may in fact be illegal. Many United States public companies are incorporated in Delaware, whose courts have consistently ruled that companies have a responsibility to shareholders to maximize profits. Indeed, Chief Justice Leo E. Strine Jr. argued recently that corporate sustainability misunderstands Delaware law and that it ''is not only hollow but also injurious to social welfare to declare that directors can and should do the right thing by promoting interests other than stockholder interests.''
That might appear coldhearted, but it underscores that corporations have the latitude to do good within their profit-maximizing context. Corporations give to charities and take social positions all the time. Consider the ''Race Together'' campaign at Starbucks, which pursued corporate sustainability. Although it was pursuing a noble goal, however misguided some thought it was for a corporation, Starbucks was trying to be more attractive to Americans so they would buy more coffee there. By focusing on profits, companies avoid the battle over whose social purpose they should adopt.
I spoke with Ann Simpson, senior portfolio manager and director of corporate governance at Calpers, who explained that the pension fund was not looking to ''maximize corporate profits'' but rather has its own fiduciary duties to its retirees to ''optimize'' its own returns over multiple generations. She further explained that ''optimize'' means ''looking at the balance between different considerations'' and maximizing among those.
It is this profit versus purpose conundrum that Calpers finds itself in. It has the power to push companies, willingly or not, toward corporate sustainability, particularly if it starts nominating directors.
Whether it will make the money Calpers needs, let alone change the world, is another story.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/25/business/dealbook/the-thorny-task-of-advocating-good-corporate-behavior.html
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The Guardian
March 24, 2015 Tuesday 5:48 PM GMT
Vanuatu won't be the last poor country devastated by climate change inaction;
Oxfam's CEO argues that we need a new, ambitious framework to reduce the risk of climate-driven poverty getting dramatically worse
BYLINE: Mark Goldring
SECTION: GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT
LENGTH: 955 words
As the world keeps warming, it is expected that both the speed of winds and the amount of rainfall associated with tropical cyclones will increase. And as sea levels rise, storm surges and other coastal flooding will only get worse.
For Vanuatu and other Pacific Island nations, cyclone Pam has been the worst-case scenario: in Port Vila, Vanuatu's capital, 90% of the housing has been badly damaged; kids have nowhere to go to school, and the town's hospital was left with no power. In the country's outer islands, where most people live, about a quarter of a million people had little or no protection from the cyclone's 160mph winds. And if people cannot get clean water and at least temporary toilets very soon, a "second emergency" could follow from water-borne diseases. That is why the world's focus must be on meeting these urgent needs before any more lives are lost.
Related: Developed nations have sown the wind, Vanuatu has reaped the whirlwind | Andrew Simms
At Oxfam, we are already providing trucks of drinking water to people living in the evacuation centres. We are also distributing kits around the capital that include items designed to maintain high levels of hygiene. We have been carrying out assessments on some of the outlying islands and are working with local organisations to support food supplies amid fears that stocks will run out in two weeks.
No other city in the world is as exposed to disasters as Port Vila - an unenviable distinction recently recorded by the Natural Hazards Risk Atlas. What makes this all the more tragic is that Vanuatu was doing all the right things to prepare for disasters. Its people, government and all the local organisations with which Oxfam works knew only too well how vulnerable Vanuatu was to typhoons, earthquakes and tsunamis.
These efforts were not wasted - setting up cyclone evacuation shelters in advance, for example, saved lives - but they could never have equipped this small country for something as big as cyclone Pam.
Last year, I saw in the Philippines that nothing could have prepared the people there for the power of typhoon Haiyan. Even the US struggled to cope with superstorm Sandy, which struck New York, New Jersey and other states in 2012.
So who or what is to blame? According to Vanuatu's president, Baldwin Lonsdale, climate change has contributed to "the level of sea rise ... the cyclone season, the warm, the rain, all this is affected".
Whether we will see a greater number of cyclones as a result of climate change is uncertain, but scientists say one thing is clear: those that we do see are likely to be stronger and more destructive.
This is the threat that the people of Vanuatu and millions of people in coastal or low-lying areas will increasingly face. Millions more in other parts of the world will encounter drought, increased flooding and other hazards.
In a 2013 report, the Met Office and Overseas Development Institute said "climate change and exposure to 'natural' disasters threaten to derail international efforts to eradicate poverty by 2030". According to the same study, by 2030 "up to 325 million extremely poor people will be living in the 49 most hazard-prone countries" in the world.
The world's poorest people are being hit harder and harder by disasters. It was so poignant that, as cyclone Pam was tearing across Vanuatu, the world's governments were gathering in Sendai, Japan, to plot a supposedly bold course to reduce the risk of future disasters.
Back in 2005, in the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami, the international community agreed a 10-year plan - the Hyogo Framework - to make the world safer from natural hazards like typhoons.
But a decade on, all the measures to reduce the risk of disasters are being overwhelmed by the rising tide of calamities the world faces. What was needed was a step change in response. That's why I've been arguing for a new framework with ambitious, measurable targets to reduce the risks for vulnerable people, a target that really ensures local authorities and NGOs have the funding, technical capacity and decision-making power to make meaningful changes where they are most desperately needed. But rather than that, the world's governments have agreed only minimal improvements on the Hyogo Framework.
The Sendai Framework will have its value, but it would have had far more worth if it had gone further, and if wealthy countries had offered far more financial and technical support to the countries struggling to recover from disasters. Back in 2009, developed countries promised to mobilise $100bn a year by 2020 to help developing countries adapt to climate change and reduce their emissions. The UK's record on contributing its fair share of that has been good. But global progress is slow, and uncertainty of finance for this purpose looms large over countries like Vanuatu.
Cyclone Pam reminds us again that so much more than money is needed. We must recognise that poorer countries like Vanuatu - with the least responsibility for climate change - are already suffering the devastating consequences of inaction. Like every richer country, the UK must act on this stark fact more than ever before. Whoever finds themselves in government after 7 May must lead the way in tackling climate change at home and abroad: in the former, by committing to phase out coal emissions from the British economy by the early 2020s; in the latter, by standing strong on the need for new concrete commitments on climate finance at the UN conference on climate in Paris this December.
My heart goes out to those whose lives have been devastated in the Pacific. But in my head I know the challenge of climate-driven poverty, inequality and disasters is likely to get dramatically worse.
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The Guardian
March 24, 2015 Tuesday 3:31 PM GMT
BP joins list of companies fleeing Alec;
The oil giant is the latest company to cut ties with the conservative advocacy group known for its controversial stance on climate change
BYLINE: Amy Westervelt
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 545 words
British Petroleum is the latest company to pull its membership from the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), the oil company announced on Monday. The oil giant is now the third oil and gas company to leave the conservative nonprofit that acts as a lobbying group.
BP's departure follows a wave of exits by tech companies from Alec at the end of last year. Google, Yahoo, Facebook, eBay and Yelp all cut ties with the organization following criticism by environmental nonprofits for drafting model legislation that denies any human contribution to climate change.
However BP spokesperson Brett Clanton did not mention the group's position on climate change in a statement announcing the decision:"We continually assess our engagements with policy and advocacy organizations and based on our most recent assessment, we have determined that we can effectively pursue policy matters of current interest to BP without renewing our membership in Alec."
BP's exit comes a few months after Occidental Petroleum (Oxy) announced that it would depart from Alec, and a year after ConocoPhillips, an American multinational energy corporation, did the same. All companies have stayed tight-lipped about precisely why they've chosen to leave the group, but a proxy statement for Oxy's annual shareholder meeting, held in May 2014, sheds some light on the subject. In it, the Needmor Foundation, which holds 800 shares of Oxy stock, proposes that the company review and evaluate its relationships with various trade groups (pdf). In regards to leaving Alec, the foundation wrote:
Alec has been associated with contentious anti-immigration, voter identification and Stand Your Ground, legislation. More recently, Alec initiatives have opposed climate change policies and efforts to weaken state renewable energy standards with the Heartland Institute. Occidental Petroleum is a member of Alec and funds its work. We believe this partnership may bring significant reputational and business risk to the company.
Oxy's board of directors recommended against the proposal, noting that the company is a member of several trade groups and that a review of all those memberships would be onerous, given that the reputational risk seemed only to be with Alec.
"Occidental contributed only $25,000 in 2011, $12,500 in 2012 and $2,500 in 2013," the board wrote. "This is a small fraction of the more than $10m a year Occidental spends on trade associations and other organizations. Based on the information it has received from such organizations, only approximately 12% of that aggregate amount was used by those organizations for lobbying purposes."
Nonetheless, shareholders were sufficiently concerned about the risks of being associated with Alec that after that meeting Oxy announced its intention to leave the group.
Related: Ebay joins Google and others in dumping Alec over climate stance
Media and public interest groups have speculated that similar factors were at play for BP, but the company insists its decision has more to do with the current economic landscape than any sort of political rift with Alec.
"For us it's more about just prioritizing what we do on the lobbying level and the groups we choose to be members of and where we can get the most bang for our buck," said Clanton.
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The Guardian
March 24, 2015 Tuesday 3:17 PM GMT
Students occupy Swarthmore College in fossil fuel divestment protest;
Wave of sit-ins by divestment campaigners starts at US college founded by Quakers and whose alumni include UN climate change chief Christiana Figueres
BYLINE: Suzanne Goldenberg
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 559 words
Student activists have occupied a historic hall at Swarthmore College, the alma mater of the United Nations climate chief, demanding the university cut its ties to fossil fuels.
The sit-in at the liberal arts college in Pennsylvania launches a new wave of protests by campus divestment campaigners across the US that will culminate in an old-style teach-in at Harvard on 13 April.
Some 37 students and six alumni entered the finance and investment office of the university at about 9am on Thursday.
"We are in," said Stephen O'Hanlon, a political science student. He said the students planned to stay until university administrators agree to return to negotiations on a divestment plan. "At this point we have no plans to leave," he said.
Swarthmore, founded by Quakers, helped launch the campus divestment movement, now active at hundreds of universities across North America, Europe and Australia. Christiana Figueres, the UN climate chief, graduated in 1979. The UN agency she heads, which is charged with guiding international negotiations towards a global deal on climate change, supports divestment. "It sends a signal to companies, especially coal companies, that the age of 'burn what you like, when you like' cannot continue," a spokesman said. Nearly two-thirds of Swarthmore's 1,500 students signed a petition last December calling on the university to exit coal, oil and gas holdings. The Swarthmore Mountain Justice campaign is calling for an immediate freeze on new fossil fuel investments, followed by a staged withdrawal over five years. It urges the university to invest 1% of the endowment in renewable energy. Nearly 100 faculty and about 1,000 alumni also support the divestment campaign, making this one of the biggest campaigns in Swarthmore's history, the activists said. "We think the conflict between Swarthmore's Quaker values and the destruction produced by the fossil fuel industry is untenable," said Sara Blazevic, who is graduating this year in comparative literature. "There is a choice before the board to stand on the right side of history and to stand with our generation." Campaigners and university administrators have held more than 30 meetings on divestment over the last four years. But those talks stalled in February after the university hosted a two-day discussion on climate change. The university said its opposition to divestment remains unchanged. "In 2013, following a two-year period of study and analysis the college chose not to divest from fossil fuels within its investment portfolio and this decision has remained unchanged since that time," Gregory Brown, vice-president for finance and administration. The university at the time dismissed divestment as a symbolic gesture, and warned divestment would slice $10m (£6.7m) to $15m off the income generated from Swarthmore's $1.6bn endowment, much of which goes for scholarships. The students reject the argument, citing the recent drop in oil prices and the uncertainties over the long-term of investing in fossil fuels. "The investment committee denies the existence of the carbon bubble and false claims that no active managers can pursue a fossil-free investment strategy effectively. We know this is wrong," said Guido Girgenti, a political science student due to graduate this year. "The carbon bubble poses a serious financial threat to our endowment."
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The Guardian
March 24, 2015 Tuesday 3:17 PM GMT
UN climate chief joins alumni calling on Swarthmore to divest from fossil fuels;
Christiana Figueres calls on Swarthmore College in a letter to 'play its part in history' and rid its investments of fossil fuels that cause climate change
BYLINE: Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 425 words
The United Nations climate chief appealed to her alma mater, Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, to withdraw from fossil fuels, in an important symbolic show of support for the campus divestment campaign.
A group of protesters occupied Swarthmore's administrative office last week to demand the university return to negotiations on fossil fuel divestment. The administrative board have since agreed to put divestment on the agenda their May meeting.
Related: Students occupy Swarthmore college in fossil fuel divestment protest
In a letter to Swarthmore's administration and students, Christiana Figueres, who heads the UN agency guiding the international climate negotiations, called on the university to rid its endowment of fossil fuels.
"History is calling all of us to smoothly usher in the next phase of global economic development," the letter said. "Swarthmore can not determine the pathway of global investments, but it can protect its endowments and play its part in history."
She took direct aim at the argument that divestment was ineffective in fighting climate change.
"The thought that one institution's small investment level is inconsequential is analogous to the dangerous sentiment that in the context of a democratic system one vote is irrelevant because a single person does not affect change," the letter said. "Or, in the context of an academic institution, it is analogous to the unacceptable belief that the education of one student is unimportant because a single person does not affect change."
Figueres graduated from the university in 1979. Her intervention provides an important boost to a campus divestment campaign which is beginning to gather momentum.
This week, 130 faculty members at New York University called on the institution to quit its holdings in the top 200 publicly traded coal, oil and gas companies. The university which has an $3.4bn (£2.3bn) endowment, has an estimated $139m in fossil fuel holdings.
Meanwhile, about 50 student protesters occupied a building at Bowdoin to demand the university withdraw from fossil fuels.
Figueres, in her letter said she shared the campaigners view that there was a "moral imperative" to quit the companies responsible for climate change.
But much of the three-page letter sought to make a financial case for divestment, drawing on her work with industry as the UN climate chief to argue that Swarthmore could better safeguard its endowment by shifting away from fossil fuels and into clean energy.
"It is financially prudent to be on the forefront of this decision," she said.
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The Guardian
March 24, 2015 Tuesday 2:39 PM GMT
UK's coastal railways vulnerable to climate threat, expert warns;
Track vulnerable to waves, landslides and storms includes sections that carry nuclear waste to Sellafield in Cumbria and from Wylfa in north Wales, says author of a new book on UK coastal railways
BYLINE: Rob Edwards
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 616 words
Hundreds of miles of railway lines around Britain's coast are becoming increasingly vulnerable to waves, landslides and storms triggered by climate pollution, an expert has warned.
Professor Robert Duck from the University of Dundee says that numerous sections of railway in Wales, Cumbria, Devon and elsewhere are at risk of being washed away because they skirt so close to the sea. Three lines had to close in 2014 after being damaged by waves, most memorably at Dawlish on the south coast of Devon where the track was left hanging in mid-air.
Trains on some of the vulnerable coastal tracks carry nuclear waste to the Sellafield nuclear complex in Cumbria and from the Wylfa nuclear site in north Wales. They are also vital lifelines for hundreds of communities.
Duck is the author of a new book on UK coastal railways called ' On the Edge ' to be launched on Thursday. It points out that over 93 miles (150km) of the operating railway network in Wales are on the coast, along with many other stretches around England and Scotland.
The seawall protecting the railway at Dawlish was destroyed in February 2014 and the line was out of action for two months. "This was a dramatic example of the problems we face as climate change leads to more storms and exacerbates coastal erosion," says Duck.
"Much of our coast has railway lines at the edge forming the first line of defence from the sea. This leads to spectacular scenery for passengers to enjoy but increasing difficulties for franchise operators and government."
For railway builders in the mid-19th century the coast was cheaper, flatter and easier than using inland sites, he points out. "We wouldn't have built these railway lines where they are if we had today's knowledge."
One of the most vulnerable lines runs along the Cambrian coast in northwest Wales. Winter storms in January 2014 damaged the track in several places between Machynlleth, Barmouth and Pwllheli, and took five months to repair.
Ballast and earth supporting 200 metres of railway line at Flimby, to the north of Workington in Cumbria, were also washed away by high tides and strong winds in January 2014. It is on the coastal line between Carlisle and Barrow-in-Furness that carries highly radioactive spent fuel from nuclear power stations to the Sellafield reprocessing plant.
Another line at risk runs close to the north Wales shore from Chester to Holyhead. It connects with Wylfa on Anglesey where there is an ageing nuclear power station, and contested proposals to build a new one.
Duck, a professor of environmental geoscience at Dundee, warns that hard engineering solutions for protecting coastal railways may become too expensive. "The time will come when we have to look at alternatives, building inland diversions and re-opening long-closed lines as a way of ensuring that we do not cut off communities," he says.
Edinburgh rail consultant, David Spaven, agreed that diversions might work in some places but in others there were major engineering challenges. "It's ironic that climate change, which should generally mean a bright future for energy-efficient rail transport, also threatens the integrity of coastal routes," he said.
Network Rail, which is responsible for maintaining the railways, accepted that coastal lines were vulnerable to extreme weather. "That's why we spend millions each year protecting the railway from nature's worst attacks," said a company spokeswoman.
"We've published a series of route-based weather resilience and climate change plans which explain our understanding of how weather can affect the railway and the potential impact of changes in our climate. We explain what we're doing to mitigate the impacts."
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The Guardian
March 24, 2015 Tuesday 1:42 PM GMT
Climate denial is immoral, says head of US Episcopal church;
Climate change is a moral challenge threatening the rights of the world's poorest people and those who deny it are not using God's gift of knowledge, says presiding bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori
BYLINE: Suzanne Goldenberg in New York
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 852 words
The highest ranking woman in the Anglican communion has said climate denial is a "blind" and immoral position which rejects God's gift of knowledge.
Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop of the Episcopal church and one of the most powerful women in Christianity, said that climate change was a moral imperative akin to that of the civil rights movement. She said it was already a threat to the livelihoods and survival of people in the developing world.
"It is in that sense much like the civil rights movement in this country where we are attending to the rights of all people and the rights of the earth to continue to be a flourishing place," Bishop Jefferts Schori said in an interview with the Guardian. "It is certainly a moral issue in terms of the impacts on the poorest and most vulnerable around the world already."
In the same context, Jefferts Schori attached moral implications to climate denial, suggesting those who reject the underlying science of climate change were turning their backs on God's gift of knowledge.
It's hard work when you have a climate denier who will not see the reality of scientific truth.
Katharine Jefferts Schori
"Episcopalians understand the life of the mind is a gift of God and to deny the best of current knowledge is not using the gifts God has given you," she said. "In that sense, yes, it could be understood as a moral issue."
She went on: "I think it is a very blind position. I think it is a refusal to use the best of human knowledge, which is ultimately a gift of God."
The sense of urgency around the issue has been deepened by Pope Francis forceful statements on global warming, which he is expected to amplify in a papal encyclical in June and during an address to the US Congress in September.
The Episcopalian church will host a webcast on 24 March to kick off a month-long action campaign designed to encourage church members to reduce their own carbon footprints and lobby government and international corporations to fight climate change.
An oceanographer before she was ordained at the age of 40, Bishop Jefferts Schori said she hoped to use her visibility as a church leader to help drive action on climate change.
As presiding bishop, she oversees 2.5m members of the Episcopal church in 17 countries, and is arguably one of the most prominent women in Christianity. The two largest denominations in the US, Roman Catholics and Southern Baptists, do not ordain women.
"I really hope to motivate average Episcopalians to see the severity of this issue, the morality of this issue," she said. "Turning the ship in another direction requires the consolidated efforts of many people who are moving in the same direction."
She acknowledged that the challenge was deepened by the strain of climate denial in American politics, and by continued resistance to science in American classrooms.
"It's hard work when you have a climate denier who will not see the reality of scientific truth," she said.
However, she, like a number of church leaders, said they had seen an uptick in climate activism in recent months, spurred by the pope's comments last January, and the conjunction later this year of United Nations conferences on development and climate change.
Evangelical churches - once seen as a conservative force - were now taking up the climate cause, largely because of growing awareness of its threat to the poor.
"One of the significant changes in particular has been the growing awareness and activism among the evangelical community who at least somewhat in the more distant past refused to encounter this issue, refused to deal with it," Jeffers Schori said. "The major evangelical groups in this country have been much more forward in addressing this issue because they understand that it impacts the poor."
A number of denominations have also joined the growing fossil fuel divestment movement which is encouraging organisations to move their investments out of coal, oil and gas companies. The United Methodist church, the third largest denomination, dumped coal companies from its pension fund.
Related: World Council of Churches rules out fossil fuel investments
The Unitarian church and the United church of Christ have also voted to divest, according to Reverent Fletcher Harper of Green Faith. And the World Council of Churches has pledged not to invest in fossil fuels. A number of individual congregations have also divested from fossil fuels.
The Guardian launched a campaign on Monday to encourage the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust to divest from fossil fuels.
The Episcopal church has also come under pressure to withdraw its fossil fuel holdings. A number of diocese are pressing for divestment, and will bring the issue to a vote at the church's annual convention this summer.
Jefferts Schori opposes fossil fuel divestment. "If you divest you lose any direct ability to influence the course of a corporation's behavior," she said. "I think most pragmatists realise that we can't close the spigot on the oil wells and close the coal mines immediately without some other energy source to shift to."
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The Guardian
March 24, 2015 Tuesday 12:31 PM GMT
MPs pension fund should not be divested from fossil fuels, says Liz Truss;
Conservative environment secretary said she favoured carbon reduction targets over divestment at a public debate on green policies in the run-up to the general election
BYLINE: Fiona Harvey, environment correspondent
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 536 words
The Conservative environment secretary, Liz Truss, has said she would not request the MPs' pension fund to divest from fossil fuels.
She told the Guardian: "I believe the right way [to affect investment] is through carbon reduction targets."
Caroline Flint, Labour's shadow energy secretary, said she would "look into it". She declined to support divestment and said the debate over divestment should be about setting the right conditions for long-term investment in environmental sustainability.
The MPs were speaking to the Guardian on the fringes of a public debate on green policies in the run-up to the general election, held by the Green Alliance and a consortium of environmental NGOs.
More than 200 institutions worldwide have now either divested from fossil fuels or have committed to do so, including faith organisations, local authorities and universities. The Guardian is currently calling on the Wellcome Trust and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to move away from fossil fuel investments, reasoning that much of the world's fossil fuel reserve will need to be kept in the ground if greenhouse gas emissions targets are to be met and the ravages predicted from climate change are to be avoided.
Ed Davey, the Lib Dem energy secretary, told the debate that he supported divestment away from coal, but not gas as it would continue to be needed, and which currently makes up 80% of the UK's energy use. He said this move was already happening.
He said: "The way pension funds are going, they are interested in placing their money in what they see as sustainable forms of investment. To give incentives we need decarbonisation targets. I would make a distinction between coal and oil and gas."
He also called for more transparency for investors. "If you look at the work of the Bank of England, the Bank of Brazil, the Bank of South Africa, you need to ensure investors have real disclosure about the assets of the companies they are investing in, [to see whether they are] building assets or long-term liabilities. Investor disclosure is one thing we can push through."
Caroline Lucas, the Green party's only MP, said she was enthusiastically calling for divestment through the MPs' pension fund and others.
The MPs were also asked about the future of shale gas in the UK, with Lucas firmly opposed while the others said they supported shale gas development with good regulation. Flint said: "We not setting our faces against shale gas - we will need gas for years to come." She said Labour had put forward a variety of measures for environmental protection and regulation on shale drilling in the infrastructure bill. Davey said producing shale gas in the UK was greener than importing gas from Qatar.
Truss said: "We have done a lot of work on the risk. Provided we have the right protections in place, it can have minimal impact on the environment. There is already onshore oil and gas in this country [without the use of fracking technology and] which has the support of local residents. Just like other forms of energy, shale has to go through local planning protections put in place by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc). It really is very heavily protected - that is the right approach."
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The Guardian
March 24, 2015 Tuesday 12:30 PM GMT
Guardian Weekly Letters, 27 March 2015;
Fighting climate change; credibility of science; anxious American males
SECTION: GLOBAL
LENGTH: 1587 words
Focus on climate change
Bravo, Guardian, for giving climate change the prominence it deserves (13 March). I hope it will contribute to international action that will take us off the current path that will lead to 4C - maybe even 6C - warming by the end of the century: a scenario that would be catastrophic.
In its Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) listed population growth as a driving force of global warming. Many argue, like George Monbiot, it's just a matter of consumption. Yes, we in the richer world do need to consume less, to travel less, to live in smaller homes.
The poor of the world may not contribute significantly to climate change through fossil-fuel emissions; nevertheless, they do need to eat. The deforestation that is associated with growing more food is definitely a major contributor to climate change, as is agriculture itself.
So, Monbiot notwithstanding, in this excellent initiative on climate change, please acknowledge that rapid stabilisation of our numbers could be both a significant mitigation and adaptation tool. Jenny GoldieMichelago, NSW, Australia
· As Alan Rusbridger puts it, the sceptics and deniers are wasting their time. The proven reality of humanly induced climate change has arrived. Yet, still, we are harried by a failure to reduce our uptake, consumption and discard of fossil fuels. Indeed, the catchy 2008 G8 communique "20% decreased carbon by 2020" is mocked by a 20% increase - with 2020 still six years away.
There are three main reasons for this. One, parliaments strive to maintain continuity in office with pork-barrel blandishments. Two, corporations seek profits that eclipse previous ones. Three, the top one-fifth of wealth perpetuate lifestyles perilous to all humankind.
Clearly, we of the upper-fifth cohort could cut by half our consumption and waste without any real hardship: curbing our mobility, fashion accessories, gadgets and appliances, food imports and waste generation.
Unlike the hapless Occupy movement, we have control over the bit of the system we want to improve. Reluctance from governments and resistance from corporations need not impede us - we already are an exemplary movement in the making.
Asceticism is not called for. In fact the reverse: a fulfilled, balanced and happy life, with social exceptions around continued access to modern indispensables. Having fun, sharing, giving back and a gentler lifestyle are the rewards. Maybe big government and big business will get our message? Robert RiddellHelensville, New Zealand
· The Guardian is taking action against "the climate threat to Earth". And environmentalists talk of saving the planet. But Earth will survive us, as it has survived many other changes and catastrophes.
What we are really talking about saving is our lifestyle - particularly our affluent, developed-nations lifestyle - since the majority of humans live in poverty, which has a low impact on the planet.
Even a brief survey of the Guardian Weekly provides abundant evidence that we, as a species, are too stupid to save ourselves. Tim SprodTaroona, Tasmania, Australia
The credibility of science
Why science is so hard to believe (6 March) resonates here in Quebec where dozens of cases of measles, all originating in one visit to California's Disneyland, continue to increase among the unvaccinated. The provincial government has made a creditable but unsuccessful effort to persuade the 16% who decline and, as your article points out, are in like-thinking clusters. Of this group 14% give religious reasons, over 20% fear autism in their children and some say they will not give "poison" to their children, even for a greater good.
Would these parents refuse pre-surgical anaesthesia, which can also be described as "poison"?
Should the media, which feast on disagreement, step away from "fairness", from giving credence to the scientifically discredited? Unlike the counter-intuitive examples you cite, if measles disappears after 95% vaccination and the only negative result is a sore arm, why should those who oppose it have a platform at all? Elizabeth QuanceWestmount, Quebec, Canada
· Joel Achenbach seems a bit confused: he supports the fluoridation of water because it is a natural mineral, but so is arsenic. A naturally occurring element is not necessarily safe for human consumption.
On the wider point of the nature of science, he argues that science is true, in particular that evolution is true; but science is much more complex and limited than that: a scientific theory is a model of the world, describing things that occur naturally in a way that enable predictions to be made, particularly by using mathematics.
A theory is true only in the sense that its predictions are correct and that it is useful, but even the best theories may one day be replaced by models which provide different and more useful views of the world.
So he is right to argue that scientists need to avoid drawing final conclusions from their work and reporters need to recognise that scientists cannot say things with absolute certainty. William AckroydEsplas de Sérou, France
Psychology of terror
I admire the sincere ethical sensitivity of Jonathan Freedland's essays on Israel's predicament, but fear the misdirection of this latest one at a time of rising Islamophobic hysteria (6 March). The psychological reject narrative or political apology of organisations like Cage should not be so easily dismissed: current security and punitive policies do seem to be motivating more rather than fewer jihad extremists, the west's colonial and postcolonial history in the Middle East is shameful and not forgotten by its peoples, and reactionary state terrorism and populist terrorism are increasingly real threats prompted by nations leading (or exploiting) the so-called war on terror.
Freedland's alternative, although apparently sympathetic, is more reductively psychologistic than the reject narrative: charismatic inspiration of youths searching for moral absolutes. This explanation may only reinforce the bigoted and provocative targeting of "subversive" imams and "immature" cultures. His concluding recommendation juxtaposing "stronger and more confident" western nations with violent jihadism "terrified by modernity, terrified of the past, terrified of women and terrified of difference" also echoes too closely the binary absolutism of Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilisations and even Bernard Lewis's The Muslim Discovery of Europe. These old rationales were part of, rather than solutions to, a historical and political economic problem that is now getting worse. Steven WebsterAuckland, New Zealand
American anxieties
In reporting a study by British scientists on average penis size (13 March), you clearly sought to reassure the average adult male that he need not feel "small penis anxiety". Your intention, I fear, will have backfired in the United States.
When you decided to give those critical measurements in centimetres, you forgot that Americans haven't the faintest understanding of the metric system. President Jimmy Carter tried to get us to learn it, but you know what the attitude towards any sort of higher education of his successor was, and the effort was dropped. Americans, therefore, mentally convert everything metric into the "English" system you have largely abandoned.
Already floundering in our sea of media-driven sexual anxieties, we read with panic the scientists' numbers - "13.12... in length when erect, 11.66... around" - as inches. Meanwhile, our tiny percent who rise above the top end of the scale must face the disappointment of believing that what they'd thought exceptional is only "average".
You will be responsible for the resulting stampede of average and above-average American males to the offices of our urologists and sex therapists - which you may well be reporting in your next issue. John RidlandSanta Barbara, California, US
Briefly
· Surely something important is missing from your article, EU needs army to defend its values, insists Juncker (13 March). We read that the British government insists "the idea is unacceptable", that "there is no prospect of a European army", that "it isn't right for the European Union to have capabilities, air forces and all the rest"... but why? How about giving us a plausible explanation for this authoritative and outright rejection? Alexandra TavernierMarcq-en-Baroeul, France
· Will Self's review of Charles: The Heart of a King (6 March) shows the novelist letting us know how clever he is with words and not learning anything from the biography. It would have been better reviewed by someone cutting the subject down to a size he thinks he isn't. Edward BlackSydney, Australia
· The sports item More shame for Armstrong (13 March) reports on the latest shenanigans in the sorry saga of Lance Armstrong's attempts to return to cycling competition, and uses an analogy purporting to show that the affair is like "a malingering head cold ... that refuses to go away".
The lingering question is: was Lance Armstrong justified in using the "doping" as a justifiable treatment for (what sounds like) a particularly devious and pernicious disease, albeit one that is difficult to get one's brain around? Anthony WalterSurrey, British Columbia, Canada
Email letters for publication to weekly.letters@theguardian.com including a full postal address and a reference to the article. Submissions may be edited for publication
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The Guardian
March 24, 2015 Tuesday 11:52 AM GMT
Scotland advised to take strong action after missing emissions target again;
Committee on climate change advises Edinburgh to rethink cuts on air duty and introduce measures to reduce road traffic
BYLINE: Severin Carrell Scotland correspondent
SECTION: UK NEWS
LENGTH: 735 words
Scottish politicians should consider congestion charges, reducing speed limits and rethink plans to cut air passenger duty after Scotland again missed its climate targets, an influential advisory committee has said.
The committee on climate change, the Scottish government's official advisers, said far-reaching action was needed to reduce CO2 emissions after the reduction targets were missed for the third time by some 4.5%.
While the figures for 2012 showed Scotland's emissions were better overall than the UK's and it has been faster on installing renewables, the CCC said it needed to do far more on cutting transport emissions - which are not falling - tackling home fuel use, and that it would require deeper cuts from the wider public sector.
Environmentalists have predicted the Scottish government would also miss the 2013 target by a very wide margin, after failing repeatedly to implement tougher measures to cut transport, home energy and public sector emissions - the sectors over which it has direct control.
Related: Scotland misses carbon targets for third year in a row
The committee said Scottish ministers should weigh up the impact of their plans to cut air passenger duty when Holyrood gets control over the duty - because it could increase aviation emissions - and use other new powers to cut speed limits on roads.
The CCC said: "Meeting future targets remains very challenging, and will require further action in a number of sectors including low-carbon heat, energy efficiency, transport and agriculture and land use. Even in areas of good progress, challenges remain to achieve the stretching targets set out by the Scottish government."
The Scottish government was pushed by opposition parties in 2008 into accepting an ambitious emissions reduction goal of 42% by 2020, and has since boasted it has "world-beating" targets, relying heavily on its successful expansion of onshore wind farms.
The CCC said those renewable energy policies were having a positive effect: with green electricity accounting for 44% of Scottish consumption in 2013, and a 40% growth in community owned energy projects, Scotland would likely meet its 2020 green energy target early.
However, only about 30% of Scotland's emissions are linked directly to policy areas directly in the control of the Edinburgh government. It relies heavily on action by the UK and EU to cut most of its emissions, including improvements in vehicle efficiency, home appliances and lighting.
Scotland's target for 2013 involves the most ambitious annual cut of the entire programme of 10% from its target in 2012 of 53.22mte (million tonnes equivalent) to 47.98mte. It actually allowed 55.6mte to be emitted in 2012, widening the gap between the target and expected emissions for the following year.
Tom Ballantine, the chairman of Stop Climate Chaos Scotland, said this was the fourth time the CCC had urgedministers to take tougher action. "This is a crucial year for the fight against global warming, as world leaders meet in Paris in December to thrash out a new global agreement on climate change," he said.
"Scotland is rightly proud of its world-leading legislation on climate change but, as the CCC highlights today, the Scottish government must deliver what is set out in our Climate Change Act, so that we can retain our credibility in this area and show other countries what the benefits are of a low carbon nation."
The report was drafted before Scottish Power announced on Monday that it was planning to close down Longannet coal-fired power station, Scotland's largest single polluter and one of Europe's dirtiest power plants.
Related: Longannet power station to shut next year
Longannet emitted 9.5mmte of CO2 in 2013, 17% of the 55.6mte of CO2 that Scotland emitted the previous year. But WWF Scotland said that under the EU's current emissions trading regime, where the energy sectors CO2 output is pooled across the EU, its closure would have no impact on Scotland's emissions because another country could open a power station in its place.
That would change in 2020, when the emissions accounting regime would include each country's power stations onto its domestic totals, said Gina Hanrahan, WWF Scotland's climate and energy policy officer.
"Longannet's closure is really good news overall in terms of Scotland's real emissions, but the way its emissions are counted, it is not credited to Scotland yet," she said.
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The New York Times
March 24, 2015 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final
Science Museums Urged to Cut Ties With Kochs
BYLINE: By JOHN SCHWARTZ
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 13
LENGTH: 846 words
Dozens of climate scientists and environmental groups are calling for museums of science and natural history to ''cut all ties'' with fossil fuel companies and philanthropists like the Koch brothers.
A letter released on Tuesday asserts that such money is tainted by these donors' efforts to deny the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change.
''When some of the biggest contributors to climate change and funders of misinformation on climate science sponsor exhibitions in museums of science and natural history, they undermine public confidence in the validity of the institutions responsible for transmitting scientific knowledge,'' the letter states. ''This corporate philanthropy comes at too high a cost.''
The letter does not mention specific companies, but it does name David H. Koch, who sits on the boards of the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and has given tens of millions of dollars to those institutions.
Koch Industries is a privately held corporation with subsidiaries in energy and other industries. Mr. Koch and his family have funded conservative causes, including scientists and organizations that contest the role of humans in climate change.
Public records show that many fossil-fuel companies have made similar contributions to such organizations and scientists over the years.
The letter is a project of the Natural History Museum, a mobile museum that draws attention to ''social and political forces that shape nature yet are left out of traditional natural history museums,'' said its co-founder and director, Beka Economopoulos.
A petition drive, also released on Tuesday and sponsored by environmental organizations including Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, urges the Smithsonian and the American Museum of Natural History to ''Kick Koch off the board!''
Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University and signer of the letter, said the donors seek a halo they do not deserve. ''Cloaked in the garb of civic-mindedness, they launder their image while simultaneously and covertly influencing the content offered by those institutions,'' he said.
Eric Wohlschlegel, a spokesman for the American Petroleum Institute, said he could not comment on the letter because he had not seen it.
Allegations that contributions from donors like Mr. Koch influence institutions exhibits are not new. A 2010 investigation in The New Yorker noted that an underlying message of exhibits in the David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History is that humans ''evolved in response to a changing world.'' The article said that such language suggests that climate change has been a feature of the planet since prehistoric times, which plays down human contributions to climate change.
Randall Kremer, director of public affairs for the museum, said that Mr. Koch served on the advisory board, which is ''a consultative board not a governing board,'' and that ''the museum director has no plans to ask any members to step down.''
Mr. Kremer added that while Mr. Koch was the largest single donor to the museum, ''he signed our standard gift agreement, which prohibits donor or sponsor involvement in content.''
A spokesman for the American Museum of Natural History, Roberto Lebron, said, ''Donors do not determine the interpretation or presentation of scientific content.''
Eric Chivian, founder of the center for health and the global environment at Harvard Medical School and a signer of the letter, said he was not convinced that policies barring donors from having direct control over exhibits are effective. ''It is just human nature not to bite the hand that feeds you,'' he said.
Mr. Koch, who has given $100 million to Lincoln Center to renovate the former New York State Theater and supports many other institutions, has said that his contributions to the museums come from a deep love of science, and from being ''blown away and just fascinated'' by the dinosaurs on his first visit to the American Museum of Natural History when he was 14. Mr. Koch and his company did not respond directly to a request for comment about the letter.
Dr. Chivian, who as co-founder of the group International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War shared the organization's 1985 Nobel Prize, said natural history museum contributions from the Koch brothers were fundamentally different from their contributions to arts institutions.
''The Koch brothers have no stake in what is played at Lincoln Center,'' Dr. Chivian said. But such funding for museums is no more acceptable than it would be if ''a major tobacco company offered to fund an exhibit for them devoted to lung diseases.''
Chris Norris, a paleontologist and prominent blogger on museum issues, warned that if museums started removing board members or turning down donations, they risked damaging their reputations for objectivity. Doing so, he added, would enable ''others to argue that the information they provide is partisan and not to be trusted.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/24/science/science-museums-urged-to-cut-ties-with-kochs.html
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The New York Times
March 24, 2015 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final
The Real Cost of Coal
BYLINE: By DAVID J. HAYES and JAMES H. STOCK.
David J. Hayes, a former deputy interior secretary, teaches at Stanford. James H. Stock, a former member of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, is a professor at Harvard.
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Editorial Desk; OP-ED CONTRIBUTORS; Pg. 23
LENGTH: 639 words
CONGRESS long ago established a basic principle governing the extraction of coal from public lands by private companies: American taxpayers should be paid fair value for it. They own the coal, after all.
Lawmakers set a royalty payment of 12.5 percent of the sale price of the coal in 1976. Forty years later, those payments remain stuck there, with actual collections often much less. Studies by the Government Accountability Office, the Interior Department's inspector general and nonprofit research groups have all concluded that taxpayers are being shortchanged.
This is no small matter. In 2013, approximately 4o percent of all domestic coal came from federal lands. A recent study by the independent nonprofit research group Headwaters Economics estimates that various reforms to the royalty valuation system would have generated $900 million to $5.6 billion more overall between 2008 and 2012.
This failure by the government to collect fair value for taxpayer coal is made more troubling by the climate-change implications of burning this fossil fuel. Taxpayers are already incurring major costs in responding to the effects of global warming. Coastal infrastructure is being battered by sea rise and storm surges; forests are being devastated by climate-aided pest infestations; and studies are suggesting that temperature rises have increased the likelihood of devastating droughts in California.
Moreover, as the Council of Economic Advisers documented in a report last July because of the long-lived nature of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, these costs will continue to rise.
The Interior Department, which manages energy resources on federal lands, has acknowledged that reforms are needed. In January, the department took a first step by proposing more scrutiny on the self-reported sales that coal companies use as the basis for royalty payments. It also must address other well-documented problems, including large discounts routinely applied to these payments, and noncompetitive lease sales.
But the department should not stop there. The federal government should also take into account the economic consequences of burning coal when pricing this fuel. The price for taxpayer-owned coal should reflect, in some measure, the added costs associated with the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions.
This is not a novel concept. Some utilities and other businesses already are applying a so-called carbon adder to account for the environmental costs of greenhouse gas emissions. These adders are used for planning purposes to compare the costs of fossil fuel and renewable electricity generation and have not been charged to consumers.
But the Interior Department should take a cue from the private sector and go a step further by imposing a carbon adder on coal sales. Money collected from the adder could be phased in to avoid sharp price disruptions and used to help defray the growing, uncompensated costs that the government is incurring in responding to climate change.
Computing the appropriate carbon adder will not be easy, but that should not deter the Interior Department from accounting for a meaningful portion of coal's climate impact when updating the federal coal royalty rate.
Industry is sure to oppose this, even though coal is the planet's most carbon-intensive energy source. Others will argue that an across-the-board carbon tax is a more efficient way to account for climate impacts. With no near-term prospects for such legislation, however, the Interior Department should set a royalty that provides fair value to taxpayers by addressing the climate costs of burning coal.
The greenhouse gas burden from coal taken from government lands can no longer be ignored. Using a carbon adder to increase the royalties that taxpayers receive is a sensible step in the right direction.
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The New York Times
March 24, 2015 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final
A Climate Change Safety Net Frays
BYLINE: By JUSTIN GILLIS
SECTION: Section D; Column 0; Science Desk; Pg. 3
LENGTH: 445 words
The ability of the Amazon forest to soak up excess carbon dioxide is weakening over time, researchers reported last week. That finding suggests that limiting climate change could be more difficult than expected.
For decades, Earth's forests and seas have been soaking up roughly half of the carbon pollution that people are pumping into the atmosphere. That has limited the planetary warming that would otherwise result from those emissions.
The forests and oceans have largely kept up even as emissions have skyrocketed. That surprised many scientists, but also prompted warnings that such a robust ''carbon sink'' could not be counted on to last forever.
In a vast study spanning 30 years and covering 189,000 trees distributed across 321 plots in the Amazon basin, researchers led by a group at the University of Leeds, in Britain, reported that the uptake of carbon dioxide in the Amazon peaked in the 1990s, at about 2 billion tons a year, and has since fallen by half.
Initially, the researchers postulated, the Amazon may have responded well to rising carbon dioxide levels, which are known to increase plant growth, but that response appears to be tapering off. Drought and other stresses could be playing a role, but the main factor seems to be that the initial acceleration of growth sped up the metabolism of the trees.
''With time, the growth stimulation feeds through the system, causing trees to live faster, and so die younger,'' Oliver L. Phillips, a tropical ecologist at the University of Leeds and one of the leaders of the research, said in a statement.
Further research is needed, but the scientists say that climate forecasting models that assume a continuing, robust carbon sink in the Amazon could be overly optimistic.
At a global scale, studies suggest that forests are still absorbing far more carbon than they release into the atmosphere, even as stresses like fires and beetle attacks increase because of climate change. In essence, rising forces of growth have been outracing rising forces of death in the world's forests.
Perhaps the big question now is whether that will flip. Will forests beyond the Amazon, such as the boreal forest that encircles the Northern Hemisphere, eventually follow the Amazon and weaken as carbon sinks?
That would mean, in effect, that human civilization would have less help from trees, and cuts in carbon emissions would need to be sharper than previously thought to limit global warming to tolerable levels.
''Forests are doing us a huge favor, but we can't rely on them to solve the carbon problem,'' Dr. Phillips said. ''Instead, deeper cuts in emissions will be required to stabilize our climate.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/24/science/earth/amazon-forest-becoming-less-of-a-climate-change-safety-net.html
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GRAPHIC: PHOTO: A section of the Amazon forest that was illegally slashed and burned next to a section of virgin forest in Brazil. (PHOTOGRAPH BY LALO DE ALMEIDA FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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The Guardian
March 23, 2015 Monday 6:23 PM GMT
Florida's unspeakable issue leaves climate change official tongue-tied;
Emergency chief says anything but phrase 'banned' by governorFema to pull funding for states that refuse to address climate change
BYLINE: Katherine Krueger
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 448 words
The latest victim of Florida governor Rick Scott's unwritten ban on state officials using the words "climate change" is his own disaster preparedness lieutenant, who stumbled through verbal gymnastics to avoid using the scientific term in a newly surfaced video.
Bryan Koon, Florida's emergency management chief, was testifying before the state senate's budget subcommittee on Thursday, answering questions about the news that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) will pull federal funding from states that refuse to directly address climate change.
In the video, uploaded by the advocacy group Forecast The Facts, Senator Jeff Clemens asks Koon whether he is aware of the updated Fema guidelines, which would block 2016 funding in states whose governors refuse to implement so-called hazard mitigation plans for global warming.
Koon affirmed that the state's next plan would be required to include "language to that effect".
Clemens came back, saying: "I used 'climate change', but I'm suggesting, maybe as a state we use 'atmospheric re-employment', that might be something the governor can get behind" - to laughter among committee members and the audience.
But Koon charged on, clarifying that "future versions of our mitigation plan will be required to have language discussing that issue".
"What issue is that"? Clemens asked with a smile.
"The issue that you mentioned earlier, regarding ..." Koon said, before being drowned out by laughter at his obvious discomfort.
Scott and his staff have repeatedlydeniedthat they have instituted a ban on allowing local officials to say "climate change", "global warming" or "sustainability" in public, but the governor has not shied away from publicly expressing scepticism about the science of climate change on the campaign trail.
Related: Florida employee 'punished for using phrase climate change'
Koon's public gaffe comes after recent reports that a longtime state environmental protection employee was issued an official reprimand instructing him to take two days of leave and not return to work before a mental health evaluation ruled him fit for duty after he included the words "climate change" in meeting notes.
Florida is far from the only state that has refused to make action on climate change a priority. Tennessee, Louisiana and North Carolina all have laws on the books that open the door for climate change denial to be taught in the classroom.
A recent study from Columbia University's Center for Climate Change Law also found 18 states have disaster mitigation plans that either include no provisions for responding to the effects of climate change, or reference it in a dismissive or inaccurate way.
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The Guardian
March 23, 2015 Monday 3:46 PM GMT
Carbon capture battle stirs hopes, dreams and grim realities;
In Norway capturing and burying carbon emissions has brought down one prime minister, been likened to a national 'moon landing' by another and left the country's highest-emitting gas plant as a monument
BYLINE: Arthur Neslen in Brevik
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 2286 words
At least 10 European power plants were supposed to begin piping their carbon emissions into underground tombs this year, rather than letting them twirl into the sky. None has done so.
Missed deadlines, squandered opportunities, spiralling costs and green protests have plagued the development of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology since Statoil proposed the concept more than two decades ago.
But in the face of desperate global warming projections the CCS dream still unites Canadian tar sands rollers with the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and Shell with some environmentalists.
"If you take climate change seriously, it is extremely dangerous not to enable this technology for use in refineries, steel, cement, gas and coal plants," said Frederic Hauge, the founder of the Bellona Foundation, a key mover in Norway's CCS project. "When combined with biomass, CCS gives us the option of going carbon negative (reducing more emissions than are created) which we need because we don't have a Plan B - or Planet B."
With 2bn people in the developing world expected to hook up to the world's dirty energy system by 2050, CCS holds out the tantalising prospect of fossil-led growth that does not fry the planet.
Shell, a major funder of Bellona, has championed it as a way of continuing to extract the oil and gas reserves that it says will likely make up most of the planet's energy mix by mid-century.
"With CCS in the mix, we can decarbonise in a cost-effective manner and still continue to produce, to some extent, our fossil fuels," Tim Bertels, Shell's Glocal CCS portfolio manager told the Guardian. "You don't need to divest in fossil fuels, you need to decarbonise them."
The technology has been gifted "a very significant fraction" of the billions of dollars earmarked by Shell for clean energy research, he added. But the firm is also a vocal supporter of public funding for CCS from carbon markets, as are almost all players in the industry.
"If you want to contribute to continued development and bring people out of poverty you need to see ever-increasing energy consumption in the world. Fossil fuels will play a large part in that, so CCS has to play a role too," said Norway's energy minister Tord Lien. "It is going to be a lot easier to see that happen through a real price on CO2 emissions."
Many environmentalists see the idea as a non-starter because it locks high emitting power plants into future energy systems, and obstructs funding for the cheaper renewables revolution already underway. "CCS is is completely irrelevant," said Jeremy Rifkin, a noted author and climate adviser to several governments. "I don't even think about it. It's not going to happen. It's not commercially available and it won't be commercially viable."
But the International Energy Agency views the technology as the most cost-effective way of delivering around a fifth of the CO2 reductions needed to cap global warming at 2C, so long as 3,000 carbon-grabbing plants are up and running by 2050.
The US, Canadian and Australian governments have chased the CCS dream with zeal, often using its compressed CO2 byproduct to prise away tar sands and eek out the dregs of depleted fossil fuel reserves.
But only in Norway has CCS brought down one prime minister, been championed by another as a national "moon landing," and left the country's highest-emitting power plant as a monument.
Norway depends on hydropower for almost all its energy, but is the world's third-largest exporter of oil and natural gas. A dissonance between the country's environmental self-image and its higher per-person emissions rankings than the UK or even Poland triggered the country's CCS turn in the 1990s. Even today, while the city of Oslo has divested itself of coal holdings, Norway's sovereign wealth fund has increased its stake in oil and gas firms to £20bn.
The carbon capture idea also sated growing national concerns about over-reliance on hydro as energy shortfalls were projected. And it squared the climate circle.
"The concept of CCS was equated with climate-friendliness in the late '90s and those in favour of it became, by default, climate-friendly politicians," said Truls Gulowsen, Greenpeace Norway's director.
In Sleipner and Snohvit, Statoil built two gas plants which funnelled high content CO2 into a sub-sea ravine. This enhanced export prospects to Germany, which has more exacting carbon content rules, and helped avoid Norway's punitive carbon taxes. Today, the plants remain Europe's only operational CCS projects.
But building other CCS installations onshore proved complicated and costly. In March 2000, the Christian Democrat prime minister Kjell Bondevik resigned after his coalition partners tried to forcethe construction of five gas power plants without CCS.
Six years later, Statoil was given permission to erect the country's largest gas-fired power plant in Mongstad - with CCS fitted. The then-prime minister and current Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg compared it to a national "moon landing" that would put Norway's name on the global clean energy map.
Over £1bn of public subsidies was lavished on the project - a "political subsidy for fossil fuels," according to Rasmus Hansson, the parliamentary leader of Norway's Green party.
"In reality it was a deliberate political move, designed to relieve the Norwegian oil and gas industry of climate-related criticism and it worked," he told the Guardian. "Statoil's plan to build a gas fired power plant had been extremely controversial and parliament only allowed it because of the promise that it would be fitted with CCS."
Statoil was never enthusiastic about the project and after technology costs quintupled in a matter of years, sources say that they demanded exorbitant prices from the government for use of steam that their installations were freely venting.
The result, according to Hansson was the construction of a white elephant gas plant that emits 1.2m tonnes of CO2 pollution annually. In recent years, "Norway is the only country in western Europe that has actually increased its emissions," Rasmusson said. "This did not happen by accident."
In Brevik, two hours from Oslo, the CCS dice are being rolled again with an (EURO)11.7m (£8.5) CCS test being run by Aker solutions at the Norcem cement plant, Norway's most polluting factory, which is responsible for 800,000 tonnes of CO2 output annually.
The factory was also the scene of one of Norway's worst pollution accidents in 2001 when at least 750 tonnes oftoxic sludge spilled into a local harbour and fjord waters. Local environmentalists are concerned about the potential for any repeat.
"A minor CO2 capture seems to be just one partial reason for the new development," said Øystein Dalland, an environmental professor who lives close to the plant. "This is also about achieving an increased bottom line by the synergy of handling fly ash in the cement production process. But even the idea of CO2 capture and waste handling must be subordinate to basic human rights."
The cement industry is responsible for around 5% of global carbon emissions - more than aviation. As with steel or aluminium, it is unlikely to be dislodged from industrial processes any time soon, so some form of carbon mitigation is essential.
One argument against this being CCS is that the technology requires roughly 40% more energy to capture about 85% of the CO2 a plant produces. When costs and emissions from plant and transport infrastructure, builds, emissions and leakages are factored in, that can easily make it a budget-breaker in financial and carbon terms.
But in Brevik, unlike Mongstad, "we can utilise waste heat from cement factory so we don't have to add additional heat," said Oscar Graff, the chief technology officer for AkerSolutionsClean Carbon. "We get it almost for free."
Testing at the plant has focused on four technologies - amine, membrane, solid and calcium cycle. So far, amine technology is "the only one which is applicable at the moment," according to Per Brevik, the CO2 project manager at the plant. A post-combustion technique pumps amine gas into an absorber tower pre-heated to 120 degrees C so that it scrubs carbon dioxide from the flue gas as it descends. The flue gas is then 'washed' again before being vented.
If all goes to plan, up to 400,000 tonnes of trapped CO2 will be trapped this way. Another 50,000 tonnes would be blended with sulphuric acid and fly ash in a solid waste capable of being stored under the southern fjord.
Norcem's testing is focused on catching carbon, not keeping it. But local people fear that adding a CO2 tag to solid waste could give 'green' cover for its burial in a local limestone mine which suffered a collapse in 1976.
"The local authorities have just refused Norcem use of that local harbour and mine site for the disposal of dangerous waste, because it is situated less than 1,000m away from a population of 2,500 people," Dalland said.
According to Lien, "the only likely places to store CO2 in Norway would be on the continental shelf where reservoirs have already been identified that have the quality needed."
But asked about future storage plans for the CO2, a Norcem source told the Guardian that "in future it could be stored in an underground mine like in Brevik. We have a huge underground area in Brevik, but it could also be stored onshore - outside of water [on an island] - or in a hole in the ground." The source said that the CO2 would be stable, well-controlled, and continuously monitored, but that the onus for doing so would not fall on Norcem.
"We can't take responsibility for transport and storage," said Brevik. "It is not our core business. Storage is definitely a national task because you have to guarantee that it won't leak and I don't think that Norcem would like to have that responsibility."
Because of the timescales and potential consequences involved, public liability for CCS leakages raises the same issues as nuclear waste disposal, in Rifkin's view. "There's no way to ensure that there will not one day be a release of CO2 from a deep geological deposit," he said. "Those plates are moving all the time."
A nearly two-mile fracture has already been found close to the Sleipner sub-sea ravine.
Shell argues that its own storage reservoirs are unlikely to ever leak more than 1% of the carbon they house. "Even when there was an earthquake in japan during an injection test, the chance of any CO2 leaking [having taken place] was minimal," Bertels said.
Greenpeace counters that even a one percent leakage rate could invalidate the raison d'etre for CCS, and that carbon escapes can have disastrous consequences in the short term. Some 1,700 people died in 1986, when a Cameroonian volcano erupted, releasing hundreds of thousands of tonnes of CO2 that had accumulated at the bottom of Lake Nyos, over a 16-mile range.
"CCS is basically about catching a problem and stuffing it away under the carpet," Rasmusson said. "W e will then live with the statistical risk of some gigantic underground burp. The problem is the same as with the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster. Things that absolutely cannot happen have a tendency of finally happening."
The storage issue opens a pandora's box for environmentalists. Many argue that it will reduce CO2 emissions by too little, and too late. Gulowsen describes CCS as a "painful" issue that "absolutely divided the environmental movement" in Norway.
Hauge a flambuoyant celebrity in Norway who has been arrested more than 30 times for daring environmental actions compares the green schism to university rows among Marxist-Leninists in the 1980s.
"There is no black and white in the environmental discussion anymore," he said. To fight climate change, "we need to go with whatever we can and I can't manage to do that without CCS, even if it means that our former enemies start to become our best allies."
Rifkin poses an alternative vision in which energy, transport and communications technologies are symbiotically - and digitally - merging in a third industrial revolution that will render today's energy firms obsolete. In this analysis, CCS is their last hurrah. "Why would we want to pin our hopes on a matured technology that is costly and nailing us to climate change, when on one sunday in Germany last May, we had so much solar and wind coming through that we had negative prices all day?" he asked. Renewables accounted for 75% of all electricity produced in Germany that day - at operating costs near to zero.
But while storage technologies such as hydrogen batteries, fly wheel storage and smart grids with two-way power-charging may eliminate the need for baseline fossil fuel capacity at some point this century, their current roll-out is happening too slowly, critics argue.
Renewables and energy efficiency "can't do the job for many industrial sectors because these are process emissions that you can't replace with green electricity," said Chris Littlecott, a CCS research associate with E3G. "Over the next 30-50 years, we may have breakthrough technologies that close the loop by recycling steel or using very different cement types but for now, we have to deal with the technologies we have."
In many ways, the debate over carbon capture and storage is a struggle between two competing visions of the societal transformation needed to avert climate disaster. One vision represents the enlightened self-interest of a contributor to the problem. The other cannot succeed without eliminating its highly entrenched opponent. The battle is keenly fought by technological optimists on both sides. But if Norway's fractious CCS experience is any indicator, it will be decided on the ground by the grimmest of realities.
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The Guardian
March 23, 2015 Monday 2:25 PM GMT
How dealing with climate change is like playing cricket;
As India gears up against Australia for Thursday's Cricket World Cup semi-final, here's why climate change activists should play close attention to the game
BYLINE: Cristina Rumbaitis del Rio, Anna Brown
SECTION: GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT PROFESSIONALS NETWORK
LENGTH: 864 words
Related: Palestine field post: 'I am not your normal human rights campaigner'
Hundreds of millions of cricket fans around the world are up all hours these days to cheer for their teams in the Cricket World Cup. As cricket fans well know, one of the toughest deliveries to face in cricket is a "googly", where the ball's movement is discontinuous and difficult to predict, posing a challenge for even the most experienced batsmen.
One-track minds that we are, this reminds us of the challenge we face with climate change - knowing that an unpredictable future is imminent, and feeling uncertain as to how to prepare for it.
One of the trademarks of great batsmen, such as India's Sachin Tendulkar, has been their resilience, even when facing diverse and unpredictable bowling outcomes. Turns out, the ways in which these athletes handle a "googly" match up quite well with the characteristics cities need to be better equipped to cope with climate change.
Here's how...
Reading the conditions
A great batsman is one with a gift for reading both bowler and ball, even before the release. He knows the bowler's strengths, weaknesses and preferences. He can even detect slight variations in the way the bowler is gripping the seam or angling his wrist. It's a kind of informed clairvoyance. Similarly, cities need to focus not only on understanding what climate projections suggest for the city, but also on understanding the current vulnerabilities of people, infrastructure and systems that keep the city running, and project how these may change over time.
This requires methods of sensing and information-gathering, robust feedback loops, such as community meetings or monitoring systems that collect and layer together data to give a more accurate and dynamic picture of the city's strengths, assets, liabilities and vulnerabilities.
Related: Corporations have rights. Now we need a global treaty on their responsibilities
Innovation
There's a stroke in cricket - the Reverse Sweep - that while not a purist's dream, can sometimes be wickedly effective. Addressing climate change sometimes requires a toolkit of similarly unconventional approaches. Cities need innovations of all kinds: especially redundant systems, alternatives, back-ups and reserves that can be used if needed during a disruption. For instance, having multiple pathways to access water (city supply, water tankers, wells and tanks, grey-water reuse, etc) and back-up energy sources for cooking and boiling water can be extremely valuable to save lives and prevent disease during typhoon recovery. Having a diverse set of capacities that can be mobilised when needed is also important.
Ability to keep calm and carry on
Great batsmen are able to keep their wits about them, even when the game appears to be going catastrophically. In urban resilience terms, this means being able self-regulate and manage when calamity does strike. This requires shifting the mindset from trying to make the city "fail-safe", to one of safe-failure. Safe failure may mean building self-regulating systems that can isolate a malfunction and prevent cascading disruptions and eventual collapse, while avoiding over-reliance on a single piece of protective infrastructure, such as a levee.
A common gameplan
Cricket is a team sport, and even the most talented batsmen will only succeed if they calibrate their approach to the needs of the day, and the diverse qualities of the rest of the team. Similarly, cities comprise diverse actors with different functions and strengths. Given the complexity of - and connections between - systems that keep a city functioning, effective solutions to climate challenges will require integrated and coordinated action.
Ability to adapt and be flexible
A winning cricketer knows how to handle whatever comes, whether it's playing in blistering conditions of heat and humidity or the cold and grey gloom of the early English summer. The resilient city is just as adaptive and able to adjust to a disruption by making new plans, taking new actions, or modifying behaviours and mandates to better accommodate the situation.
Inclusive and team-minded
Related: I am a man fighting for women's rights in the Middle East: any questions?
A team is only as strong as its weakest link. So it goes, too, with the resilience of a city. Even if portions of the city are able to withstand floods and storms, these pockets of robustness - whether they are specific wards or populations or sectors - will be crippled if the city as a whole, including marginalised and poor groups, are not able to bounce back from shocks and stresses.
We realise that linking climate change to cricket is a bit of a stretch. But we can't deny - for us, at least, the game provides some unlikely insights into our urgent need to weather the range of climate impacts that are heading our way.
Cristina Rumbaitis del Rio and Anna Brown are senior associate directors at the Rockefeller Foundation, specialising in climate change and resilience.
Join our community of development professionals and humanitarians. Follow @GuardianGDP on Twitter.
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The Guardian
March 23, 2015 Monday 6:07 AM GMT
Climate-sceptic US senator given funds by BP political action committee;
Senator Jim Inhofe, who opposes climate change regulation, has received $10,000 from PAC funded by donations from US staff at oil group
BYLINE: Simon Bowers
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 1285 words
One of America's most powerful and outspoken opponents of climate change regulation received election campaign contributions that can be traced back to senior BP staff, including chief executive Bob Dudley.
Jim Inhofe, a Republican senator from Oklahoma who has tirelessly campaigned against calls for a carbon tax and challenges the overwhelming consensus on climate change, received $10,000 (£6,700) from BP's Political Action Committee (PAC).
Following his re-election, Inhofe became chair of the Senate's environment and public works committee in January, and then a month later featured in news bulletins throwing a snowball across the Senate floor.
Before tossing it, the senator said: "In case we have forgotten - because we keep hearing that 2014 is the warmest year on record - it is very, very cold outside. Very unseasonal."
The BP PAC is funded by contributions from senior US executives and company staffers who sent in contributions to the PAC totalling more than $1m between 2010 and 2014. Over the same period the committee paid out $655,000 to candidates, with more than 40 incumbent senators benefiting.
Yet, BP and Dudley have long called for world leaders to intervene and impose tough regulatory measures on the fossil fuel industry. Publishing its 98-page research paper, Energy Outlook 2035, last month, BP warned : "To abate carbon emissions further will require additional significant steps by policymakers beyond the steps already assumed."
Dudley has personally given $19,000 since June 2011 to the BP PAC - very close to the $5,000-a-year maximum allowable by law. Although Dudley is resident in Britain, he is eligible to give via the BP PAC because he is a US national.
While the sums channelled to Inhofe's campaign represent only a small proportion of the BP PAC's election spending and the senator's own campaign funds, they show how unafraid the committee has been to spread its donations to the most controversial candidates. According to the BP PAC website, it financially supports election candidates "whose views and/or voting records reflect the interests of BP employees".
Records suggest Inhofe's 2014 campaign was a funding priority for the BP PAC, ranking as one of the top recipients of committee funds when compared with disbursements to other serving senators.
This was despite Inhofe's senate battle not being a close one. His opponent, Matt Silverstein, who Inhofe beat comfortably in last November's midterms, had a tiny campaign war chest by comparison.
BP was asked whether it was appropriate for the PAC to make campaign contributions to such a vocal opponent of action on climate change, or for Dudley to be contributing towards such payments.
In a statement BP replied: "Voluntary donations [by staff] to the BP employees' political action committee in the US are used to support a variety of candidates across the political spectrum and in many US geographies where we operate.
"These candidates have one thing in common: they are important advocates for the energy industry in the broadest sense."
It added: "BP's position on climate change is well known and is long-established. We believe that climate change is an important long-term issue that justifies global action."
The company declined to comment on Dudley's own donations.
PACs exist in the US where companies and trade unions cannot give directly to the campaigns of those running for office. Instead funds are pooled from staff - often senior executives - into a PAC, and disbursed by a committee board, often in a manner sympathetic to the company's lobby and other interests.
Other US oil industry leaders, including Exxon Mobil chief executive Rex Tillerson, make contributions to their own corporate PACs - money which in many cases can then be traced to Inhofe and other climate-sceptic politicians.
But Tillerson and other peers have not been as outspoken as BP and Dudley in calling for state intervention to tackle climate change, making the BP boss's links to Inhofe campaign finance more controversial.
Last week Obama said it was "disturbing" that Inhofe had been made chair of the senate environment committee. In broader criticism of unnamed political opponents, he then went on to say: "In some cases you have elected officials who are shills for the oil companies or the fossil fuel industry. And there is a lot of money involved."
Inhofe is unabashed about election campaign financing he receives from the industry. In his 2012 book, The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future, he wrote: "Whenever the media asked me how much I have received in campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry, my unapologetic answer was 'not enough'."
According to data compiled from public filings by the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), Inhofe's campaign raised $4.84m between 2009 and 2014, with $1.77m coming from PACs, many of them sponsored by fossil fuel companies.
BP's PAC was more active in the US 2014 election cycle than any other for more than a decade. Despite insisting it is non-partisan, 69% of contributions to federal election candidates in recent years have been to Republican politicians. This is a stronger bias than most other corporate PACs, according to the CRP.
Not all recipients of BP PAC donations are climate change sceptics. Indeed, among other top recipients in recent years has been Steny Hoyer, House Democrat whip, one of the strongest advocates for government measures to tackle climate change.
There are, however, other leading recipients who have attracted criticism from climate change campaigners, including Republican House speaker John Boehner and fellow Republican, Sen Mike Enzi from Wyoming.
When asked his views on climate change in January, Boehner said : "We've had changes in our climate, although scientists debate the sources, in their opinion, of that change. But I think the real question is that every proposal out of this administration with regard to climate change means killing American jobs."
"I don't see [Obama] as trying to control pollution. I see him trying to put business out of business," Enzi said last year.
Campaign contributions is just one aspect of US political engagement linked to BP and its staff. Filings show the oil and gas group spends millions on lobbying efforts.
The CRP classifies BP as a "heavy hitter", ranking it among the top 140 biggest overall donors to federal elections since 1988. Its PAC ranks as the six largest such body with a sponsor company that is ultimately part of a non-US multinational.
Those on the PAC board, deciding how to spend staff donations, are senior executives and lawyers at the company. The board's vice-chair is Bob Stout, BP's Washington-based head of regulatory affairs, who also sits on the group's global policy making body. Dudley does not sit on the PAC board.
According to its website, the PAC makes donations to "candidates who support the principles of free enterprise and good government, support a fair and reasonable business environment for the energy industry and share our philosophy that energy diversity advances energy security." It says staff contributions are encouraged but stresses they are voluntary. The first BP PAC contribution to Inhofe's 2014 campaign was a given on 12 March 2012. This $1,000 donation came just two weeks after the publication of Inhofe's book The Greatest Hoax, cementing his credentials as the most outspoken denier of climate change in US politics.
Publicising the book, the senator gave a radio interview on Voice of Christian Youth America. "God is still up there," he said. "The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what he is doing in the climate to me is outrageous."
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The Guardian
March 23, 2015 Monday 3:00 AM GMT
Climate change: Coalition accused of politicising greenhouse gas target;
Greg Hunt says figures exaggerated under Labor but former Liberal leader John Hewson says both parties use same projections and that such interference is 'damaging to the national interest'
BYLINE: Lenore Taylor political editor
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 935 words
The Abbott government has been accused of politicising the release of official greenhouse gas projections that confirm Australia's international climate change pledge for 2020 is becoming easier to reach, but which will also increase pressure for Australia to adopt a more ambitious post-2020 target.
The official figures have shown that the total greenhouse gas reduction required to meet Australia's bipartisan minimum target of a 5% cut by 2020 is now 236m tonnes, a decrease on previous estimates.
The environment minister, Greg Hunt, said the previous projections had been "Labor's numbers" and that the lower projections were "because Labor's numbers exaggerated the abatement task by more than a billion tonnes of emissions".
"Labor used these figures in an attempt to justify the world's largest carbon tax that hurt families and businesses by pushing up electricity prices," Hunt said.
The former Liberal leader John Hewson said the official projections were, and always had been, produced by the environment department based on the best available evidence at the time.
"Both parties have always based their policies on these projections. To try to politicise them in this way is enormously counterproductive and damaging to the national interest," Hewson said.
Professor Ross Garnaut, Labor's former climate change adviser, said there was "nothing at all political in the change in trajectory ... these figures have been produced in the same way since the Howard years".
The official figures attributed the decrease to "lower electricity demand ... due to the uptake of household solar, energy efficiency and increased retail prices; worse-than-expected agricultural conditions due to drought; lower manufacturing output due to industrial closures and weaker growth expectations for local coal production due to a fall in international coal prices".
The latest forecasts are very close to private estimates, including those from Frontier Economics, published by Guardian Australia in September 2014, which calculated Australia's task to 2020 would be about 225m tonnes.
The revised figures mean the task of reducing emissions by 5% requires less than a third of the effort envisaged when both major parties signed up to the 2020 target.
In 2012 the promise to reduce emissions by 5% of 2000 levels by 2020 was calculated to require the cumulative reduction of 755m tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. In 2014 new government calculations reduced that figure to 421m tonnes.
The new figures were based on the assumption that the renewable energy target is reduced to a "real 20%" - something the government has yet to agree with Labor. If it is unable to achieve this reduction and the existing RET remains, additional renewable energy is likely to take greenhouse emissions even lower.
The figures explain why the government remains confident it can meet the target even though it has repealed the carbon tax and has not yet begun auctions under its $2.55bn "Direct Action" scheme. The first auction will be held in April.
Hunt said the new figures meant the Coalition would "easily meet our commitment to reduce Australia's emissions by 5% from 2000 levels by 2020". But modelling by Sinclair Knight Merz, released during the 2013 election campaign, which found the Coalition would need to find at least another $4bn to meet its target, was based on broadly similar projections.
Energy market analyst RepuTex said it still believed the $2.55bn Emissions Reduction Fund, on its own, would fail to meet the 2020 target - even taking the new projections into account.
"We forecast that the ERF will purchase between 80m and 120m tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions abatement. This is equivalent to around half of Australia's new 2020 abatement task," RepuTex said.
RepuTex said that to meet the target the government would have to establish a "baseline and credit" emissions trading scheme, using so-called safeguards mechanisms that have been legislated but not yet explained in detail.
The government is soon to release a discussion paper on how it will set its post-2020 emissions reduction target. It will announce this target mid-year, ahead of the United Nations conference in Paris in December.
The Climate Institute thinktank said the new figures did not explain how the government would meet its 2020 emissions reduction targets, let alone deeper cuts after 2020.
Its chief executive, John Connor, said: "It's not much use to say that the job has got easier when you still don't have the tools to do it properly."
"Without a plan to modernise and decarbonise our economy, Australia's ballooning pollution through 2020 and beyond will require massive dollops of taxpayer funds if the primary policy tool remains the Emissions Reduction Fund."
"These new projections are consistent with independent modelling that shows the government's policies still aren't up to the task of cutting Australian emissions even by the minimum amount we've committed to, let alone match comparable countries' efforts or drive the deeper decarbonisation we will need over coming decades. The government has provided no modelling to argue otherwise."
Garnaut said the government's optimism was also based on a continuation of recent reductions in electricity emissions, which "were helped by a carbon price and have been hindered by recent policy developments".
The total task of reducing emissions by 236m tonnes takes into account a "carryover" because Australia exceeded its 2012 reduction target, which actually allowed a small increase in emissions and was easily achieved through calculating the impact of reduced land clearing.
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The Guardian
March 22, 2015 Sunday 10:52 PM GMT
Great Barrier Reef campaign: scientists call for scrapping of coal projects;
Australian coral reef experts say if the mining and port expansion projects go ahead, there will be permanent damage to the reef
BYLINE: Oliver Milman
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 727 words
Australia's leading coral reef scientists have called for huge coalmining and port developments in Queensland to be scrapped in order to avoid "permanent damage" to the Great Barrier Reef.
The Australian Coral Reef Society (ACRS) report, compiled by experts from five Australian universities and submitted to the United Nations, warns that "industrialising the Great Barrier Reef coastline will cause further stress to what is already a fragile ecosystem."
The report notes that nine proposed mines in the Galilee Basin, in central Queensland, will produce coal that will emit an estimated 705m tonnes of carbon dioxide at capacity - making the Galilee Basin region the seventh largest source of emissions in the world when compared to countries.
Climate change, driven by excess emissions, has been cited as the leading long-term threat to the Great Barrier Reef. Corals bleach and die as water warms and struggle to grow as oceans acidify.
"ACRS believe that a broad range of policies should be urgently put in place as quickly as possible to reduce Australia's record high per capita carbon emissions to a much lower level," the report states.
"Such policies are inconsistent with opening new fossil fuel industries like the mega coalmines of the Galilee Basin. Doing so would generate significant climate change that will permanently damage the outstanding universal value of the Great Barrier Reef."
The warning follows the unveiling of a long-term plan to reverse the reef's decline on Saturday. The strategy, which outlines cuts in pollution flowing onto the reef but sets out no additional action to curb emissions, was hailed by Tony Abbott as evidence that the government was "utterly committed" to the reef's preservation.
In the ACRS report, the scientists urge a rethink on associated plans to expand the Abbot Point port, near the town of Bowen as well as calling for a halt to the Galilee Basin mines, which have broad support from the Queensland and federal governments.
The expansion would make Abbot Point one of the largest coal ports in the world, requiring the dredging of 5m tonnes of seabed to facilitate a significant increase in shipping through the reef.
The report warns dredging will have "substantial negative impacts on surrounding seagrass, soft corals and other macroinvertebrates, as well as turtles, dugongs and other megafauna." Research has shown that coral disease can double in areas close to dredging activity.
The port expansion will also increase the amount of coal dust blowing onto the reef and the risk of shipping strikes upon whales and dugongs, the report states.
Sediment dredged from Abbot Point was initially earmarked to be dumped within the reef's waters, but following a request from Unesco, an alternate onshore plan was devised.
Dr Selina Ward, a reef scientist at the University of Queensland and co-author of the report, said the high-profile campaign around the sediment dumping obscured the more pressing threats to the reef.
"The dumping of the dredge spoil is important but it's not the whole story," she said. "We have the huge background threat of climate change and going ahead with the industrialisation of the coastline just doesn't sit well with that.
"The dredging involves the removal of seagrass beds and it creates sediment plumes that move large distances and cut light out to corals, which need photosynthesis for energy.
"If we have a 2C rise in the world's temperature we'll have bleaching events far more frequently. The outlook really is grim for the reef, but we still have time to turn it around."
Ward said she hoped the report would spur international pressure on Australia to scale back the mines and port. The report will be send to advisors to Unesco's world heritage committee, which will decide whether to officially list the reef as "in danger" in June.
"I don't want to see the Great Barrier Reef listed as in danger, that would be terrible for Australia," Ward said. "I hope the government understands what is at stake. We can have these mines and this port or we can have a healthy reef. We really can't have both."
Queensland's mining industry has also voiced its apprehension over the reef being listed in danger. The Queensland Resources Council said that the listing would harm the economy by triggering potential restrictions on mining activity, port operations and tourism facilities.
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The Guardian
March 22, 2015 Sunday 9:00 PM GMT
Corrections and clarifications;
Coltsfoot | Climate change threshold | Gothenburg
BYLINE: Corrections and clarifications column editor
SECTION: NEWS
LENGTH: 206 words
· Because of an editing error, a Country Diary from Sunderland (19 March, page 42) that discussed a close examination of the coltsfoot plant ( Tussilago farfara ) said that the "central disc florets in this composite flower are male. Each has a central anther rising like a piston through the rest of the stamen". In fact, while textbook descriptions of coltsfoot inflorescences do describe the central disc florets as being entirely male, the writer's original observation was that, if one looks closely, it becomes apparent that the central disc florets are in fact structurally hermaphrodite, with a central stigma forcing pollen from a ring of anthers surrounding it.
· A missing word resulted in a piece about climate change saying that limiting the Earth's surface temperature to 2C would make it impossible to burn many fossil fuel reserves, according to a report by the Green European Foundation. The threshold is a surface temperature increase of 2C ( Davey backs switch from coal to green investments, 18 March, page 1).
· A report on the recent shootings in Gothenburg ( Two dead and 10 injured after pub gun attack, 20 March, page 32) wrongly referred to the city as Sweden's third-largest. It is the country's second-largest.
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The Guardian
March 22, 2015 Sunday 8:06 PM GMT
Shell oil drilling in Arctic set to get US government permission;
Controversial decision expected from US interior secretary likely to spark protests from campaigners against Anglo-Dutch exploration in seas off Alaska
BYLINE: Terry Macalister
SECTION: BUSINESS
LENGTH: 849 words
The US government is expected this week to give the go-ahead to a controversial plan by Shell to restart drilling for oil in the Arctic.
The green light from Sally Jewell, the interior secretary, will spark protests from environmentalists who have campaigned against proposed exploration by the Anglo-Dutch group in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas off Alaska.
Jewell will make a formal statement backing the decision as soon as Wednesday, the earliest point at which her department can rubber-stamp an approval given last month given by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM).
The US Interior Department had been forced to replay the decision-making process after a US federal court ruled last year, in a case brought by environmental groups, that the government had made mistakes in assessing the environmental risks in the drilling programme.
However, the BOEM, an arm of Jewell's department, has backed the drilling after going through the process again, despite revealing in its Environmental Impact Statement "there is a 75% chance of one or more large spills" occurring.
A leading academic, Prof Robert Bea, from the engineering faculty at the University of California in Berkeley, who made a special study of the Deepwater Horizon accident, has raised new concerns that the recent slump in oil prices could compromise safety across the industry as oil producers strive to cut costs. Bea, who has worked as a consultant to BP and Shell, told the Guardian:
"We should all be concerned about tradeoffs between production and protection... With the significant reduction in the price for oil, there are equally significant pressures to reduce costs so that acceptable profitability can be maintained."
Bea was brought in by Shell in 2004 to reviewhow the group had assessed the risks associated with the proposed drilling in the Chukchi Sea. "At the end of the week's discussions, we agreed to disagree," he said.
Meanwhile, Greenpeace argues that drilling in extreme Arctic conditions is always risky, especially during a period when industry is trying to reduce overheads due to a price of $50 per barrel oil.
"Piling cost-cutting pressures onto these contractors, who already have frankly atrocious safety records, doesn't bode well for the Arctic, or the people and wildlife that call it home," said Charlie Kronick, Greenpeace's Arctic campaigner.
But Kronick said the move particularly made no sense in the context of countering global warming. "If we want to avoid catastrophic climate change we can't even burn all the fossil fuels we already have; we definitely don't need to trash what's left of the melting Arctic looking for more.
"Obama needs to show leadership ahead of the Paris climate talks; allowing Arctic drilling in Alaska will seriously undermine that leadership and US credibility."
Ed Davey, the British energy and climate change secretary, has asked the Bank of England to investigate threats to the financial system due to a carbon bubble caused by fossil fuels which cannot be burned because of global warming.
Shell declined to comment on the prospective Arctic go-ahead but has previously said a decision on whether to start drilling again this summer would depend on a number of factors including regulatory and legal certainty.
Ben van Beurden, the chief executive, told a recent financial results conference that he was keen to proceed : "We have retained very significant capability to be ready this year to go ahead. So will we go ahead? Yes, if we can."
On the issue of safety a spokesman for the company said: "We've said clearly that our plans must meet our own high bar as well as the one set by US regulators. Both have taken unprecedented measures to ensure offshore operations and contingency plans in the US Arctic are second to none."
Shell was forced to halt operations in Arctic the middle of 2012 after the failure of a key piece of safety equipment that would be used to tackle oil spills. The situation for the company became worse when the drilling rig it was using, the Kulluk, ran aground after it was being towed back to port.
A US coast guard report into the incident was heavily critical of the incident and Noble Drilling, which was working for Shell, was slapped with $12m worth of fines and community payments.
Shell hoped to restart in 2013 and then again in 2014 but failed after a series of legal challenges and other setbacks.
Despite its determination to press ahead in the Arctic, Shell aims to confront the risk that climate change may pose to its future, backing a resolution from activist shareholders to be debated at its May annual general meeting. This requires Shell to test whether its business model is compatible with the pledge by the world's nations to limit global warming to a further rise of 2C.
The group also says it has always made clear that cost cutting must never compromise safety and remains committed to the highest safety initiatives through a Goal Zero initiative. "Goal Zero captures the belief that we can operate without fatalities or significant incidents despite the often difficult conditions in which we operate."
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The Guardian
March 21, 2015 Saturday 6:49 AM GMT
Tony Abbott unveils plan to save Great Barrier Reef;
Prime minister sets out targets to reduce pollution in plan aimed at allaying Unesco's concerns but criticised for lack of attention to climate change
BYLINE: Oliver Milman
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 728 words
Australia has submitted its long-term plan to arrest the decline of the Great Barrier Reef, with Tony Abbott stressing to the international community that the government is "utterly committed" to the reef's preservation.
The Reef 2050 Long-Term Sustainability Plan has been compiled to allay concerns from Unesco over the fading health of the reef, with the organisation's world heritage committee set to meet in June to decide whether the reef is to be listed as "in danger."
The plan sets a number of targets to reduce pollution running on to the reef, including an 80% reduction in nitrogen and a 50% cut in sediment by 2025.
The final version of the strategy has been re-written to include the policies of Queensland's new Labor government, which has pledged to ban the dumping of dredged sediment in the reef's world heritage area and to provide $100m over five years to improve water quality.
For its part, the federal government is banning dumping in the reef's marine park and announced a further $100m in funding for the Reef Trust, a body that will work with landowners to ensure chemicals are not flowing into the coral ecosystem.
There will also be a new independent scientific panel, headed by the government's chief scientist, Ian Chubb, which will oversee the work of the Reef Trust.
Abbott said the government was helping to ensure that the reef is "handed on in the best possible condition to our children and grandchildren".
"Australia is telling its international partners that we are utterly committed as an entire nation to the protection of the Great Barrier Reef, one of the natural wonders of the world," he said.
"If there was only one thing in the world that was heritage listed, this would be it.
"We're making our position clear right around the world: this is a number one priority of the Australian government to protect the Great Barrier Reef."
Abbott said representations had been made at the "highest level" to countries that comprise the world heritage committee to ensure the "in danger" listing is avoided.
Greg Hunt, the federal environment minister, said he was in the process of visiting "a great number" of the 21 countries that sit on the committee and that the feedback so far had been "very positive".
Abbott added: "We are all conservationists, we are all utterly committed to protecting this priceless environmental asset of which we are today's custodians.
"Greg has snorkelled on the reef as a youngster, I've done a little bit of snorkelling on the reef myself. I'm probably more of a surfer than a diver, but the last thing I'd want to do as prime minister is anything that would compromise the quality of this reef."
The Great Barrier Reef is considered by government scientists to be in poor and worsening condition, having lost half of its coral over over the past 30 years. Pollution, coastal development and a plague of coral-eating starfish have been blamed for its decline.
The greatest long-term threat to the reef is climate change, with scientists criticising the draft reef 2050 plan for its lack of attention to the issue.
Reef experts have voiced concern over the potential development of nine large mines in the Galilee Basin region of Queensland which would, if all operated at full capacity, produce coal that would emit an estimated 705m tonnes of carbon dioxide a year - far more than Australia's national total.
Abbott stressed that climate change "impacts upon our entire world, it's relevant for all reefs including this, the world's greatest reef". But he added that it was "important to continue to strengthen our economy because a strong economy and a better environment should go hand in hand".
Dermot O'Gorman, chief executive of WWF Australia, said: "It's good that the plan has reflected the commitments of the ALP and that those commitments are in the 2050 plan. The $100m for the reef trust is well short of the billions not millions that the science says is needed to turn the Great Barrier Reef around."
Greenpeace was more critical. Campaigner Jessica Panegyres said the 2050 reef plan paid "lip service to reef protection" and did little to deal with the issue of climate change.
Mark Butler, Labor's environment spokesman, said the Coalition's climate policies were "woeful" and said that the state Labor government had intervened to ensure the protection of the Great Barrier Reef was taken seriously.
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The Guardian
March 20, 2015 Friday 6:25 PM GMT
Exxon shareholders lose out on vote over high-risk carbon projects;
The US Securities and Exchange Commission rules against allowing Exxon's shareholders to vote on whether to stop investing in high-carbon projects, but in favor of a near-identical proposal at ChevronInvestors ask oil companies to disclose refineries' risks from climate changeClimate change: why Guardian is putting threat to Earth front and center
BYLINE: Siri Srinivas
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 754 words
ExxonMobil shareholders will not be able to vote on whether the oil company should stop investing in risky, high-carbon projects after failing to win support from the Securities and Exchange Commission this week.
Wednesday's decision not to require the proxy vote comes a week after the federal agency ruled in favor of including a near-identical shareholder proposal on the Chevron proxy ballot in May.
Both proposals, represented by Arjuna Capital and nonprofit As You Sow, aim to pressure oil companies to stop investing in expensive fossil-fuel extraction projects - such as ultra deepwater, arctic drilling and tar sands projects - and instead share that money with investors as dividends.
Related: Al Gore: oil companies 'use our atmosphere as an open sewer'
An attorney-adviser for the SEC said that the commission's decision stemmed from its conclusion that Exxon has already partially implemented the proposal by increasing dividends.
Natasha Lamb, director of shareholder engagement at Arjuna Capital, called the ruling bizarre, confusing and based on a technicality. "It's a very odd ruling in part because even if dividends and share buybacks are going up, a shareholder still has the right to increase in the amounts of capital distributed."
"It seems as though they are grasping at straws for a reason to not to [uphold shareholders' demands]," she said.
Last week's ruling on Chevron was the first time the SEC upheld a shareholder proposal for increased returns based on climate change.
Related: A new study urges leaving fossil fuels in the ground. How will it affect business?
Chevron initially challenged the resolution, but the SEC's ruling means that the issue will now go to a vote at Chevron's annual shareholder meeting on May 27.
Many oil companies have been facing pressure from investor groups to disclose financial risks from climate change. The pressure comes on top of the challenge sometimes described as "peak oil", or the rising costs of maintaining production volume as the easiest-to-get reserves are depleted.
The easy oil is gone, Lamb said. Oil companies are scrambling to invest in oil that's harder and more expensive - and therefore less profitable - to extract in a bid to keep up production. Ultra-deepwater drilling, Arctic drilling and tar sands projects, for example, "cost a lot more money and are carbon-intensive", Lamb said. "What we've seen in the industry over the last 10 years is that capital expenditure has increased 100% - it has doubled - and crude oil production has actually decreased 3%."
Related: Leave fossil fuels buried to prevent climate change, study urges
Some shareholders are concerned not only about the immediate risk of reduced returns, but also the longer-term risk of investing in fossil-fuels projects that could end up being unprofitable and unsaleable if governments cap emissions amid global climate talks. Several studies have concluded that much of the world's fossil fuel reserves must remain unburned to prevent catastrophic climate change.
So-called "stranded" assets could cause major damage to oil companies' profitability, Lamb said. "The risk [is] that we can only pump that much CO2 into the atmosphere before we cause catastrophic climate change," she said. "These companies should be forward-thinking and make strategic decisions that position them as not just fossil-fuel companies, but energy companies."
In a report in April, ExxonMobil wrote that it doesn't expect any of its fossil fuel reserves will be stranded. Meanwhile, in a shareholder letter in May, Shell said it doesn't believe any of its proven reserves will become stranded either.
Related: Fossil fuel industry must take stranded assets seriously, says Tim Yeo
Rising shareholder interest in assessing the impact of climate change on business has attracted the attention of corporate boards: the BP board last month endorsed a shareholder proposal asking for more disclosure about climate risk, after the Shell board endorsed a similar proposal in January.
As for the latest SEC ruling, Arjuna Capital has not decided whether it will challenge the decision.
Danielle Fugere, president of As You Sow, said the ruling is not in shareholders' best interests, adding that shareholders have the right to demand increased dividends when a company's current investments put it at risk.
"We will continue to press this with the company to get other shareholders on board, to continue to ask the company to take action and decrease spending on these projects," she said. "We won't go away."
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The Guardian
March 20, 2015 Friday 4:18 PM GMT
Senior scientists call on health charities to shift money out of fossil fuels;
Former chief advisers to UK and European commission add their support to Guardian campaign for Gates Foundation and Wellcome Trust to divest
BYLINE: Ian Sample and Hannah Devlin
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 1128 words
Senior scientists including former chief advisers to the UK government and European commission have called on the world's two largest health charities to sell their investments in leading fossil fuel companies.
They argue that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust should offload their holdings in major coal, oil and gas corporations because the investments are undermining the charities' aims.
"There's an anomaly there. It is like giving with the one hand and taking with the other," said Prof Anne Glover, who was chief scientific adviser to the European commission until last year.
"These are leaders. These are people that others look to. So they have enormous responsibility. That's why for me it is important that they react to this."
She said there was a lack of progress in the development of cleaner alternatives to fossil fuels. "Gates and Wellcome and many others are huge investors," she said. "Their endorsement or investment in the accessing and using of fossil fuels - it makes a big impact. If they were to reconsider and think about investing elsewhere, they could use their power as investors in a very positive way."
On Monday, the Guardian launched a major campaign to encourage the two charities to divest their endowments from fossil fuels. By Friday over 100,000 people had signed the petition with supporters including actor Tilda Swinton, activist Bianca Jagger, Costa award-winning author Helen Macdonald and chef Yotam Ottolenghi.
"[By signing the petition], individuals can say that this matters to us. I don't think [the Gates Foundation and Wellcome Trust] are organisations who don't care about what people think about them. I think that they will listen. It really matters that people make their voice heard," said Glover.
"We have to leave more of the fossil fuel that has sequestered over millennia in the ground," said Lord May, the UK government's former chief scientist. "If we continue to extract it unremittingly, there's no doubt that we are not going to be able to stay within any plausible envelope of a habitable Earth."
Divestment from the most intensive fossil fuel companies would send a clear signal about the urgency of this challenge, he said.
Sir Bob Watson, former adviser to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, also urged the charities to rethink their investments. "The more people invest in fossil fuel companies, the more these companies will exploit fossil fuels," he said.
The scientists have cast a spotlight on the tension between the funders' shareholdings in fossil fuel companies and the grave toll that climate change, driven by burning the fuels, threatens to inflict on public health.
"One of the major impacts of climate change is on human health, especially in developing countries through vector borne disease and heat stress," said Watson. "This is where Wellcome and Gates have put a huge amount of money."
Professor Chris Rapley, former director of the Science Museum, said the position of Wellcome Trust and the Gates Foundation is "fundamentally inconsistent", adding that as scientific thought leaders, any gesture was particularly powerful.
"We have to confront our own inconsistencies," he said. "Either they accept the argument that we need to wean ourselves off fossil fuels or they don't. It's highly symbolic when charities like this make a stand."
But he added that there was still room for the industry to change. "Threats to divest from fossil fuel-based companies and expose the potential carbon bubble, should be tempered in such a way to strongly encourage the industry to invest seriously in solving the technical challenges of carbon capture and storage - or better carbon capture and utilisation."
A spokesman for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation said : "Bill is privately investing considerable time and resources in this effort and the breakthrough innovations needed and will continue to speak out about it. We respect the passion of advocates for action on climate change, and recognize that there are many views on how best to address it."
A spokeswoman for the Wellcome Trust said climate change and health was "a highly complex issue which we take seriously in our decisions and on which we engage with policymakers, researchers and the businesses in which we invest."
Maria Neira, director of public health and environment at the World Health Organisation, warned last year that climate change will cause an extra 250,000 deaths per year between 2030 and 2050, mostly from rises in malaria, diarrhoeal diseases, heat exposure and inadequate nutrition.
Last year Wellcome gave £727m in grants in fields including ebola and cancer research. In total, the Gates Foundation has given $32.9bn in grants to health programmes around the world. Its work focusses on prevention, immunisation and vaccination.
The Wellcome Trust's endowment originates from funds left by Sir Henry Wellcome, the co-founder of a successful multinational pharmaceutical company, after his death in 1936.
"Given that Henry Wellcome essentially gave away his fortune in the hope of making the world better, I can only believe that he would be on the side of the people who want to keep the carbon in the ground," Lord May said.
The global divestment movement, which is encouraging investors to sell their fossil fuel holdings is growing rapidly with over 200 organisations worth over £33bn signed up.
The driving force for many is the calculation that existing fossil fuel reserves already hold far more carbon than can be burned while still having a hope of keeping the global temperature rise below 2C.
"If we don't do that we are leaving a dreadful legacy for the next generation," said Glover.
Sir Martin Rees, of the University of Cambridge and former president of the Royal Society, said: "Obviously it's important that most fossil fuel reserves remain underground, rather than being exploited."
However, the case for divestment is less obvious, he argues. "I think our cause would be far more effectively boosted if Bill Gates stood up and made eloquent speeches at [ExxonMobil's] AGM than by divestment," he said. "The one thing that is clear, I think, is that large charities shouldn't hold big shareholdings in these companies and remain passive."
Sir John Beddington, former government chief scientist, agreed that fossil fuel reserves could not continue to be burnt without major technological advances in carbon capture technology, although stopped short of backing the call for divestment. "The sums are pretty clear," he said. "What's under the ground cannot be burnt within a 2C framework unless you have some method of sequestering the carbon dioxide or that you change in other ways."
Additional reporting by James Randerson
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The Guardian
March 20, 2015 Friday 4:12 PM GMT
The biggest story in the world: inside the Guardian's climate change campaign;
How was Keep it in the Ground created? Our audio documentary series tells the inside story of how the team came to an agreement on focusing on fossil fuel divestment
BYLINE: Emma Howard
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 438 words
How do you cover the biggest story in the world?
This was the question on the lips of the 20 Guardian journalists who met in the first few days of the new year to debate editor Alan Rusbridger's new project on climate change.
Keep it in the Ground is the project that has emerged, but how did we get there?
This being one of the most complex stories of our time, we wanted the process of our decision making to be transparent. Alan asked Francesca Panetta, co-creator of the award-winning Firestorm interactive, how we could showcase the inside story to our readers.
She decided to create an audio documentary series and from that point on we started to record our internal meetings. "The biggest story in the world" is a weekly podcast, which you can subscribe to here.
The first episode tells the story of how the project first emerged - which for most of the journalists involved came in the form of an email on Christmas Eve from Alan Rusbridger.
It read:
"Colleagues, This time next year I won't be the editor of the Guardian: indeed, well before that I'll have stepped down. I'm not at all depressed. This is the right time to be moving on. But I do have an urge to do something powerful, focused and important with the Guardian while I'm still here. And it will be about climate change. Sometimes there's a story so enormous that conventional journalism struggles to cope with it, never mind do justice. The imminent threat to the species is the most existentially important story any of us could imagine telling - for our sakes, for our children and for their children. But, as journalists, we also know that we sometimes tire of telling, and that people tire of reading."
The latest episode takes place in the new year with the team searching for an angle. There is debate and disagreement. Who is to blame? Do we target governments or corporations? George Monbiot says we should focus on a global political solution, such as a carbon auction, to put on the table at the climate conference in Paris.
James Randerson prefers a more practical solution that readers can get their teeth stuck into - could we take inspiration from the global divestment movement founded by Bill McKibben at 350.org ? Investigative journalist Felicity Lawrence agrees: "the powerful thing about divestment is that it provides a moral framework that people can get behind."
How did we come to an agreement? You can follow the inside story of the Keep in the Ground campaign every week by subscribing to our podcast. Are we debating the right issues and making the right decisions? Tell us what you think in the comments below.
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The Guardian
March 20, 2015 Friday 3:12 PM GMT
Green news roundup: Guardian climate campaign, Arctic sea ice and ducks;
The week's top environment news stories and green events. If you are not already receiving this roundup, sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox
BYLINE: Environment editor
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 391 words
Keep it in the Ground - the Guardian's climate campaign
Guardian climate change campaign gathers 100,000 signatures
Revealed: Gates Foundation's $1.4bn in fossil fuel investments
Wellcome Trust sold off £94m ExxonMobil oil investment
Alan Rusbridger: The argument for divesting from fossil fuels is becoming overwhelming
Ed Davey backs Guardian climate change campaign
Everything you wanted to ask about the Guardian's climate change campaign
We're calling on the world's two biggest charitable funds, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Wellcome Trust, to shift their money out of fossil fuels. Please join us and sign the petition here.
Environment news
Arctic sea ice extent hits record low for winter maximum
Florida employee 'punished for using phrase climate change'
Rare continental butterfly survives UK winter for first time
Nearly one in 10 of Europe's wild bee species face extinction, says study
Wet wipes found on British beaches up more than 50% in 2014
Australia urged to shut coal-fired power plants
Amazon's trees removed nearly a third less carbon in last decade - study
Pitcairn Islands to get world's largest single marine reserve
Students occupy Oxford university in fossil fuel divestment protest
On the blogs
Who are really Australia's top climate polluters?
High-end Laos resort serves up illegal wildlife for Chinese tourists
India falling behind in protection of snow leopards and their habitat
Fossil fuels are way more expensive than you think
The Arctic's climate change is messing with our weather
Multimedia
The biggest story in the world - climate podcast
Why we need to keep fossil fuels in the ground - video
Satellite Eye on Earth: February 2015 - in pictures
Pangolins: the world's most illegally traded mammal - in pictures
The week in wildlife - in pictures
Features and comment
Conservationist murders threaten Costa Rica's eco-friendly reputation
Bryony Worthington: The quiet revolution that's changing the way we use energy
Jeremy Leggett: Why I pledged to give my degree back if Oxford voted against fossil fuel divestment
George Monbiot: Isis are not the only ones committing great acts of vandalism
And finally...
Don't feed the ducks bread, say conservationists
We feed six million loaves of bread a year to ducks in England and Wales causing damage to birds' health and polluting waterways. Oats, corn and peas are safer for the birds
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The Guardian
March 20, 2015 Friday 3:04 PM GMT
Florida employee 'punished for using phrase climate change';
In a complaint against the state, worker says he was accused of violating policy and instructed to get a mental health evaluation after mentioning climate change
BYLINE: Katherine Krueger in New York
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 472 words
An employee of Florida's environmental protection department was forced to take a leave of absence and seek a mental health evaluation for violating governor Rick Scott's unwritten ban on using the phrases "climate change" or "global warming" under any circumstance, according to a complaint filed against the state.
Longtime employee Barton Bibler reportedly included an explicit mention of climate change in his official notes from a Florida Coastal Managers Forum meeting in late February, during which climate change, rising sea levels and the possible environmental impact of the Keystone XL Pipeline were discussed.
Related: Climate change: why the Guardian is putting threat to Earth front and centre | Alan Rusbridger
On 9 March, Bibler received a formal reprimand for "misrepresenting that 'the official meeting agenda included climate change'", according to a statement from Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (Peer), a nationwide non-profit that champions public employees' rights and providers resources and guidance to whistleblowers using its network of members across the country.
Bibler was instructed to stay away from the office for two days and told he could return to work only after a mental health evaluation from his doctor verified his "fitness for duty", the complaint said. In the letter to Florida's inspector general, Candie Fuller, the state's Peer director calls for a full investigation to the matter.
Bibler told the Miami Herald that he "didn't get the memo" about the gag order, so when he introduced himself by congratulating other officials on the call for the "exciting" work they were doing to address climate change, the "reaction was mostly shock".
News of the governor's ban on the phrases first surfaced in early March, when the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting found that the ban came from the top after Scott took office and appointed Herschel Vinyard Jr as DEP director.
Guardian requests for comment from Scott, the Florida inspector general and the environmental protection department were not immediately returned on Thursday, but Scott and representatives from his office have ardently denied such a policy exists.
Related: Republicans' new climate strategy: just ban the words 'climate change' | Jeb Lund
Scott has also long dodged questions about climate change with a refrain of "I'm not a scientist" and consistently misrepresented the state's preparedness for rising sea levels.
Florida is particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, as 80% of the state's residents live or work near the coasts and damage from recent storms, including hurricane Wilma, has caused billions of dollars in damage since 2005.
This article was amended on 19 March 2015. An earlier version said damage from hurricanes had caused billions of dollars in damage since 2005.
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The Guardian
March 20, 2015 Friday 11:57 AM GMT
Guardian climate change petition reaches 100k signatures;
Actor Tilda Swinton and chef Yotam Ottolenghi are among 100,000 people who have supported the campaign calling for the Wellcome Trust and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to divest from fossil fuels
BYLINE: Emma Howard
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 924 words
A Guardian petition which calls for the Wellcome Trust and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to ditch their fossil fuel investments has gathered more than 100,000 signatures since it launched on Monday.
The campaign asks the world's two largest charitable foundations to divest from the top 200 oil, gas and coal companies within five years and to immediately freeze any new investments. It was launched by Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger in partnership with the global climate movement 350.org.
High profile signatories include Scottish actor Tilda Swinton and Professor Anne Glover, the former chief scientific adviser to the president of the European commission.
The campaign has also attracted the support of activist Bianca Jagger, Costa award-winning author Helen Macdonald and Rou Reynolds from the band Enter Shikari, while chef Yotam Ottolenghi said he backed it "because we're running out of time and it's pretty terrifying".
Rusbridger said: "The argument for a campaign to divest from the world's most polluting companies is becoming an overwhelming one, on both moral and pragmatic grounds. The usual rule of newspaper campaigns is that you don't start one unless you know you're going to win it. This one will almost certainly be won in time: the physics is unarguable."
Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, said: "We're at a tipping point and it's become clear that people and institutions of good conscience have to cut these ties. Now 100,000 people from around the world have combined to say that these giant philanthropies need to walk their talk."
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have more than $1.4bn (£1bn) invested in fossil fuel companies, according to a Guardian analysis of their most recent tax filings in 2013. The charity has already given out $33bn in grants to global health programmes, including those dedicated to tackling the spread of malaria, polio and HIV.
The Wellcome Trust, which is one of the world's largest funders of medical research, has an endowment of over £18bn. In 2014, a minimum of £450m was invested in fossil fuel companies including Shell, Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton and BP.
More than 200 institutions worldwide have now either divested from fossil fuels or have committed to do so, including faith organisations, local authorities and universities. In September 2014, a coalition of more than 50 philanthropic organisations and individuals in control of $50bn in assets committed to divestment.
The Wellcome Trust has refused to divest, arguing that its investments allow it to engage with fossil fuel companies, which offer "a better prospect for change than divestment". The foundation was unable to provide the Guardian with examples of this engagement.
A spokeswoman for the Wellcome Trust said climate change and health was "a highly complex issue which we take seriously in our decisions and on which we engage with policy-makers, researchers and the businesses in which we invest."
The Gates Foundation refused to comment on its position on fossil fuel divestment, arguing their investments are handled by the Asset Trust, which does not make public statements.
A spokesman for Bill Gates's private office said: "We respect the passion of advocates for action on climate change, and recognise that there are many views on how best to address it. Bill is privately investing considerable time and resources in the effort [to develop clean energy]."
The most recent annual letter from the $43.5bn Gates Foundation asks "whether the progress we're predicting will be stifled by climate change. The long-term threat is so serious that the world needs to move much more aggressively - right now - to develop energy sources that are cheaper, can deliver on demand, and emit zero carbon dioxide."
Both the Wellcome Trust and the Gates Foundation sold off their respective £94m and $766m investments in the oil company ExxonMobil, which has funded climate change denial in the past. Both companies refuse to invest in tobacco on moral grounds.
Ed Davey, Minister for Energy and Climate Change backed the Guardian Keep it in the Ground campaign on Tuesday, urging pension and insurance funds to consider divestment from "very risky" coal assets.
Writing in the Guardian, he said: "I want this year's UN climate change negotiations to be the seminal moment when humanity faces up to these challenges. That's why I'm strongly backing the Guardian's campaign to raise the profile of the divestment debate prior to climate change negotiations in Paris in December."
The campaign has also received the backing of the Climate and Health Council, which encouraged the British Medical Association to commit to divestment last year, the first health organisation in the world to do so. Co-chair Dr Robin Stott described the Wellcome Trust's decision to maintain their fossil fuel investments as "a dereliction of duty".
The coalition was one of a number of medical groups that published a report in February, calling on health organisations to divest on moral grounds, as they previously did with tobacco investments. The report cited the UCL/Lancet commission on climate change which described climate change as "the biggest global health threat of the 21st century".
Professor Hugh Montgomery, co-author of the report and director of the Institute for Human Health and Performance at the University College London said:
"I am backing the Guardian divestment campaign because I support the Gates Foundation and am a great fan of their work. I just want to help them to do more good."
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The Guardian
March 20, 2015 Friday 11:07 AM GMT
Our campaign puts climate change where it should be - on the front page;
George Monbiot is supporting the Guardian's Keep it in the ground campaign. But why are so few newspapers willing to tackle the subject of climate change?
BYLINE: George Monbiot
SECTION: MEMBERSHIP
LENGTH: 392 words
Journalism claims to hold power to account. Yet all too often it sides with power against the powerless. Proprietors' interests are stealthily advanced, corporate press releases are disguised as news, favoured businesses and political parties are protected from serious scrutiny.
Above all, power determines the issues that the media treats as significant. Matters of the utmost importance - such as inequality, poverty, exploitation, corporate crime and the destruction of the natural world - are neglected or marginalised, while trivial political gossip is elevated to the status of major news.
Related: Keep it in the ground: Guardian climate change campaign
Nowhere is this more obvious than in the coverage of climate change, the great moral issue of our age. Do we destroy the conditions that support life on Earth? Do we bequeath to our children a scarcely habitable planet? Or do we confront the most powerful corporate lobby of all - the fossil fuel industry - to prevent it from treating the world as its dustbin?
Across much of the media, climate change is either avoided or mocked. The willingness of some newspapers to embrace the denial of climate science - a denial that has been seeded and funded by fossil fuel companies - hints at the profound corruption pervading the press.
Because the Guardian has no proprietor, and therefore no industrial interests to defend, it is able to resist such pressures. On a topic like climate change, its independence is crucial. Our campaign puts the issue where it ought to be: on the front page. By pressing for most fossil fuels to be kept in the ground, this newspaper is seeking to defend the common interests of humanity against an extremely wealthy corporate machine.
It is a David v Goliath battle, but we believe it can be won. Please help us by becoming a Guardian Member and supporting independent journalism. It is one of the last lines of defence against the corporate assault on our magnificent planet.
Join Guardian Membership by 31 March to become a founding member and the price you pay will never rise.
George Monbiot will be in conversation with George Marshall, one of the most eminent thinkers in the world on climate change at a Guardian Members' event on 13 May, at King's Place, London.
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The Guardian
March 20, 2015 Friday 3:35 AM GMT
Australia urged to shut coal-fired power plants urgently as analysis reveals huge emissions;
Australian Conservation Foundation says US-style regulation should be introduced to force the worst polluting plants to close
BYLINE: Oliver Milman
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 793 words
The Australian government has been urged to place US-style regulations on coal-fired power plants to ensure they shut down, as a new analysis highlights the vast scale of emissions pumped out by the largest carbon dioxide polluters in the country.
Just 10 companies are responsible for a third of Australia's total greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) study.
"We have got to close down the worst polluting plants in Australia," said Geoff Cousins, ACF's president. "At the moment the government is offering no incentives for companies to get off fossil fuels."
Cousins said he would welcome the kind of direct regulations placed by Barack Obama's US administration on coal-fired plants, effectively making them untenable without expensive carbon capture technology.
"In Australia there are taxpayer subsidies to keep these plants open, whereas in the US, China and parts of Europe, the government is taking actual direct action to close them down," Cousins said.
When direct and indirect emissions, such as energy consumption by a coal power station, are considered, the top 10 polluters emitted 158m tonnes of greenhouse gases in 2013-14. Most of this pollution comes from the production and use of energy.
The list is headed by Energy Australia, responsible for 20.8m tonnes of heat-trapping gas. Macquarie Generation, at 20.3m tonnes, and AGL Energy, at 19.9m tonnes, are in second and third position.
The rest of the top 10 comprises energy and mining giants, including Rio Tinto, Origin Energy and Alcoa.
EnergyAustralia and Origin Energy chalked up the largest rises in emissions from 2012-13 to 2013-14, at 66% and 230% respectively. This was due to the companies buying power stations previously owned by the New South Wales government.
A separate ranking of Australia's most polluting power stations is dominated by ageing power stations burning carbon-intensive brown coal in Victoria's La Trobe valley.
Hazelwood, owned by GDY Suez, emits 15.5m tonnes of greenhouse gases a year, followed in the rankings by Yallourn and Loy Yang B.
The ACF report also notes the political donations made by the large energy and mining companies. For example, EnergyAustralia donated more than $45,000 to the Labor and Coalition parties, at both state and federal level, in 2013-14.
Victoria has previously considered shutting down its most polluting power stations, only for the plan to be shelved.
The introduction of carbon pricing included a large hand-out to the brown coal polluters, while the federal Coalition's new Direct Action plan, which provides voluntary grants to lower emissions, is aimed at "cleaning up" power plants rather than shutting them down.
The UN's IPCC has said that fossil fuel energy without largely unproven carbon capture technology must be phased out by the end of the century if the world is to avoid highly dangerous climate change.
The ACF said Australia needed to start phasing out fossil fuels, pointing to Energy Supply Association of Australia data that shows wind and solar energy projects already earmarked could provide a quarter of Australia's electricity demand by 2023-24
"These companies should not be paid to shut down," Cousins said. "There should be compensation for redundancies and retraining, but to pay them to shut down is wrong."
But a spokesman for Greg Hunt, the federal environment minister, said: "Labor ran a failed contract-for-closure program. By contrast, we have passed the emissions reduction fund which is about to hold its first auction.
"We are not about to abandon our legislated policy in favour of an utterly failed policy."
Cousins said there was a "real disconnect" between large energy companies acknowledging the risks posed by climate change and their opposition to the renewable energy target, a measure to increase clean energy that the Coalition wants to pare back.
"I think it will be very possible to change the policies of the government on this matter," Cousins said. "There has been a remarkable coming together of events - climate change got on the G20 agenda against the wishes of the government, there was that remarkable speech by Obama at the Queensland University and there was the China-US climate deal.
"I think this has led the population to realise that we are being left behind, that the government has pulled the wool over our eyes. And now we see fossil fuels and climate change are back in the top five areas of concern in voting intentions. It's clear the government is completely out of kilter with the rest of the world."
This article was amended on 20 March 2015. The original said that Rio Tinto gave $175m to the Coalition-linked Cormack Foundation. While this is true, it was for an investment vehicle rather than a political donation.
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The Guardian
March 20, 2015 Friday 3:31 AM GMT
Who are really Australia's top climate polluters?;
A list of Australia's top ten greenhouse gas emitters would look different if fossil fuel firms were seen as responsible for the burning of their products
BYLINE: Graham Readfearn
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 1339 words
Environment group the Australian Conservation Foundation released a top ten list yesterday.
Now as any human of the internet age knows, lists of things are almost as difficult to ignore as compilations of cats falling off furniture or GIFs of baby elephants.
Sadly, the ACF's list isn't as much fun.
The list, Australia's Top Ten Climate Polluters, used public government data of greenhouse gases emitted in Australia.
The ten most polluting companies - led by Energy Australia, which generates electricity mainly through burning coal and gas - make up almost one third of the country's entire emissions.
The report also juxtaposes those companies' huge greenhouse gas footprints with statements they have made about climate change.
Many of them say they're worried about climate change and greenhouse gas emissions (but not worried enough, some would fairly point out, to get out of the business of being major contributors to the problem).
Last September, the company in third place, AGL, bought the company in second place, Macquarie Generation, meaning that AGL is likely now Australia's top emitter. But more about AGL later.
The ACF uses the established methodology of including emissions that companies generate from their operations, such as burning coal for electricity or running trucks on petrol.
But that doesn't include emissions from the burning of fossil fuels that some companies extract and sell to other people.
If you did include those emissions then the top ten list would look very different.
Take for example miner Rio Tinto, which occupies fourth spot on the ACF list with emissions of 18 million tonnes of CO2 last year.
Rio Tinto emits greenhouse gases due to the energy-intensive nature of its mining, processing and smelting operations.
Rio Tinto's coal mining operation is concentrated in Australia. In the company's 2014 annual report, Rio Tinto says the burning of its coal by its customers (for both power and steel making) was responsible for a further 129 Mt of CO2. That's quite a bit more than 18 Mt.
It's also quite a bit more than the 20.8 Mt of CO2 emitted by Australia's "top ranked" emitter, EnergyAustralia.
A very rough rule of thumb on coal is that each tonne burned for power emits about two and half times that in carbon dioxide emissions.
Glencore-Xstrata exported some 54 million tonnes of coal for power generation last year, but it is not on the ACF list even though the emissions from that coal are likely well above 100 Mt of CO2.
Neither is BHP Billiton on the ACF list - a company which exported about 21 Mt of thermal coal in 2014.
Yet assigning emissions to the companies that extract the fossil fuels is not a new idea.
A study in the journal Climatic Change released in November 2013 also assigned emissions to the corporations who had extracted the fossil fuels.
The report found that since the start of the industrial revolution just 90 companies caused 63 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions.
A study led by CSIRO scientists in 2010 found that emissions caused by the burning Australian fossil fuels exported overseas were more than double the level of emissions generated by burning fossil fuels domestically. Yet those emissions don't appear on Australia's national greenhouse accounts.
Altogether, Australia exported some 201 Mt of coal for power generation last year.
I spoke to Kelly O'Shanassy, the CEO of ACF, and asked her about the way the report was put together.
Internationally the way they account for pollution goes to the organisation directly responsible for it, so if we ship coal to India then the company there that burns it is responsible for the pollution. However, the company in Australia that dug it up has some responsibility because it is their product that has polluted the global climate and is causing the damage globally. So I think we might in future years include other scopes in that work. The companies are still making money from pollution.
O'Shanassy revealed the report marked the beginning of a shift in approach for ACF, which she said had previously played "the inside game" of working with governments.
Whilst we have had success in those approaches, what has happened is that governments have come in and just unwound the progress. It's not going to work anymore to be just quietly asking governments to do the right thing. So the purpose of this report is to say - we are going to hold you to account and we are going to go out to all Australians and build a huge constituency in this country to make sure you do what Australians want you to do. If governments put the interests of polluters above those of Australians then we need to start to grow a force to support clean energy, not coal. This is definitely a shift in our focus.
She said they would also be working to build "community power" and to work with major financial investors to encourage them to get their money out of fossil fuels.
We respect the role of politicians, but we don't think they are doing enough. There's a great saying that the power of the people is greater than the people in power. I think the people in power forget that sometimes. We are going to remind them.
O'Shanassy said a key reason for putting the report together was to highlight the disparity between what companies do and what they say about climate change.
We have got to start holding them to account for what they actually do. It's pretty easy to put greenwash out there. Business sustainability is about what you produce, not whether you change lightbulbs in the corporate office. If those companies produce coal then that has a massive impact and we are going to hold them accountable for that. Many of these companies have actually increased their emissions in recent times. We will be putting out this report every year to track their progress.
That brings us to third-ranked AGL, which last September bought Macquarie Generation, the former New South Wales Government-owned coal generator occupying second spot in the top ten polluter list.
The ACF report places AGL's statements of concern for climate change and emissions reductions with its position on Australia's renewable energy target, which AGL says should be revised downwards.
AGL sent me a statement, saying its position was not contradictory and had research to back up its view.
The statement said there was "little point in maintaining the target without complementary policy that ensures older emissions intensive power stations are permanently retired" which was consistent with a policy goal of "decarbonisation".
In effect, such policy would ensure that as new renewables are built, older emissions intensive power stations are removed from the system - ensuring a sustainable investment environment.
In a separate statement, AGL said climate change and greenhouse gas emissions were "a long term challenge requiring long term and lasting solutions" and the company recognised it was a large emitter with a "key role to play" in cutting its emissions.
The statement added the company had $3 billion worth of investments in renewable energy and 17 per cent of the energy it did generate came from renewables.
AGL has a range of programs and policies in place to reduce its GHG emissions, including improving the GHG efficiency of our operations and those which we have an influence on.
Now all that may be true.
But how does this sit with AGL's decision to buy Macquarie Generation last year? Here's what they bought.
MacGen is the largest producer of electricity in New South Wales. The assets include the Bayswater (2,640 MW) and Liddell (2,000 MW) black coal fired power stations, Hunter Valley Gas Turbines (50 MW), Bayswater B and Tomago development sites, Liddell solar farm, extensive coal handling infrastructure comprising rail unloaders and conveyor systems, 104 million tonnes of contracted coal and approximately 4.2 million tonne coal stockpile.
I have to wonder why a company concerned about climate change and cutting its emissions would buy another company with an annual greenhouse gas footprint of 20 million tonnes?
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The New York Times
March 20, 2015 Friday
Late Edition - Final
McConnell Wants States' Help Against an Obama 'War on Coal'
BYLINE: By CORAL DAVENPORT
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1353 words
WASHINGTON -- Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has begun an aggressive campaign to block President Obama's climate change agenda in statehouses and courtrooms across the country, arenas far beyond Mr. McConnell's official reach and authority.
The campaign of Mr. McConnell, the Senate majority leader, is aimed at stopping a set of Environmental Protection Agency regulations requiring states to reduce carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants, the nation's largest source of greenhouse gas emissions.
Once enacted, the rules could shutter hundreds of coal-fired plants in what Mr. Obama has promoted as a transformation of the nation's energy economy away from fossil fuels and toward sources like wind and solar power. Mr. McConnell, whose home state is one of the nation's largest coal producers, has vowed to fight the rules.
Since Mr. McConnell is limited in how he can use his role in the Senate to block regulations, he has taken the unusual step of reaching out to governors with a legal blueprint for them to follow to stop the rules in their states. Mr. McConnell's Senate staff, led by his longtime senior energy adviser, Neil Chatterjee, is coordinating with lawyers and lobbying firms to try to ensure that the state plans are tangled up in legal delays.
On Thursday, Mr. McConnell sent a detailed letter to every governor in the United States laying out a carefully researched legal argument as to why states should not comply with Mr. Obama's regulations. In the letter, Mr. McConnell wrote that the president was ''allowing the E.P.A. to wrest control of a state's energy policy.''
To make his case, Mr. McConnell is also relying on a network of powerful allies with national influence and roots in Kentucky or the coal industry. Within that network is Laurence H. Tribe, a highly regarded scholar of constitutional law at Harvard Law School and a former mentor of Mr. Obama's. Mr. Tribe caught Mr. McConnell's attention last winter when he was retained to write a legal brief for Peabody Energy, the nation's largest coal producer, in a lawsuit against the climate rules.
In the brief, Mr. Tribe argued that Mr. Obama's use of the existing Clean Air Act to put forth the climate change regulations was unconstitutional. He then echoed that position in an op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal. He argued that in requiring states to cut carbon emissions, and thus to change their energy supply from fossil fuels to renewable sources, the agency is asserting executive power far beyond its lawful authority.
Peabody Energy has been the fourth-largest contributor to Mr. McConnell's election campaigns over the course of his political career, and his office maintains close and frequent communication with the company.
In addition to stopping state-level enactment of the climate rules, Mr. McConnell's strategy is intended to undercut Mr. Obama's position internationally as he tries to negotiate a global climate change treaty to be signed in Paris in December. The idea is to create uncertainty in the minds of other world leaders as to whether the United States can follow through on its pledges to cut emissions.
''We've seen modern lobbying strategies that become a very large campaign, coordinated with states and localities, but we've never seen a Senate majority leader or House speaker in front of it,'' said James Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University in Washington. ''It's quite clever. It's sophisticated and unusual.''
As he campaigned across Kentucky's economically ravaged coal towns last fall, Mr. McConnell frequently declared that he would do everything in his power to battle what he calls Mr. Obama's ''war on coal.''
Although Republicans now control both chambers of Congress and could summon a simple majority of votes for legislation to block or delay the climate regulations, they do not have the majorities necessary to override a Democratic filibuster or a presidential veto. Blocking Mr. Obama's climate policies is also difficult for lawmakers because the regulations largely sidestepped Congress.
Using its existing authority, the E.P.A. will require each state to submit an individual plan for cutting emissions from power plants. Ultimately, the success or failure of the plan will depend on how -- and if -- states comply with the rules. It will also depend on the courts. Coal-dependent states and coal mining companies are already planning legal challenges to the regulations.
Those coal-dependent states are where Mr. McConnell has trained his fire.
Mr. McConnell opened his campaign on March 3 with an op-ed article published in The Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky with the headline, ''States should reject Obama mandate for clean-power regulations.'' Mr. McConnell urged governors to refuse to submit climate change compliance plans to the E.P.A., citing the arguments of Mr. Tribe.
Mr. McConnell contends that the Obama administration has bypassed Congress and stretched the boundaries of existing law to impose climate change regulations -- and that he intends to step outside of Congress and use creative legal methods to push back.
''The E.P.A. is bypassing Congress and the American people by unilaterally proposing these crippling regulations that would wreak havoc on our economy and are clearly unprecedented,'' he said. ''I have used and will continue to use all of the tools available to protect families and jobs, whether that be in Congress, or outside of the legislative process.''
Advocates of Mr. Obama's climate change agenda called Mr. McConnell's actions nearly unprecedented, and a spokesman for the White House assailed Mr. McConnell's moves.
''Climate change is one of the most pressing challenges that we face, and instead of offering solutions, Senator McConnell's alternative is an inappropriate and unfounded attempt to dictate state decisions,'' said Frank Benenati, the spokesman. ''E.P.A. is following the law by proposing clean-air standards to tackle the largest sources of carbon pollution -- the power sector,'' he said.
While some governors oppose the climate change plan, others are preparing to comply. On Thursday, the National Governors Association announced that four states -- Michigan, Missouri, Pennsylvania and Utah -- would take part in a program to prepare to meet the climate-change regulations.
But longtime experts in the field of climate change law and policy say that Mr. McConnell's unconventional efforts could prove formidable.
''The majority leader is a master tactician,'' said Scott Segal, a lobbyist with the law firm Bracewell & Giuliani and the director of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, which represents power companies. ''He understands the legal vulnerabilities, and he's acutely aware that not all solutions go through traditional legislative channels.''
Over the coming weeks and months, Mr. McConnell's office intends to continue to push to undermine the climate regulations, using a host of legal, lobbying and legislative tools.
Less than a week after Mr. McConnell's op-ed article citing Mr. Tribe, Mr. McConnell's friend and fellow Republican, Representative Ed Whitfield of Kentucky, was the chairman of a House hearing designed to highlight the legal challenges to the climate change law. Mr. Whitfield called as his star witness Mr. Tribe -- who in testimony likened Mr. Obama's climate change rules to ''burning the Constitution.''
In April, Mr. Tribe, representing Peabody Energy, is set to deliver oral arguments in the first federal court case about Mr. Obama's climate change rules.
Mr. McConnell's efforts come on top of an initial groundswell of efforts by Republican governors from coal-dependent states to push back at the rules. Twelve states have already filed suit against the rules.
In Washington, a coalition of nearly 200 industry and lobbying groups, led by the Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, has been working together for months on a set of legal and legislative tactics, both in Washington and the states, to block the rules.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/20/us/politics/mitch-mcconnell-urges-states-to-help-thwart-obamas-war-on-coal.html
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GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, urged the nation's governors not to comply with President Obama's climate rules. (A1)
Senator Mitch McConnell, center, wants to stop rules requiring a reduction in carbon emissions from coal-fired plants. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A20)
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The New York Times
March 20, 2015 Friday
Late Edition - Final
Obama's Order to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions of Federal Government
BYLINE: By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 20
LENGTH: 818 words
WASHINGTON -- President Obama signed an executive order on Thursday to set new goals for reducing the greenhouse gas emissions of federal agencies, his latest use of his executive authority to address the root causes of climate change and press private companies and foreign governments to follow suit.
Mr. Obama's directive orders federal agencies over the next decade to cut their emissions by an average of 40 percent compared with their levels when he won office in 2008, and to increase their use of electricity from renewable sources by 30 percent.
The goals are in line with a commitment that he announced in November as part of a climate agreement with China. In the deal, Mr. Obama said the United States would reduce its emissions of the heat-trapping gases that are warming the planet by 26 percent to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.
They are also part of Mr. Obama's effort during his last two years in office to use an expansive interpretation of his presidential authority to push ahead with unilateral moves to combat climate change in the face of strong opposition from the Republican-controlled Congress to advancing legislation that would do so.
''We're proving that it is possible to grow our economy robustly while at the same time doing the right thing for our environment and tackling climate change in a serious way,'' Mr. Obama said during a visit to the Energy Department on Thursday to announce the order. ''America once again is going to be leading by example.''
The federal government's share of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States is minuscule -- less than 1 percent in 2013, the last year for which data is available -- so the order by itself is unlikely to make a major dent in the president's broader goals to cut emissions.
But because the federal government is the largest user of energy in the United States economy -- encompassing 360,000 buildings, 650,000 fleet vehicles and $445 billion in annual spending on goods and services -- it has the potential to influence private companies to step up their emissions-cutting targets.
In conjunction with the executive order, the Obama administration released a new scorecard to allow federal suppliers to disclose their emissions and track their reductions. Several large companies that do business with the federal government -- including I.B.M., General Electric, Honeywell and Northrop Grumman -- announced new emissions-cutting goals of their own.
''As we get economies of scale, and demand for solar and wind and other renewable energies grows, obviously that can help drive down the overall price, make it that much for efficient, and we start getting a virtuous cycle that is good for the economy and creates jobs here in America,'' Mr. Obama said after touring the Energy Department's solar-paneled rooftop.
At a round table with representatives of some of the private corporations taking part, Mr. Obama praised the companies for stepping up with new or enhanced emissions-cutting targets.
''You guys have done an outstanding job,'' he said. ''Because of the prominence of many of the companies here, and the fact that they've got a whole bunch of suppliers up and down the chain, what you do with respect to energy efficiency is going to have a ripple effect throughout the economy.''
Mr. Obama's directive extends a goal he set during his first year in office, when he signed an executive order to cut federal greenhouse gas emissions by 28 percent by 2020.
Since then, said Christy Goldfuss, the managing director at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, federal agencies have reduced their emissions by 17 percent, and increased, to 9 percent from 3 percent, the share of electricity they consume from renewable sources.
White House officials, who are increasingly describing Mr. Obama's environmental agenda in economic terms, estimated that the directive issued on Thursday could save up to $18 billion over the next decade by cutting down on wasted energy.
''For federal agencies who are looking at how to cover their energy needs, this is a very pragmatic dollars-and-cents issue,'' said Brian Deese, a senior adviser to Mr. Obama. ''If they can consume less energy or they can consume renewable energy that is cheaper, more reliable or more sustainable, then they can achieve their environmental goals while they are saving money.''
Having failed during his first term to push a cap-and-trade bill through Congress, Mr. Obama has undertaken a systematic effort to regulate pollution through the existing Clean Air Act, advancing new rules on emissions from cars and trucks, power plants and oil and gas wells.
Mr. Obama has also laid out an ambitious overall emissions-cutting goal for the United States ahead of a United Nations climate conference in December in Paris, and is expected by the end of the month to release his detailed plan for reaching those targets.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/20/us/politics/obama-order-to-cut-federal-greenhouse-gas-emissions.html
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The Guardian
March 19, 2015 Thursday 8:05 PM GMT
Obama pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from federal buildings;
Executive order proposes 40% decrease from 2008 levels within 10 yearsEnergy consumption from renewable sources is planned to increase by 30%
BYLINE: Tom McCarthy in New York
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 463 words
Barack Obama announced a plan on Thursday to reduce the federal government's greenhouse gas emissions by 40% from 2008 levels within the next 10 years.
The US president inspected solar panels on top of the Energy Department's headquarters to highlight an executive order that would also increase the share of electricity that the federal government uses from renewable sources to 30%, according to White House figures.
Comparable moves from Obama last year, including new emission caps for some power plants, drew the ire of anti-regulation Republicans, and the argument flared up again in November, when the president announced an agreement with China to reduce harmful emissions.
"Today, America once again is going to be leading by example," Obama said on Thursday. "These are ambitious goals, but we know they're achievable goals."
To hit the new targets, the government plans to reduce energy use in federal buildings; reduce greenhouse gas emissions from federal fleets, in part by using more hybrid vehicles; and reduce water consumption in federal buildings.
The president was joined at the Energy Department by executives from major federal suppliers who had agreed to new green standards of their own. The suppliers, each of whom do more than $1bn a year in business with the government, included IBM, GE and defense contractors Honeywell and Northrop Grumman.
The federal government is the top energy consumer in the country, with 360,000 buildings, 650,000 fleet vehicles, and $445bn spent annually on goods and services, according to a White House fact sheet. The Obama administration anticipates that the new caps would reduce harmful emissions by 26m metric tonnes by 2025 from 2008 levels and save taxpayers up to $18bn.
Ed Maibach, director of the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University, said the executive action was consistent with what he said was methodical action by the president to put new climate protections in place.
"Today's executive order was a smart move in many ways," Maibach said in an email. "There will be lots of public support for it, it will create demonstrable cost-savings, and it's great for the American businesses that are making a business of helping others save energy."
Asked about the role of government and industry in combatting climate change, US voters were most likely to say that corporations and industry should be doing more, according to polling last year by the George Mason center. Respondents also placed the onus for action on "citizens themselves" and Congress.
On the roof of the Energy Department headquarters, Obama viewed 66 solar panels installed in 2008, while the building's energy manager, Eric Haukdal, explained what he was looking at.
"They're actually very low-maintenance," Haukdal said.
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The Guardian
March 19, 2015 Thursday 6:54 PM GMT
Arctic sea ice extent hits record low for winter maximum;
Record low ice coverage this winter is caused by climate change and abnormally mild weather, scientists say
BYLINE: Karl Mathiesen
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 850 words
Arctic sea ice has hit a record low for its maximum extent in winter, which scientists said was a result of climate change and abnormal weather patterns.
The US National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) said on Thursday that at its peak the ice covered just over 14.5m sq km of the northern seas. This was 130,000 sq km smaller than the previous lowest maximum in 2011.
The peak occurred on 25 February, which the NSIDC's senior research scientist Ted Scambos said was "very early but not unprecedented".
Climate change is driving declining ice coverage in the Arctic, with a recent study finding it has also become significantly thinner, down 65% since 1975.
Scambos said northern oceans have progressively warmed because of climate change. This winter, the warmer seas combined with mild weather to create exceptionally poor conditions for the annual freeze.
"[The record low extent] is significant, in that it shows that the Arctic is being seriously impacted by our warming climate," said Scambos. "In general, sea ice retreat has proceeded faster than modelling expects in the Arctic, although models are catching up."
Bob Ward, at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at LSE, said: "This is further evidence that global warming and its impacts have not stopped despite the inaccurate and misleading claims of climate change 'sceptics'.
"Over the past few weeks, there has been an increase in the amount of misinformation from climate change 'sceptics' in the UK and elsewhere which is intended to mislead the public and policy-makers into believing that the effects of global warming on the polar regions are absent or negligible."
The most pronounced deviation from the 1981-2010 average cover was in the Bering and Okhotsk seas in the northern Pacific. There, the ice edge was 100-200km further north than in a normal year.
After March the summer thaw will begin, with the ice retreating towards its summer minimum, which usually occurs in September. The summer ice cover in the Arctic is also on a long-term decline, although Scambos says a low winter maximum does not necessarily indicate a low minimum is on the way.
The loss of ice from the Arctic has raised questions over when the region will experience its first ice-free summer. Scambos said he expects the summer minimum to dip below 1m sq km (386,100 sq miles) within the next 15 years. At this stage, he said, the Arctic will be profoundly changed.
"A less than 1m sq km summer would mean that the north pole would be open water, that a broad seaway would exist north of Siberia and that major ecosystems and fauna would be severely impacted. My own guess is that we will reach this level around 2030."
The absence of sea ice and abnormally mild weather affects communities and wildlife in the Arctic circle, which are adapted to extreme conditions.
In Svalbard, Kim Holmén, the international director of the Norwegian Polar Institute, said the fjords there remained unfrozen and instead of the normal snowfall the island experienced rain which froze when it hit the ground.
"Much of Svalbard is covered with ice on land, which is a fatal state for the reindeer. When the landscape is covered by ice they can't move around and they can't eat."
Too much ice on the land and none in the sea has also made life difficult for the 2,600 people who live on Svalbard.
"This iced landscape is miserable to travel across on your snowmobile and your skis," said Holmén. "We can't ride our snowmobiles across the fjord so there are places where people want to go that they can't go. We have had tragic events with avalanches. Living in Svalbard we've always had avalanches but we've had one casualty this winter. Some of the risks are changing because we have more icing events."
He said this type of weather is expected to become normal under a changing climate.
"This winter is an example of what we believe will become more common and has profound influence on the reindeer and the ptarmigan [a species of bird] and other creatures that roam the land," he said.
This week, on the opposite side of the Arctic Ocean, Alaska's Iditarod sled race was forced to shift its start 362km (225 miles) further north due to a lack of snow. This has only happened once before in the race's 43-year history, in 2003.
Meanwhile, the NSIDC said ice floes surrounding Antarctica reached a relatively high summer minimum on 20 February. The extent of ice was 1.38m sq km, the fourth largest on record. Antarctic sea ice has confounded some scientific modelling by growing in recent years. There are several theories why the extent of the ice is growing despite a general warming trend across the southern continent.
"This is a matter of considerable debate," said Scambos. "The important thing to say is that the Antarctic is most definitely seeing the effects of warming and circulation changes - it is participating in 'global warming' in its own way. There are several effects in play. Primarily it seems that increased strength in low-pressure areas near the Ross and Weddell seas are pushing ice outward from the continent."
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The Guardian
March 19, 2015 Thursday 6:00 PM GMT
Amazon rainforest and Great Barrier Reef need better care, say scientists;
Research published in journal Science shows local protection of three world heritage sites is too weak and leaves them at risk of 'unfolding diaster'
BYLINE: Oliver Milman
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 735 words
The world's most prized ecosystems, such as the Amazon rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef, require stronger local management to reduce the enormous global threat posed by climate change, according to an international team of scientists.
In a paper published in the journal Science, the researchers warned that localised pressures such as deforestation, nutrient pollution and poor water quality could exacerbate climate-driven challenges such as heatwaves and ocean acidification.
A study of three Unesco world heritage sites - the Amazon, the Great Barrier Reef and the Doñana wetlands in Spain - found that "stewardship is at risk of failing", putting the ecosystems at greater risk of collapse due to climate change impacts.
"Despite the solid scientific basis for managing climate resilience in such ecosystems, failure to do so is putting globally important ecosystems at risk," the paper warned.
While Brazil has slowed the deforestation of the Amazon by 70% over the past decade, the Science paper said: "These successes are now being partially undermined by major infrastructure and natural resource extraction projects and by shifts in legislation."
These added pressures were likely to mount as the Amazon dealt with rising temperatures and dry spells driven by climate change, which could turn it into a drier, more fire-prone place that lost much of its biodiversity.
Climate change is the leading threat to Australia's Great Barrier Reef, although there are significant local issues such as overfishing, chemical pollution from agriculture and the dredging of the seabed to facilitate the expansion of ports.
Spain's Doñana wetlands are threatened by pollution and groundwater extraction for fruit growing and the tourism industry. The wetlands are considered one of the most important sites for waterfowl in Europe, as well as hosting a range of amphibians.
Researchers said local management at each of the world heritage sites was "worrisome" and risked compounding the effects of climate change.
"Poor local management makes an ecosystem less tolerant to climate change and erodes its capacity to keep functioning effectively," said the study's lead author, Marten Scheffer, an ecologist at Wageningen university in the Netherlands.
"Local management options are well understood and not too expensive. So there is really no excuse for countries to let this slip away, especially when it comes to ecosystems that are of vital importance for maintaining global biodiversity," he said.
Terry Hughes, another co-author of the paper, said the Great Barrier Reef was facing an "unfolding disaster" due to climate change and local pressures.
The reef has lost half of its coral cover in the past 30 years, is considered in "poor" and worsening condition by the Australian government and may be listed as "in danger" by Unesco's world heritage committee later this year.
"It's an easy exercise to document how pressures have increased over time - they look like the famous hockey stick," said Hughes, who is the director of the centre of excellence for coral reef studies at James Cook university in Queensland.
"Fishing pressure has gone up, the number of recreational boats in Queensland has just passed 250,000 and the population in the reef's catchment will double in the next 25 years, meaning more coastal development and more dredging.
"It's hard to reconcile the aspirations of coalmining in Australia to action on climate change. Australia has got itself a well-deserved reputation for dragging its feet on climate change and there's no greater indication of that than the handing out of 60-year coal licences. The stressors on the reef are intimately tied to the fossil fuel industry, given that the dredging is for coal ports.
"The northern and offshore reefs are still very pretty and help out the tourism industry but you need to go further to find a reef in decent condition than you did 30 years ago."
His co-author Scott Barrett, of Columbia university, said improved local management needed to be driven by the international community, as well as individual countries.
"These ecosystems are of value to the whole world, not only to the countries that have jurisdiction over them," he said.
"It may be necessary for other countries to bring pressure to bear on these 'host' countries or to offer them assistance, to ensure that these iconic ecosystems are protected for the benefit of all of humanity."
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The Guardian
March 19, 2015 Thursday 5:33 PM GMT
Revealed: Gates Foundation's $1.4bn in fossil fuel investments;
Analysis of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's most recent tax filing reveals huge investments in the world's biggest fossil fuel companies
BYLINE: Damian Carrington and Karl Mathiesen
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 1098 words
The charity run by Bill and Melinda Gates, who say the threat of climate change is so serious that immediate action is needed, held at least $1.4bn (£1bn) of investments in the world's biggest fossil fuel companies, according to a Guardian analysis of the charity's most recent tax filing in 2013.
The companies include BP, responsible for the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, Anadarko Petroleum, which was recently forced to pay a $5bn environmental clean-up charge and Brazilian mining company Vale, voted the corporation with most "contempt for the environment and human rights" in the world clocking over 25,000 votes in the Public Eye annual awards.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Asset Trust is the world's largest charitable foundation, with an endowment of over $43bn, and has already given out $33bn in grants to health programmes around the world, including one that helped rid India of polio in 2014.
A Guardian campaign, launched on Monday and already backed by over 95,000 people is asking the Gates to sell their fossil fuel investments. It argues: "Your organisation has made a huge contribution to human progress... yet your investments in fossil fuels are putting this progress at great risk. It is morally and financially misguided to invest in companies dedicated to finding and burning more oil, gas and coal."
Existing fossil fuel reserves are several times greater than can be burned if the world's governments are to fulfil their pledge to keep global warming below the danger limit of 2C, but fossil fuel companies continue to spend billions on exploration. In addition to the climate risk, the Bank of England and others argue that fossil fuel assets may pose a "huge risk" to pension funds and other investors as they could be rendered worthless by action to slash carbon emissions.
A landmark report citing climate change published by the Lancet medical journal and University College London concluded that climate change is "the biggest global health threat of the 21st century".
In their annual letter in January, Bill and Melinda Gates wrote: "The long-term threat [of climate change] is so serious that the world needs to move much more aggressively - right now - to develop energy sources that are cheaper, can deliver on demand, and emit zero carbon dioxide."
The Guardian analysis of the Gates endowment revealed investments in 35 of the top 200 companies as ranked by the carbon held in their reserves. These included coal giants Anglo American, BHP Billiton, Glencore Xstrata and Peabody Energy, the oil majors Shell, ConocoPhillips, Chevron and Total and Brazilian oil company Petrobras, currently embroiled in a corruption scandal.
"This is very shocking. I never knew that they had so much of this kind of investment," said Nnimmo Bassey, a Nigerian activist who received the Right Livelihood Award in 2010 for "revealing the full ecological and human horrors of oil production" in the Niger delta where many oil majors operate. "If this is a charity that really care about the health of the people, they ought not to be investing in fossil fuel industries. They should pull back their resources from this sector completely."
Bill McKibben, who leads the fast-growing Go Fossil Free campaign, said: "The Gates Foundation has worked so hard to grapple with global poverty. But at the same time they're investing in the same companies that drive climate change, which endless studies now show is one of the key factors behind... global poverty. The developing world deserves better than this kind of tunnel vision."
He said: "The great industrial fortune of the 20th century, the Rockefeller oil legacy, has begun aggressively divesting from fossil fuel, arguing explicitly that climate change undermines its philanthropy for a better world. It's time for the great technological fortune of the 21st century to do likewise."
Prof Hugh Montgomery, a medical doctor at University College London and one of the authors of the UCL/Lancet study said: "I am backing the Guardian divestment campaign because I support the Gates Foundation and am a great fan of their work. I just want to help them to do more good."
A spokesman for Bill Gates's private office said: "We respect the passion of advocates for action on climate change, and recognise that there are many views on how best to address it. Bill is privately investing considerable time and resources in the effort [to develop clean energy]."
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation declined to comment on fossil fuel divestment and said all investment decisions were taken by a separate entity, the Asset Trust, which manages the endowment but never makes public comments.
However, the Gates's charity has a track record of divestment from other sectors, having sold companies linked to the conflict in Sudan and banned tobacco investments. It also sold its stake in a security company G4S, following controversy over its prison contracts in Israel.
The Gates charity investment policy states: "When instructing the investment managers, Bill and Melinda consider issues beyond corporate profits, including the values that drive the foundation's work. They have defined areas in which the endowment will not invest, such as companies whose profit model is centrally tied to corporate activity that they find egregious. Bill and Melinda regularly re-assess the endowment's holdings."
In recent months, the Gates charity sold off its huge stake in ExxonMobil for $766m, which has in the past funded climate change deniers and now argues it is "highly unlikely " that international action on global warming will stop it selling oil and gas "far into the future". No reason was given and it is unknown whether new fossil fuel investments have been bought.
"At this critical moment in time, if you own fossil fuels, you own climate change," said Ellen Dorsey, executive director of the $168m Wallace Global Fund, which has fully divested from fossil fuels and now invests in renewables and energy efficiency.
She has worked with many of the 75 other philanthropic organisations that have followed suit. "At a minimum, our investments should not be driving the problems we ask our grantees to solve. And those who acted early avoided the collapse of coal and oil prices. They were rewarded with strong financial returns: doing well while doing good."
Dorsey said fossil fuel divestment by the Gates charity would be a huge boost for the fight against climate change: "For a foundation with such global prominence to lend its full weight - with grants and investments combined - would be game changing."
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The Guardian
March 19, 2015 Thursday 4:52 PM GMT
Climate and Health Council back Guardian fossil fuel campaign;
Coalition of health practitioners describes the Wellcome Trust's investments in fossil fuels as a 'dereliction of duty'Sign the petition asking the world's largest charitable foundations to divest from fossil fuels
BYLINE: Emma Howard
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 462 words
The Climate and Health Council have backed the Guardian's Keep it in the Ground campaign urging the world's largest two charitable foundations to divest from fossil fuels.
The Climate and Health Council is an international coalition of health practitioners taking action on climate change. Members who sit on its executive board include Dr Fiona Godlee, the Editor of the BMJ, Dr David Pencheon OBE, Director of the NHS Sustainable Development Unit and Professor Hugh Montgomery, Director of the UCL Institute for Human Health and Performance.
Speaking on Thursday in support of the petition to the Wellcome Trust and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, co-chair Dr Robin Stott said:
We are overjoyed that the Guardian and its readers have started this campaign. We believe that all health organisations need to show leadership in divesting from fossil fuels - on both moral and financial grounds.
The Climate and Health Council is part of a coalition of medical organisations that published a report in February urging the health sector to divest from fossil fuels. The report argued that health organisations, and in particular the Wellcome Trust, should divest on moral grounds, as they did previously with regards to the tobacco industry.
Last year, the coalition encouraged the British Medical Association, the representative body of doctors in the UK to commit to divestment, which later became the first health organisation in the world to do so.
Dr Stott described the Wellcome Trust's decision to maintain fossil fuel investments as "a dereliction of duty". He said:
The health impacts of their grants will become irrelevant if the world is immersed in a world devastated by climate change. Tobacco is extremely profitable and they won't invest in that on health grounds. We need to find a way of reducing carbon very quickly but we worry that there is undue influence on the direction of government policy. We saw exactly the same phenomenon with the tobacco industry and we think that the same merchants of doubt are creating similar problems here.
If you have an idea for our campaign or want your organisation to be involved, you can email us at keep.it@theguardian.com
Want the inside story on Keep it in the Ground? Don't forget to download the latest podcast in "The Biggest Story in the World", our audio documentary series on the project behind the scenes. If you haven't yet signed the petition, you can join 94,000 people who have by signing here.
Are you a doctor, nurse, medical student or other health practitioner? Are you concerned about the health impacts of climate change? What should the sector be doing on the issue? Share your thoughts in the comments below and we will bring a selection above the line.
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The Guardian
March 19, 2015 Thursday 3:45 PM GMT
Nearly one in 10 of Europe's wild bee species face extinction, says study;
First ever assessment of all Europe's 1,965 bee species finds them in dramatic decline, with intensive farming, insecticide use and climate change blamed
BYLINE: Arthur Neslen in Brussels
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 611 words
Europe's wild bee population is in dramatic decline with nearly one in 10 species facing the threat of extinction, according to the first ever assessment of all the continent's nearly 2,000 bee species.
Another 5.2% of bee species are likely to be threatened in the near future, while more than a quarter of species such as the European bumblebees are at risk of dying out, said the study by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Population trends for 79% of the continent's pollinators - mostly wild honeybees - are still unknown, but over a third of bee populations for which data was collected were shown to be in decline.
"This report should be a wake up call to the ecological disaster that is unfolding in Europe's countryside," Ariel Brunner, the head of EU policy at Birdlife told the Guardian. "It's very clear that something is going horribly wrong with our agricultural practices which are the main driver of these declines, whether it is increased pesticide use, the destruction and conversion of grasslands, or the loss of natural vegetation and intensified farming methods."
The IUCN paper said that sources of food and forage for pollinators have been hit hard by intensive silage production at the expense of hay-cropping. The widespread use of insecticides and herbicides has also reduced the availability of flowers and promoted rank grassland, which is low in flowering plants and legume species.
Climate change has been another factor in the dip in bee numbers, the report said, because heavy rainfalls, droughts and increased temperatures can alter and reduce habitats that species have adapted to over many generations.
Of 1,965 bee species in Europe, the EU-funded paper found 9.2% were threatened with extinction, 12.6% of species were stable and 0.7% were increasing. But the peer-reviewed research by more than 40 experts was constrained by a lack of verifiable data, and the true number of bees at risk could be higher.
"This assessment is the best understanding we have had so far on wild bees in Europe," said Jean-Christophe Vié, the deputy director of IUCN's Global Species Programme. "However, our knowledge about them is incomplete as we are faced with an alarming lack of expertise and resources."
Bees play an essential role in sustaining ecosystems and pollinating crops and the IUCN is calling for urgent investment into new research on ways of reversing the decline.
The EU's environment commissioner Karmen Vella described the study's findings as "very worrying".
"Our quality of life - and our future - depends on the many services that nature provides for free," he said. "If we don't address the reasons behind this decline in wild bees, and act urgently to stop it, we could pay a very heavy price indeed ."
However, Brussels has been criticised for the application of measures to 'green' its Common Agricultural Policy, which were intended to make farmland management across all 28 EU states more sustainable.
"It is shocking that just a couple of weeks ago, the commission accepted a French implementation of this 'greening' which recognises maize monoculture as green," Brunner said. "Monoculture is about the most unfriendly thing you can do to biodiversity in general and pollinators in particular. In the name of greening the CAP, we are actively fomenting this crisis with public policies."
The annual value of global crop pollination by bees has been estimated at (EURO)153bn globally and (EURO)22bn in Europe.
More than a third of global agricultural volumes come from crops supported by bees, while 84% of crops grown for human consumption require insect pollination to enhance product quality and yields.
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The Guardian
March 19, 2015 Thursday 12:19 PM GMT
Scientists shoot down Ted Cruz after attack on Nasa's Earth sciences mission;
Agency provides key data on volcanoes, algae growth and weather, but the Texas senator wants Nasa to focus on space exploration and drop climate change study
BYLINE: Tom McCarthy in New York
SECTION: SCIENCE
LENGTH: 964 words
Curtailing the Earth sciences mission of Nasa would deprive scientists of important data relating to volcanic eruptions, destructive algae growth, extreme weather events and much more, experts warned a week after a confrontation on Capitol Hill over the Nasa budget between Senator Ted Cruz and the agency director.
Related: Republican senator Ted Cruz to oversee Nasa in Congress
At a routine budget hearing, Cruz challenged Nasa's administrator, Charles Bolden, a former astronaut, to explain why funding for the agency's Earth sciences mission had grown while funding for space exploration had shrunk.
"I would suggest that almost any American would agree that the core function of Nasa is to explore space," Cruz said. "I am concerned that Nasa in the current environment has lost its full focus on that core mission."
Bolden replied that a shift in emphasis away from manned space shuttle flights had produced savings in the area of exploration, but that in any case the observation and study of Earth was a central part of Nasa's core mission.
"It is absolutely critical that we understand Earth's environment, because this is the only place we have to live," Bolden said. "We've got to take care of it. and the only way to take care of it is to know what's happening."
The exchange raised eyebrows in part because Cruz is a climate change skeptic, and his attack on Nasa's efforts to study the Earth, which it carries out primarily through satellite technology, was perceived as an attack on the ability to document climate change. Cruz's office did not reply to a request for comment.
But Cruz's position could be seen as merely an extension of previous Republican attempts to reduce Nasa's Earth sciences mission, which some have proposed should be shifted to another agency such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said Marcia S Smith, founder and editor of SpacePolicyOnline.com.
"It's not new, it's not something that Senator Cruz came up with," Smith said. "He's arguing what has been a Republican line for some time, which is that this should not be Nasa's responsibility, because Nasa's unique role is space exploration, so that should be its priority."
Top Earth and space scientists warned, however, that the particular exploration of earth that Nasa carries out with satellites could not readily be replicated by a different agency.
"Nasa is an agency that has incredible expertise in satellites and in getting satellites into space," said Margaret Leinen, vice-chancellor for marine sciences and director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California-San Diego. "And while Noaa does some of that, Nasa is the agency that, that's their bread-and-butter. They are the experts."
Leinen said Nasa satellites could observe deformations of the Earth on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis that could identify a seismic or volcanic event. "You can see how a volcano is bulging, and how dangerous it is," she said. "Whether it's moving or whether it's quiet. You can look at the major faults in Los Angeles and other places, and see the accumulation of stress.
"One of Nasa's satellites that looks at the oceans, called Aqua, has many different measuring instruments on it," Leinen continued. "One of them, for example, allows us to look at the concentration of phytoplankton in the ocean, and what kind of phytoplankton are there. And one of the things that that's used for is monitoring harmful algal blooms in coastal areas.
"It's another great example of a basic research satellite that's also doing work that's essential to protecting us from harm."
A Nasa satellite project allowed teams responding to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to track the movement of the oil into coastal waterways and monitor other impacts, according to a letter sent to Cruz by the American Geophysical Union, which represents 60,000 earth and space scientists.
The White House agreed in its latest budget request that Nasa's earth sciences program was critical, calling for a 10% jump to $1.9bn for the program for fiscal year 2016, out of $18.5bn total for the agency. As chairman of the Senate subcommittee that oversees Nasa, Cruz can hold oversight hearings and originate legislation shaping Nasa, Smith has pointed out, but Cruz does not hold the agency's purse strings, which belong to appropriations.
In any case, Cruz, for his general budget hawkishness, has not called for cuts to Nasa's space exploration mission. Legislators from Texas tend to like space exploration, for one very good reason named the Lyndon B Johnson space center, which sprawls over 1,600 acres just outside Houston (as in, " Houston, we've had a problem ").
Space exploration is "what inspires little boys and little girls across this country", Cruz said at last week's hearing. "It's what sets Nasa apart from any other agency, is the mission that has landed man on the moon, that has the potential to explore new worlds beyond our imagination."
Bolden, the Nasa administrator, replied that space exploration would not be possible if rising sea levels sank launchpads in coastal areas such as Cape Canaveral, Florida.
"We can't go anywhere if the Kennedy space center goes underwater, and we don't know it," Bolden said. "That's understanding our environment."
Leinen said it was important for Congress to promote understanding of how and why Nasa looks at the Earth.
"What's concerning is that if people don't understand the value of the Earth sciences mission, it can lead to cuts down the line," she said. "It can lead to - in the same way that a misunderstanding in any part of life can lead to consequences - what's concerning is that this could lead to a misunderstanding within Congress about the importance of that valuable mission."
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The Guardian
March 19, 2015 Thursday 10:52 AM GMT
Developed nations have sown the wind, Vanuatu has reaped the whirlwind;
As emissions alter weather patterns, island nations are the bellwethers that show what our future will be if we fail to tackle climate change
BYLINE: Andrew Simms
SECTION: COMMENT IS FREE
LENGTH: 808 words
When the president of Vanuatu said that years of progress had been wiped out by a single extreme weather event, it was both a warning and an echo. Hurricane Mitch did the same to Nicaragua and Honduras in 1998; and in 2005 political failure combined with the collapse of sea defences under the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina to wreck the rich, vibrant culture of New Orleans. Climatic extremes in a warming world stand to reverse human progress and expose broken social contracts.
But in the case of Vanuatu there seems to be a crueller twist. Vanuatu is distinguished by having come top of a global index that measures how ecologically successful (low in impact) nations are at producing good lives for their people - so-called "happy life years". Vanuatu beat all other nations through treading lightest on the Earth for the quality and length of life its people enjoyed. Now it sits in the pathway of a giant climatic steamroller, fuelled by the energy-intensive lifestyles of nations much further down that index.
Its people are the national equivalent of the individual who leads an exemplary, healthy life only to suffer chronically due to someone else's bad habit - innocent, global victims of passive smoking. Vanuatu's president, Baldwin Lonsdale, was quick to point the finger of blame at manmade climate change for the severity of Cyclone Pam, saying that " the cyclone seasons, the warm, the rain, all this is affected ".
Many may think it's too soon to jump to such conclusions. For years cautious scientists have balked at attributing the effect of warming to individual events. Attribution can sometimes be hard to prove, either for methodological reasons of complexity or due to lack of data. While trepidation remains, things have changed rapidly. Instead of simple claims of cause and effect, climate scientists now readily discuss how the probability of any particular event has been raised by the existence of warming.
Hence joint work in 2011 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the US and the UK's Met Office concluded that a Texas heatwave was 20 times more likely to be caused by climate change than by natural weather variation. A winter warm spell in Britain the same year was 62 times more likely than in the 1960s. The Met Office's Hadley Centre now confidently states that it "can identify any changed risk of such events".
In time, more analysis will be done on Cyclone Pam, but Lonsdale's personal experience and gut reaction fits a pattern of expectations described in the most recent and most comprehensive collation of science on extreme events in the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report. It concluded that: "The frequency of the most intense storms will more likely than not increase in some basins. More extreme precipitation near the centres of tropical cyclones making landfall is projected in North and Central America, east Africa, west, east, south and southeast Asia as well as in Australia and many Pacific islands."
So, while the present is pretty bad for Vanuatu, in a warming world the future looks set to worsen. For this island nation, that is bitterly ironic. Vanuatu is an archipelago in the western Pacific, famous for having no regular military. When it topped the index in 2006 its ecological footprint per person was no higher than those in non-industrialised countries like Mali and Swaziland, life expectancy matched that in Turkey, and life satisfaction levels were considered as high as New Zealand's. It is democratic, rich in natural wealth but, being remote, exports little, avoiding the scramble of competing in global markets. It is also hugely culturally diverse with more than 100 languages spoken across its islands.
Small island states tend to do very well in the index topped by Vanuatu. Over countless generations and in the face of geographical isolation, many Pacific islands developed more cooperative economies and highly resilient farming methods. In a warming world they are bellwethers, and carry lessons for us all. If climate change renders small island states unliveable, the international community will sooner or later have to learn to accept and support environmental refugees. Though this would be tragic, remote island populations can, at least, relocate. However, blue island-planet populations cannot.
We will seal our own fate if we fail to learn to share and live within our overall environmental thresholds. There is a long way to go. The World Bank recently tweeted that climate change exacerbates the risk of already costly disasters. It's a shame then, that as recently as 2012-13 the World Bank Group increased lending to $2.7bn for fossil fuel projects, including toward new oil and gas exploration.
It's one more reason why the Guardian's campaign for divestment from fossil fuels is so important. If you haven't signed it already, do so for Vanuatu.
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The Guardian
March 18, 2015 Wednesday 6:46 PM GMT
More than 10,000 people call on Dutch pension fund to divest from fossil fuels;
Petition to world's fifth largest pension, ABP, asks fund managers to drop oil, coal and gas holdings from £250bn portfolio
BYLINE: Emma Howard
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 423 words
More than 10,000 people have called on the fifth largest pension fund in the world to divest from oil, coal and gas. Members of the Dutch pension fund ABP handed over a petition to the fund's managers on Tuesday asking them to remove fossil fuel company holdings from its $360bn (£250bn) portfolio.
The campaign is part of a fast-growing movement, launched by the campaign group 350.org, that is putting pressure on institutions around the world to remove their investments from fossil fuels.
Around 60% of those who signed the petition to ABP currently hold their pension with the fund.
Vatan Hüzeir, co-ordinator of the ABP Fossil Free campaign which organised the petition, said: "We are very inspired by what Scandinavian pension funds are doing, such as AP2, AP4 GPFG and KLP. They all have decided to take climate change and the stranded assets scenario seriously and followed up their concerns with concrete action. It's now time for ABP to pick up the ball."
José Meijer, vice-chair of ABP, said: "These kind of initiatives are good, they keep us sharp. We are going to take a critical look at the influence our investments have on climate change and better communicate what we do."
KLP, Norway's largest private pension fund, divested from coal in 2014, while Norway's Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), the world's largest sovereign wealth fund, recently divested from 50 coal companies.
In September 2014, the Fourth Swedish National Pension Fund (AP4) announced they have joined forces with a coalition of investors and the United Nations Environment Programme to decarbonise the carbon footprint of $100bn of institutional investments worldwide.
On Monday, the Guardian launched a campaign asking the two largest charitable foundations in the world - the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust - to move their investments out of fossil fuel companies. More than 88,000 people have signed the petition calling for the foundations to divest.
Introducing the campaign, editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger wrote : "This [campaign] will almost certainly be won in time: the physics is unarguable. But we are launching our campaign today in the firm belief that it will force the issue now into the boardrooms and inboxes of people who have billions of dollars at their disposal."
Vatan Hüzeir said: "The Guardian's campaign has already inspired the media here to dedicate more of their work to climate change. We're all mere grains of sand, but together we can call a halt to climate change and introduce alternatives."
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The Guardian
March 18, 2015 Wednesday 6:00 PM GMT
Amazon's trees removed nearly a third less carbon in last decade - study;
Fall in amount of carbon absored by rainforest means even greater cuts to manmade emissions are needed to combat climate change, warn scientists
BYLINE: Karl Mathiesen
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 548 words
The amount of carbon the Amazon's remaining trees removed from the atmosphere fell by almost a third last decade, leading scientists to warn that manmade carbon emissions would need to be cut more deeply to tackle climate change.
Trees in untouched areas of the forest have been dying off across the basin at an increasing rate, found the study, published in Nature on Wednesday. Meanwhile the tree growth produced by higher CO2 levels in recent decades levelled off.
The authors said this may be because the Amazon's seasonal weather variation had become more extreme. They also suggested more CO2 in the atmosphere was, counterintuitively, leading to trees dying younger.
Dr Roel Brienen of Leeds University said the Amazon was responsible for one-fifth to one-quarter of carbon sequestered on land, so any decline in its efficiency as a carbon sink was of consequence to efforts to combat climate change.
"If this trend continues then that is worrying because that means that basically the subsidies that we have been getting from nature - the forests that are taking up part of the emissions that we have been putting out into the atmosphere - if that is going to stop then that means that we have to make even stronger cuts in our CO2 emissions in order to keep the rate of climate change as low as possible," he said.
Brienen said the declines were occurring in pristine forest areas and were not directly related to the overall deforestation of the Amazon caused by logging and mineral exploration. The study found the Amazon's overall ability to soak up CO2 dropped by 30% from the 1990s to the 2000s. During the same time, global CO2 emissions rose by 21%.
"We observed that these undisturbed forests over the last 20 years have been taking up carbon, acting as a CO2 sink, but the rate at which they are taking up carbon is decreasing over time," said Brienen.
The study is based on a continuous survey of trees at 321 sites across the Amazon over three decades. It found the growth rate stalled between 2000 and 2010, but more trees were dying every year.
Globally, vegetation is locking away more carbon as atmospheric CO2 levels rise. Plants are growing faster, fuelled by a more fertile atmosphere. But the Amazon is eschewing this trend.
Brienen said the growth in mortality could be the result of increased variability in the Amazonian climate. Two large droughts, in 2005 and 2010, caused mass tree die-offs.
But Brienen said the long-term trend of increasing mortality could not be explained by these isolated events. Overall the region is experiencing wetter wet seasons and drier dry seasons. The unfamiliar patterns place the trees under increased stress, possibly affecting the health of the forest.
Brienen said the forests may also be experiencing an unanticipated consequence of higher CO2 levels. He suggests the accelerated growth is leading to trees dying younger. The dead trees decay, slowly releasing much of their stored carbon to the atmosphere.
The idea is consistent with a prediction by an Australian scientist in 2009 that the Amazon would lose much of its ability to absorb carbon as the air became more rich with it.
"Our study does indicate that there is a limit to the amount of carbon that forests can be taking up. Then that is truly worrying," said Brienen.
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The Guardian
March 18, 2015 Wednesday 5:05 PM GMT
Scotland's carbon footprint grew 5.3% in a year, report finds;
Increasing reliance on imports has seen overall emissions rise, despite a fall in greenhouse gases produced by Scottish homes and businesses.
BYLINE: Owen Duffy
SECTION: UK NEWS
LENGTH: 614 words
Scotland's carbon footprint appears to be on the rise according to a report published by the Scottish government, with the growth in consumer spending pushing up the country's CO2 emissions.
The country generated overall emissions of 76.8m tonnes equivalent (mte) of CO2 in 2012, the study found, an increase of 5.3% on the previous year.
While the figures show a longer-term decline from a peak of 94.3mte CO2 in 2007, the recent increase is a blow to the Scottish Government, which has failed to meet its legally-binding emissions targets every year since they were introduced.
Today's figures account for greenhouse gas emissions produced within Scotland, but also include estimates of the environmental impact of goods and services consumed in the country, no matter where in the world they originate.
While emissions generated directly in Scotland fell 6.6% from 13.8 to 12.9mte CO2 between 1998 and 2012, the reduction has been offset by an increasing reliance on imports. Foreign sources represented 44% of Scotland's emissions in 2012.
Commenting on the figures, Friends of the Earth Scotland Director Dr Richard Dixon said:
An economy powered by excessive consumption drives dangerous climate change, but often the true scale of our impact is hidden. Almost everything that we buy has a carbon cost which measures the energy, materials and water that goes into producing it. We now buy so much stuff from overseas that the impact of these spending choices is just as important as the emissions we generate here at home.
He added that the increase in emissions seemed to be linked to Scotland's recovery from the global financial crisis.
As the economy has recovered our carbon footprint has shot up again by 5.3% in just one year. If we are serious about cutting our carbon footprint we need to buy less stuff, buy more locally, get help with making our homes more energy efficient and switch to public and active transport. Improving European product standards are helping but the Scottish Government needs to do more to make the low-carbon choices the easy ones, from transport to where we get our food and from insulating our homes to buying the right goods.
Lang Banks, director of WWF Scotland, echoed Dixon's concerns:
It's disappointing to see that Scotland's carbon footprint appears to be back on the rise. These figures are an important reminder that decisions taken here in Scotland result in greenhouse gas emissions around the world. Our carbon footprint is a one of the Scottish Government's national performance indicators and if it is to be turned round we need to see the Ministers use all their powers to help secure the low carbon economy Scotland needs and wants.
A Scottish Government spokeswoman emphasised that, in spite of the recent increase, the country had seen a reduction in emissions in the long term:
We are working hard to reduce Scotland's greenhouse gas footprint, and have seen a 6.3 per cent decrease since 1998 while our population has increased by almost five per cent over the same period. Although the Scottish Government is leading the way internationally with our transition to a low carbon economy, tackling climate change is not for governments alone - it needs everyone to play their part. Taking action to cut waste and use resources more efficiently can help Scottish businesses and households save money as well as reducing emissions, no matter where products are sourced.
The Scottish Government has committed to reducing Scotland's greenhouse gas emissions by 42% by the end of the decade. It has previously said that the country is on track to meet the target, despite repeatedly failing to achieve its annual reductions in CO2.
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The Guardian
March 18, 2015 Wednesday 2:23 PM GMT
Fossil fuels are way more expensive than you think;
A new study estimates the costs of energy sources including their carbon and other air pollutants
BYLINE: Dana Nuccitelli
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 1089 words
A new paper published in Climatic Change estimates that when we account for the pollution costs associated with our energy sources, gasoline costs an extra $3.80 per gallon, diesel an additional $4.80 per gallon, coal a further 24 cents per kilowatt-hour, and natural gas another 11 cents per kilowatt-hour that we don't see in our fuel or energy bills.
The study was done by Drew Shindell, formerly of Nasa, now professor of climate sciences at Duke University, and Chair of the Scientific Advisory Panel to the Climate and Clean Air Coalition. Shindell recently published research noting that aerosols and ozone have a bigger effect on the climate in the northern hemisphere, where humans produce more of those pollutants.
That research led Shindell to question current estimates of the true costs of our energy sources. Much research has gone into estimating the social cost of carbon, which attempts to account for the additional costs from burning fossil fuels via the climate damages their carbon pollution causes. However, this research doesn't account for the costs associated with other air pollutants released during fossil fuel combustion.
For example, depending on how much more we value a dollar today than in the future (a factor known as ' discount rate '), Shindell estimates carbon pollution costs us $32 per ton of carbon dioxide emitted in climate damages, and another $45 in additional climate-health impacts like malnutrition that aren't normally accounted for.
But Shindell also estimates that carbon emissions are relatively cheap compared to other fossil fuel air pollutants. For example, sulfur dioxide costs $42,000 per ton, and nitrous oxides $67,000 per ton! However, less of these other pollutants are released into the atmosphere during modern fossil fuel combustion.
Electric Cars Cheaper than Gasoline Powered
For an average American car (26 miles per gallon), Shindell estimates that the air pollution emissions altogether cost us $1700 in damages per year. In comparison, emissions from energy to power an electric Nissan Leaf would cost us $840 even if purely powered by coal, and $290 if fueled by electricity supplied entirely from natural gas. These costs would become negligible if the electricity came from renewable or nuclear power. Electric vehicles (EVs) are clearly the winners in this cost comparison.
Hence environmental damages are reduced substantially even if an EV is powered from coal-fired electricity, although they are much lower for other electricity sources
The Needed Energy Transition May Have Begun in 2014
The key conclusion from Shindell's study is that fossil fuels only seem cheap because their market prices don't reflect their true costs. In reality they are remarkably expensive for society, but taxpayers pick up most of those costs via climate damages and other health effects. Those who argue that we need to continue relying on fossil fuels - like former popular science writer Matt Ridley - just aren't accounting for the costs of pollution.
These air pollution costs are effectively a massive subsidy, and Shindell likely underestimated their size. When I asked Shindell if he had accounted for recent research by Moore & Diaz showing that climate change slows economic growth, he said,
I saw the Moore and Diaz paper, which was quite interesting, but after my paper had already been accepted so it didn't make it in there. Indeed if growth is slowed by climate change as in their study, the associated social costs could be much larger... But in general, this is only one of several possible reasons that my values are likely conservative as I've left out many things that I didn't know how to put a price on. That includes the influence of pollution on cognitive function decline, on IQ, and on mental health, the influence of energy on freshwater resources, on national security (e.g. military spending related to oil/gas supplies), the impact of climate change on biodiversity, the effects of ocean acidification, etc.
This research shows that we need to transition away from fossil fuels not just to mitigate the risks associated with climate change, but to reduce the economic and health impacts of air pollution in general. Fortunately there was some good news this week suggesting that we may be on our way to making this transition. The International Energy Agency (IEA) reported,
global emissions of carbon dioxide from the energy sector stalled in 2014, marking the first time in 40 years in which there was a halt or reduction in emissions of the greenhouse gas that was not tied to an economic downturn... In the 40 years in which the IEA has been collecting data on carbon dioxide emissions, there have only been three times in which emissions have stood still or fallen compared to the previous year, and all were associated with global economic weakness: the early 1980's; 1992 and 2009. In 2014, however, the global economy expanded by 3%.
When we examine the data, 2014 indeed stands out. With 3% GDP growth, it's the first year on record that energy-related CO2 emissions didn't increase and GDP nevertheless grew by more than 2%.
The IEA reports that the stagnation in carbon pollution stemmed from a transition away from fossil fuels rather than a drop in energy use due to poor economic conditions, as had been the case in previous years where CO2 emissions didn't grow.
The IEA attributes the halt in emissions growth to changing patterns of energy consumption in China and OECD countries. In China, 2014 saw greater generation of electricity from renewable sources, such as hydropower, solar and wind, and less burning of coal. In OECD economies, recent efforts to promote more sustainable growth - including greater energy efficiency and more renewable energy - are producing the desired effect of decoupling economic growth from greenhouse gas emissions.
It's important not to over-interpret a single data point, but it's a promising sign that carbon pollution emissions didn't grow in 2014 while the global economy did. This is the sort of "decoupling" of GDP and CO2 that needs to happen for a successful transition away from fossil fuels. Signs that we may have reached peak coal production are also encouraging.
As Shindell's research shows, it's an important transition for us to make in order to preserve a livable climate and a healthy economy.
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The Guardian
March 18, 2015 Wednesday 12:09 PM GMT
The quiet revolution that's changing the way we use energy;
The unsung heroes of the fight against climate change are the entrepreneurs and politicians applying themselves to the task of changing our energy consumption
BYLINE: Bryony Worthington
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 1005 words
There is a quiet revolution underway in the way we produce and consume energy.
This revolution has been kickstarted by laws, regulations and the arrival of new technologies. It's been influenced by people - no less passionate than those protesting on the streets - who've chosen to engage in the existing economic system to divert it toward more sustainable ends.
It's not glamorous, and can be slow and technical, but more people are applying themselves to the task internationally - and it is producing results.
This quiet revolution began in the UK in 1990 with the first regulations supporting renewable electricity. The rules obliging energy companies to support non-fossil-fuel-based electricity were originally conceived to support nuclear power after privatisation, with renewable sources such as wind power added subsequently. Twenty-five years and a couple of policy re-designs later, including significantly the Climate Change Act passed by Ed Miliband, the UK has a renewables sector which, though still dependent on subsidies, is starting to make serious in-roads into conventional energy systems.
The renewables sector contains many big players using the capitalist system to increase their market share and push out incumbents. It is attracting criticism from those with vested interests and is thwarted on occasion by members of what author Naomi Klein refers to as "blockadia " - people stopping things - but on the whole its continued growth looks certain. Costs have tumbled and the need for subsidies is receding.
In the UK, the Conservative party may bark about closing the door on renewables but even David Cameron and his chancellor, George Osborne, can see that any private entities prepared to pour hard cash into concrete and steel, whatever its purpose, are incredibly valuable. If Labour wins the election in May we will set a target to almost fully decarbonise electricity generation by 2030.
Policies in support of renewables and energy efficiency, together with policies that make fossil fuels more expensive - such as applying air quality standards - are bringing emissions down fast in Europe. Of course two other factors - the financial crisis and warmer weather - have also contributed, but the signs are that as economic growth recovers, emissions are not returning.
Many of the regulations driving emissions down here are EU-wide, though in the UK our Climate Change Act and carbon taxation policy keep us slightly ahead.
The new European parliament and commission are embarking on a programme to create an "energy union " that has decarbonisation at its heart. The penny has finally dropped that low carbon can also mean low import dependency and increased security.
Different approaches are being tried in different countries with the UK looking to also invest in carbon capture and storage (CCS), and nuclear energy. Europe has always gained strength from countries diversely applying themselves to shared endeavours and this next industrial revolution will be no exception.
Outside Europe too, progress is being made in quiet, steady ways.
In China, pro-environment policymaking is on the increase and, for the first time last year, demand for coal appeared to have peaked as a result. A massive planned rollout of renewables, gas and nuclear energy looks very likely to continue the trend.
Realising renewable energy is the fastest technology to deploy, bar none, Narendra Modi is determined to electrify his nation using a policy to double India's coal tax and support renewables.
In Chile a new carbon tax is imminent but high energy prices and enormous amounts of sun are already making solar power profitable. South Korea has a cap and trade scheme that is a match for the EU's.
Even in the Middle East huge sums are being invested in all forms of zero carbon technology, nuclear and CCS included. A recent tender for new capacity in Dubai saw solar power undercutting conventional sources by a wide margin.
In North America, where the hijacking and paralysis of federal governments has led many to all but give up on national policy, state-level innovative policies continue to be introduced. The US Environmental Protection Agency is also overseeing a nationwide process to control emissions that stands a reasonable chance of being enacted if it can dodge the lawsuits. And for once the president is seriously engaged in trying to find a global solution.
It is these improved national conditions that give hope that a deal can be reached in Paris this year. It is easy to criticise the UN climate negotiations process and it is certainly far from perfect, but if there were a magic bullet it would have been discovered.
Climate change is a unique challenge and international politics is messy. The negotiations will only codify what countries believe to be possible today but, over time, ambitions will increase as confidence grows. What really needs to be achieved is an inclusive deal that boosts confidence in the revolution already underway.
A huge proportion of fossil fuels will remain unburned because many of the tools we need to make this happen have been created and are being improved.
They need to be applied more widely and with more ambition but it is already clear that we can, and do, drive capitalism in the directions we choose. Public pressure helps make this happen but so too do individuals working within the current system to divert its course.
It's been said that human beings are somehow wired to ignore climate change, but the human brain is the ultimate problem-solving device. Like a brain, as more people are added to the network, with quicker connections between them, the solution-seeking parts of society will become more effective. A few will ignore the signs of harm and pursue profits unencumbered by a conscience, but they will be outnumbered.
Those wanting to help increase the pace of change can take to the streets demanding action but, in between the protests, they can dedicate their time, skills and money to improving the tools of change: laws and technology.
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The Guardian
March 18, 2015 Wednesday 10:26 AM GMT
Tidal power scheme to be unveiled in 2015 budget;
World first proposed for Swansea Bay could increase government's green credentials but chancellor is also offering subsidy for North Sea oil firms
BYLINE: Terry Macalister
SECTION: POLITICS
LENGTH: 843 words
George Osborne will use the budget to unveil an ambitious and costly plan to build the world's first tidal lagoon to generate green energy.
The move comes alongside controversial measures to lower taxes for North Sea oil schemes in a bid to stem plummeting levels of UK oil exploration and production.
The government will announce on Wednesday that it is entering formal negotiations on funding a £1bn project to produce electricity from turbines in Swansea Bay, south Wales.
The Tidal Lagoon Power company will be offered the chance to discuss subsidies similar to the " contracts for difference " used on the planned Hinkley Point C nuclear plant in Somerset.
However, the project, which has the initial support of some environmental groups, is likely to generate its own concerns because it will need a subsidy of about £150 per megawatt hour (MWh) - compared with the £98 agreed for Hinkley and wholesale electricity prices of £50 per MWh.
Related: Budget 2015: what we know already and what we can expect
The final cost will depend on a range of factors, but proponents appear to have convinced the Department of Energy and Climate Change that if they can successfully build a prototype in south Wales, they will be able to roll out the concept much more cheaply at other locations as part of an eventual £12bn programme.
The Swansea Bay scheme envisages an area of 4.4 sq miles (11.5 sq km) cordoned off by a breakwater. It would have a generating capacity of 320MW with an annual output of 420GWh and a design life of 120 years.
Power would be generated as the incoming and outgoing tides - the daily equivalent of 100,000 Olympic swimming pools of water - passed through turbines.
The project would require a five-mile (9.5km) sea wall up to 20 metres high, but the Tidal Lagoon Power company says only a little more than half of this wall would be visible from land at low tide, with a few metres showing at high tide.
Osborne will also try to boost job and exploration prospects in the North Sea by changing the fiscal regime.
He is expected to introduce an investment allowance that could drive down taxes on some oil schemes from 60% to 30%. There are also hopes of a cut in the 30% supplementary tax charge on North Sea profits, which could reduce total taxes on some oil companies from 60% to 50% - still much higher than standard corporation tax.
Osborne used the autumn statement to make an initial cut to the North Sea supplementary charge - from 32% to 30% - but it was widely interpreted as being too little, too late.
There has been a huge drop in exploration off the Scottish coast, made worse by the halving of the oil price. Hundreds of jobs have been lost and there are fears that producing fields could be dismantled earlier than necessary.
Critics will argue that it is contradictory to cut offshore taxes as Britain tries to wean itself off fossil fuels to counter the effect of climate change. But the chancellor could point to the tidal lagoon plans as evidence of the government's commitment to green energy.
The wider tidal plans include four more, even larger, lagoons with an overall capacity of 7,300MW - enough to meet 10% of the UK's electricity needs.
The inclusion in the budget is a triumph for Ed Davey, the energy and climate change secretary, who has been pushing the Swansea Bay project in the face of initial scepticism from Osborne and the Treasury.
Davey believes tidal lagoons can provide another leg to a clean energy strategy involving solar, offshore wind and nuclear together with carbon capture and storage (CCS).
The tidal scheme is not certain to proceed. Even if the Swansea Bay scheme can secure firm funding, it will need planning permission. The application is with ministers and a decision is expected shortly.
An equally ambitious plan to build a Severn Barrage - linking the English and Welsh coasts - was debated for many years. There were concerns about the economic viability of the project as well as opposition during the planning phase from the RSPB wildlife charity and others. It was eventually halted.
Outlining the project for the first time last year, Mark Shorrock, Tidal Lagoon Power's founder and chief executive, said it was essential to build more than one tidal lagoon: "Economies of scale bring immediate advantage. A second lagoon will require a lower level of support than offshore wind, for a renewable power supply that is both long-lived and certain.
"A third lagoon will be competitive with the support received by new nuclear, but comes without the decommissioning costs and safety concerns."
Related: Should the UK be subsidising the world's first tidal lagoons?
A second project would cost £2.3bn and be based in Colwyn Bay, with a third costing £4bn and located in the upper Severn estuary. Two more at a cost of £4.5bn would follow, on as-yet-unspecified sites.
Upfront money is expected to be raised through infrastructure funds run by Macquarie Group and other pension funds. The long-term cost of the project, however, will eventually come from energy customers through household fuel bills.
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The Guardian
March 18, 2015 Wednesday 9:55 AM GMT
Climate change: why the Guardian is putting threat to Earth front and centre;
As global warming argument moves on to politics and business, Alan Rusbridger explains the thinking behind our major series on the climate crisis
BYLINE: Alan Rusbridger
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 1457 words
Journalism tends to be a rear-view mirror. We prefer to deal with what has happened, not what lies ahead. We favour what is exceptional and in full view over what is ordinary and hidden.
Famously, as a tribe, we are more interested in the man who bites a dog than the other way round. But even when a dog does plant its teeth in a man, there is at least something new to report, even if it is not very remarkable or important.
There may be other extraordinary and significant things happening - but they may be occurring too slowly or invisibly for the impatient tick-tock of the newsroom or to snatch the attention of a harassed reader on the way to work.
What is even more complex: there may be things that have yet to happen - stuff that cannot even be described as news on the grounds that news is stuff that has already happened. If it is not yet news - if it is in the realm of prediction, speculation and uncertainty - it is difficult for a news editor to cope with. Not her job.
For these, and other, reasons changes to the Earth's climate rarely make it to the top of the news list. The changes may be happening too fast for human comfort, but they happen too slowly for the newsmakers - and, to be fair, for most readers.
These events that have yet to materialise may dwarf anything journalists have had to cover over the past troubled century. There may be untold catastrophes, famines, floods, droughts, wars, migrations and sufferings just around the corner. But that is futurology, not news, so it is not going to force itself on any front page any time soon.
Even when the overwhelming majority of scientists wave a big red flag in the air, they tend to be ignored. Is this new warning too similar to the last? Is it all too frightening to contemplate? Is a collective shrug of fatalism the only rational response?
The climate threat features very prominently on the home page of the Guardian on Friday even though nothing exceptional happened on this day. It will be there again next week and the week after. You will, I hope, be reading a lot about our climate over the coming weeks.
One reason for this is personal. This summer I am stepping down after 20 years of editing the Guardian. Over Christmas I tried to anticipate whether I would have any regrets once I no longer had the leadership of this extraordinary agent of reporting, argument, investigation, questioning and advocacy.
Very few regrets, I thought, except this one: that we had not done justice to this huge, overshadowing, overwhelming issue of how climate change will probably, within the lifetime of our children, cause untold havoc and stress to our species.
So, in the time left to me as editor, I thought I would try to harness the Guardian's best resources to describe what is happening and what - if we do nothing - is almost certain to occur, a future that one distinguished scientist has termed as "incompatible with any reasonable characterisation of an organised, equitable and civilised global community".
It is not that the Guardian has not ploughed considerable time, effort, knowledge, talent and money into reporting this story over many years. Four million unique visitors a month now come to the Guardian for our environmental coverage - provided, at its peak, by a team including seven environmental correspondents and editors as well as a team of 28 external specialists.
They, along with our science team, have done a wonderful job of writing about the changes to our atmosphere, oceans, ice caps, forests, food, coral reefs and species.
For the purposes of our coming coverage, we will assume that the scientific consensus about man-made climate change and its likely effects is overwhelming. We will leave the sceptics and deniers to waste their time challenging the science. The mainstream argument has moved on to the politics and economics.
The coming debate is about two things: what governments can do to attempt to regulate, or otherwise stave off, the now predictably terrifying consequences of global warming beyond 2C by the end of the century. And how we can prevent the states and corporations which own the planet's remaining reserves of coal, gas and oil from ever being allowed to dig most of it up. We need to keep them in the ground.
There are three really simple numbers which explain this (and if you have even more appetite for the subject, read the excellent July 2012 Rolling Stone piece by the author and campaigner Bill McKibben, which - building on the work of the Carbon Tracker Initiative - first spelled them out).
2C : There is overwhelming agreement - from governments, corporations, NGOs, banks, scientists, you name it - that a rise in temperatures of more than 2C by the end of the century would lead to disastrous consequences for any kind of recognised global order. 565 gigatons: " Scientists estimate that humans can pour roughly 565 more gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by mid-century and still have some reasonable hope of staying below 2C," is how McKibben crisply puts it. Few dispute that this idea of a global " carbon budget " is broadly right. 2,795 gigatons: This is the amount of carbon dioxide that if they were burned would be released from the proven reserves of fossil fuel - ie the fuel we are planning to extract and use.
You do not need much of a grasp of maths to work out the implications. There are trillions of dollars worth of fossil fuels currently underground which, for our safety, simply cannot be extracted and burned. All else is up for debate: that much is not.
Related: Gormley climate change artwork shown for first time in the Guardian
We need to keep it in the ground. This was the starting point for the group of journalists who met early in January to start considering how we would cover the issue.
But how?
Some will make the case for governmental action. Within nine months, the nations of the world will assemble in Paris, as they did previously in Copenhagen and Kyoto and numerous other summits now forgotten. Can they find the right actions and words, where they have failed before? It is certainly important that they feel the pressure to achieve real change.
Others will make the case for reducing the fossil fuel exposure of investment portfolios by decarbonisation. Or going further to full divestment from the most polluting fossil fuel extraction companies. Next week, McKibben will describe how the cause of divestment is moving rapidly from a fringe campaign to a mainstream concern for banks and fund managers.
It is now very much on the radar of the financial director rather than the social responsibility department. If most of these reserves are unburnable, they are asking, then what does that say about the true value of carbon-dependent companies? It is a question of fiduciary responsibility as much as a moral imperative.
We will look at who is getting the subsidies and who is doing the lobbying. We will name the worst polluters and find out who still funds them. We will urge enlightened trusts, investment specialists, universities, pension funds and businesses to take their money away from the companies posing the biggest risk to us. And, because people are rightly bound to ask, we will report on how the Guardian Media Group itself is getting to grips with the issues.
Related: Polly Toynbee: 'If you read the Guardian, join the Guardian'
In addition to words, images and films, we will be podcasting the series as we go along, to give some insight and transparency about our reporting and how we are framing and developing it.
We begin on Friday and on Monday with two extracts from the introduction to Naomi Klein's recent book, This Changes Everything. This has been chosen because it combines sweep, science, politics, economics, urgency and humanity. Antony Gormley, who has taken a deep interest in the climate threat, has contributed two artworks from his collection that have not been exhibited before - the first of many artists with whom we hope to collaborate over coming weeks.
Where does this leave you? I hope not feeling impotent and fearful.
Some of you may be marching in London on Saturday 7 March. As McKibben will argue next week, the fight for change is also full of opportunity and optimism. And we hope that many readers will find inspiration in our series to make their own contribution by applying pressure on their workplace, or pension fund, to move.
But, most of all, please read what we write. Real change can only follow from citizens informing themselves and applying pressure. To quote McKibben: "This fight, as it took me too long to figure out, was never going to be settled on the grounds of justice or reason. We won the argument, but that didn't matter: like most fights it was, and is, about power."
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The Guardian
March 18, 2015 Wednesday 7:00 AM GMT
Wellcome Trust sold off £94m ExxonMobil oil investment;
However, medical charity refuses to divest all fossil fuel assets and despite calling climate change 'one of the greatest contemporary challenges to global health' just 0.9% of £3.5bn it awarded over five years went to climate change work
BYLINE: Damian Carrington
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 997 words
The Wellcome Trust has quietly sold off a $138m (£94m) investment in ExxonMobil, the oil giant which previously funded climate change denial, the Guardian can reveal. But the medical charity, which says "climate change is one of the greatest contemporary challenges to global health", has refused to divest all its fossil fuel assets, as called for in a Guardian campaign launched on Monday.
Doctors and Wellcome Trust grant recipients labelled this stance contradictory and called for full divestment. The UN World Health Organisation (WHO) said health professionals should take a leading role in fighting climate change and that divestment by the Wellcome Trust would be in line with calls from UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon to cut such investments.
Existing fossil fuel reserves are several times greater than can be burned if the world's governments are to fulfil their pledge to keep global warming below the danger limit of 2C, but coal, oil and gas companies continue to spend billions on exploration. The fast-growing divestment movement argues that fossil fuel investments are a threat to both the climate and investors, as action to combat climate change could render the fuel reserves worthless.
The Wellcome Trust is the world's second biggest non-governmental funder of medical research and is dedicated to improving global health, most recently leading the fight against the ebola epidemic in west Africa. It declines to reveal the full extent of its fossil fuel investments, but in 2014 its £18bn endowment included over £450m invested in the fossil fuel majors Shell, BP, Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton alone.
The chair of Wellcome's board of governors, Sir William Castell, set out the Trust's position in a letter to the medical campaign group Medact in 2014: "The Wellcome Trust considers climate change to be one of the greatest contemporary challenges to global health. We have made understanding the connections between environment, nutrition and health one of our five key research challenges."
But the Guardian can reveal just 0.9% of the £3.5bn given out by the Wellcome Trust over the last five years was dedicated to this key challenge. Castell is a former senior director of BP and chaired the oil company's safety committee at the time of the Deepwater explosion in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.
A spokeswoman for the Wellcome Trust said climate change and health was "a highly complex issue which we take seriously in our decisions and on which we engage with policy-makers, researchers and the businesses in which we invest."
Wellcome argues engaging with the fossil fuel companies it invests in "offers a better prospect for change than divestment", but it declines to give examples of its engagement.
A spokeswoman said Castell had no conflict of interest: "He has, and has had, no material interest that would exclude him from discussing wider investment policy in the energy sector." His directorship at BP ended in 2012.
"Climate change poses the single biggest threat to the health of humanity over the next few decades," said Dr David McCoy, director of Medact and a former NHS director of public health. "It is already causing deaths, ill health and suffering. The Wellcome Trust's acknowledgement that climate change is a very serious public health issue is contradicted by their investment policy. I am absolutely sure that within the Wellcome Trust and among their grant holders there are many, many people who want to divest from fossil fuels."
Dr Taavi Tillmann, at University College London and whose research into heart disease in eastern Europe is funded by the Wellcome Trust, said: "I really think the Wellcome Trust should divest from fossil fuels. It makes perfect sense, as health organisations have already divested from other sectors which are thought of as unethical, like tobacco."
"We take the precautionary principle very seriously in the health sector and the risk of climate change to health invokes that principle," Tillmann said. "We have the right and responsibility to invoke that principle, and to speak out and take action."
"The World Health Organisation is very much convinced that health professionals should take a leading role in fighting climate change," said Dr Maria Neira, the WHO's director of public health and the environment and a former health minister in Spain. "It is clear from the global perspective that we have to stimulate companies to disinvest from fossil fuels. Our secretary general Ban Ki-moon has been very strong on urging companies - and the Wellcome Trust could be one of those - to reduce their investments in fossil fuel."
In February, a coalition of medical groups including Medact issued a report arguing that the health sector, including the Wellcome Trust, should not be helping to fund the harm they exist to tackle. The British Medical Association, which represents UK doctors, voted to divest from fossil fuels in June 2014.
The Wellcome Trust is a "transparent" investor, according to Castell, but only publishes its 30 largest holdings in its annual reports. Its investment in ExxonMobil was revealed in regulatory filings to the US Securities and Exchange Commission filed in January. The Wellcome Trust said the investment was sold in January, but did not give a reason.
Many senior figures and institutions in the financial world, including the World Bank, Bank of England, HSBC, Goldman Sachs and Standard and Poor's, have warned that only a fraction of known fossil fuel reserves can be safely burned and that the remainder could plummet in value posing huge risks to investors. Norway's sovereign wealth fund, the world's richest, revealed on Friday it had dumped over 50 coal companies.
Over 180 institutions around the world, including pension funds, cities, universities and faith groups, have already divested and the Go Fossil Free campaign received a significant boost on Sunday, when it received the support of the UN organisation in charge of global climate change negotiations.
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The Guardian
March 17, 2015 Tuesday 9:34 PM GMT
There are ways to tackle climate change: now we must find the will
BYLINE: Letters
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 3878 words
· Thank you for your courageous advocacy for divesting and keeping fossil fuels in the ground (16 March). I proudly signed the 350.org and Guardian petition asking the Gates Foundation and Wellcome Trust to divest from fossil fuel companies and freeze new investments.
Physics tells us that nothing happens unless energy is transferred from something to something else, but our use of fossil energy is rapidly disrupting the climate that sustains us. It is easy to envisage the necessary goal of a sustainable energy economy, but not how to reach it. The global energy system is huge, complex, resistant to change, and intimately woven into every aspect of our culture. Yet biofuels, solar, wind, and geothermal energy are available in superabundance, and the technologies for using them are waiting.
What holds us back is the greed and short-sightedness of energy companies and the politicians who do their will, and unease about the profound changes that will inevitably accompany a sustainable system. But think what some of those changes would be. An end to unremitting mining and drilling accidents, pipeline breaks and tanker spills, fiery explosions, ecosystem destruction, and the health problems attributable to producing and burning fossil fuels. Carol SteinhartMadison, Wisconsin, USA
· If we are to have a meaningful debate about climate change, then it is important to get the numbers right ( Crunching the numbers on carbon, 10 March ). The carbon dioxide allowance produced by the Carbon Tracker Initiative in 2011 was 565bn tonnes, an estimate that was said to provide an 80% chance of staying below 2C. In 2013 however, CTI revised its estimate upwards to 900bn tonnes to take account of the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
For a 66% chance of staying below 2C, the IPCC calculated a total carbon budget of 1tn tonnes, but this is from the start of the industrial revolution and includes other greenhouse gases. As these account for 20% of global warming, the IPCC figure for burnable carbon was actually 800bn tonnes. We have already burnt 550bn tonnes, leaving only 250bn tonnes of carbon. Currently we are producing 36bn tonnes of CO2 a year, which is equivalent to 10bn tonnes of carbon, so we will burn through our carbon allowance by 2040, if emissions stay the same. In fact, they are increasing by 2-3% a year, so we actually have less than 20 years before we enter the territory of irreversible climate change. In this context, China does not plan on reducing its emissions until after 2030. Dr Robin Russell-JonesStoke Poges, Buckinghamshire
· The irony that Baldwin Lonsdale, president of Vanuatu, was attending a conference on disaster risk when his island country was hit by a terrible typhoon will be lost on no one ( Report, 17 March). Commonwealth governments and aid agencies should be in the forefront of relief and reconstruction.
With erratic climate events and sea-level rise it is time for the global community to take more seriously the growing risks for archipelagos, especially low-lying atoll states in the Pacific and Caribbean. In a single year a storm can knock 10% off GDP and certain communities are already being withdrawn from shorelines where ocean levels have risen. This is a particular challenge for the Commonwealth, where the Ramphal Institute estimates that there are some 10 independent and dependent territories which might be under water in 2100.
Winning support for serious analysis and advocacy, in conjunction with these countries, has proved difficult. Large donor agencies see the populations as too small - Vanuatu's is less than twice the size of the Isle of Wight's - and some of the governments fear that to draw attention to their vulnerability might damage investment in their tourism. But if no man is an island, no populated island country - especially one with a vote at the UN - should lie outside international concern. Instant relief is no substitute for long-term planning. Richard BourneTrusteeRamphal InstituteLondon
· As part of your campaign I urge you to focus on solutions - what people are already doing to mitigate some of the effects of climate change. Take drought, an example close to home for me in northern California. What old and new technologies are available or could be developed to conserve water? Two high-school students developed a dew collector ; what has happened to this? Permaculture advocates suggest an old technology - clay ollas - as an irrigation system that can reuse grey water for plants; but there seem to be no manufacturers in the state. Some folks are developing grey water systems. Some cities are changing local ordnances to allow grey water use. How to bring composting toilets into more general use? What has happened to electric cars and really effective mass transport schemes? What are visionary individuals, community groups, cities and counties doing?
Of course, all this needs to be done on a huge scale at the systemic level, not just locally, but knowing more about solutions will inspire people to get involved in the changes that are needed. Gwyn KirkOakland, California, USA
· Gillian Caddick (Letters, 11 March) suggests it should be "mandatory for all new buildings to have solar panels". It should be mandatory for all new buildings to have enough insulation to be carbon neutral. Ross MartinWest Bridgford, Nottinghamshire
· You are campaigning against the symptoms and not the causes of environmental destruction. The causes are too many people (and no, this problem has not been solved: Africa and south-east Asia are likely to add another billion people every 20 years or so, unless we do something about it); consuming too many goods (how many people who have signed up for your climate change newsletter have bought a new smartphone, when their old one was still functioning?); flushing too many of our food nutrients into the oceans, rather than scavenging them from the city sewage systems to be returned to the world's cropping systems. That is where we should be focusing our efforts. Bruce DanckwertsChoma, Zambia
· One aspect hardly mentioned is the environmental impact of the number of tower blocks proposed for London, in addition to the present cacophony of those already ruining the skyline - the energy required and environmental cost of servicing these buildings, lifts, lighting, heating, computing back-up, sanitary provision and water, all creating a totally artificial environment which, in years to come will be viewed as a suicidal lack of foresight - and all in a flood plain of the Thames which already is stretching its flood defences to the limit. Diana HolbrookCanterbury, Kent
· Your editorial on food security " If the dreamers lose, we face a nightmare " (1 March) argues that when climate change really kicks in and the big heat arrives, it will be catastrophic - particularly hitting food security and water availability.
I agree that climate change is happening, and its impact will grow. But by focusing on new tools such as soil microbes we can begin to get ahead of climate change. As a scientist working to ensure that we can sustainably feed ourselves in a changing climate, I believe we have many potential helpers ready to assist us. They are beneficial soil microbes - billions of them.
They can be found in coastal Kenya where I was born, and in Alabama where I work as a microbiologist. Unlocking the secrets of soil microbes has the potential to protect crops from climate extremes while increasing productivity. Scientists have documented mutually beneficial associations between soil microbes and plants such as corn: improving their growth; enhancing their ability to tolerate drought and insect pests; and withstanding other challenges of a changing climate. In Colombia for example, beneficial microbes have been used to colonise cassava plants, leading to yield increases of 20%. Esther NgumbiDepartment of entomology and plant pathologyAuburn, Alabama, USA
· In 2012 John Crawford, a professor at the University of Sydney, discussed the issue of topsoil erosion. He noted that about 40 per cent of agricultural soils around the globe is currently classified as degraded or seriously degraded. Seriously degraded means that 70% of the topsoil (the layer of soil in which plants grow) has already disappeared. Fighting over whether or not climate change is real or whether manmade or not is irrelevant. The answer is to alter our agricultural practices in such a way as to return and confine organic matter and carbon in the soil. Soil is connected with so many things: health, the environment, food security, climate, water. For example agriculture is estimated to account for 70% of our freshwater use. If soil is not fit for purpose, that water will be wasted. Given the enormous potential for conflict over water in the next 20 years, it is ridiculous to keep degrading the soil at such a rate.
Restoring the water cycle in our environment - by sequestering carbon in our soil - will not only make our food supply more secure. It can also help moderate changes in climate. A mere 1% increase in organic soil carbon means an acre of land can hold an additional 20,000 gallons of water. If water can be kept in the soil then that soil is supporting life. Kate TraversSutton, Cambridgeshire
· I have been an organic farmer for 30 years and can sympathise with the Quenault' s frustration (15 March) at the lack of government support for organic farming. The difficulty arises because organic farmers internalise costs and conventional farmers externalise theirs. For example who pays the cost of removing pesticides from the water supply? Not the farmers who put them there. The polluter doesn't pay.
This is the International year of the Soil and unless organic farming practices are adopted widely our most fundamental resource will be rapidly diminished by the monocultural, chemical-soaked, ecosystem-destroying globilised food system. Edward GoffOswestry, Shropshire
· This week President Obama told the US that, "No challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change". Given the seriousness of the problem, and its impact upon us all, I am wondering when the election debate will focus on switching defence spending to combating our worst possible enemy. It isn't Russia. After all, increasing defence spending to 2% of GDP will not be of much use if there is nothing left to defend. Dave HepworthBakewell, Derbyshire
· I've just read the long reads by Bill McKibben and George Monbiot (10 and 11 March).The writers expose the activities of the fossil fuel developers, but don't mention the nuclear industries. Their activities result in plenty of carbon emissions if the whole cycle from uranium mining to waste disposal is considered. I've spent 15 years fighting against their intrusion into Northumberland and I've cycled through the villages next to Chernobyl, seeing how the locals creep under the boundary fence to collect berries and mushrooms which end up in markets in other countries.
All this speaking out against fossil fuels gives nuclear people an opportunity to paint themselves green, which is far from the case. There must be many others like me, who are 100% in favour of a renewables economy, and for whom nuclear will never be acceptable. Bridget GubbinsMorpeth, Northumberland
· George Monbiot eloquently spells out the powerful state of denial surrounding the issue of climate change - "the absence of official recognition of the role of fossil fuel production in causing climate change permits governments to pursue directly contradictory policies." Nowhere, in the UK is this more egregiously true than in Scotland where, in the "oil capital of Europe", Aberdeen, Ian Wood's government-sponsored review successfully achieved the Infrastructure Act, "maximising the economic recovery of petroleum from the UK's continental shelf".
This was music to the ears not only to billionaire owner of the Wood Group oil services company but also to the SNP government whose silence, already legendary in matters relating to investment in infrastructure and society, and that elusive 3% of tax raising powers gifted to them by UK government, could be seen as just another part of a nationwide "pattern of silence that surrounds our lives". Carolyn KirtonAberdeen
· If George Monbiot thinks his words are going to provide a clarion call to change the direction of climate actions, I fear he may have been to too many conferences. The core of the problem is even simpler than he has espoused: global economic activity is based on the assumption that natural resources are infinite and their use or replacement need not be included in the financial transaction.
The idea that we could convert natural resources to "wealth" without cost is clearly an attractive one and while world population was a few hundred million was even workable. Unfortunately, it no longer serves us and the climate is just one indicator of the unintended consequences it has produced.
The answer lies in the economy and how we account for our activity. Quite simply, the environment needs to become a cost in the calculation of profit. We need an economy that rewards activities that nourish the future rather than destroying it. Harold ForbesLondon
· George Monbiot's article highlighting the silence around restricting fossil fuel production made me thing about tradable energy quotas (TEQs). This idea has been around for 20 years and was dismissed in a government feasibility study in 2008 for being "ahead of it's time". They are essentially an annually contracting extraction budget, with a fair and workable distribution system. The TEQs scheme would guarantee that the UK's targeted carbon reductions are actually achieved, while ensuring fair shares of available energy." Anna Marie ByrneHuddersfield
· George Monbiot' s observationon the need to focus on control of fossil fuel production rather than output of emissions is spot on. The focus on emissions targets by successive British governments is indicative of the way in which we Brits do denial at an institutional level. Spurred on by the big consultancies such as Coopers & Lybrand, for over two decades now governance in the UK has become preoccupied with creating an "as if" reality, a virtual reality of targets and indicators which, through a collective act of self-deception, policymakers have come to believe is real.
Wherever you look, be it education, health or policing you see the same phenomenon, often with perverse consequences. Our policymakers have taken the same approach to climate change. As Monbiot said some years ago in his book Heat, "the thought that worries me most is this ... We will wish our governments to pretend to act ... They know that we want tough targets, but that we also want those targets to be missed."
The demand to "keep it in the ground" takes the ground from underneath this endless game of organised denial. Paul HoggettChair, Climate Psychology AllianceBristol
· Duncan McLaren writes "Where is the justice in geoengineering" (14 March). But, having attended the Cambridge conference on the subject, I ponder "Where is the justice in not geoengineering?" If geoengineering can reduce the misery around the world as climate change bites, hurricanes grow in intensity, droughts lengthen, rivers flood, sea inundates, and crops fail, shouldn't we be geoengineering sooner rather than later?
Geoengineering is not an alternative to emissions reduction. In some cases, like cooling the Arctic to prevent meltdown, emissions reductions can have no significant effect and geoengineering is the only tool at our disposal with sufficient cooling power.
The real danger is leaving geoengineering too late; it may not be possible to bring back the sea ice once it is gone. Sea ice acts as a giant solar reflector and losing that reflective power would ensure that vast amounts of heat, more than the combined energy consumption of the human race, would collect in the Arctic. This in turn would ensure continued melting of the Greenland ice sheet, with the sea level rising up to a half metre per decade, and more.
So the urgent question is whether it is just and ethical to further delay the development and deployment of safe geoengineering techniques. John NissenChair, Arctic Methane Emergency GroupBath
· Contrary to your report on a solar powered plane, the aviation sector is neither the toughest sector to decarbonise nor will it take 35 years to fly clean. Zero carbon emission (non fossil) hydrocarbon fuels are with us. In the next few months the German firm Sunfire will complete a pilot plant in Dresden which will combine recycled carbon dioxide that has been separated from air with hydrogen that has been released from water using renewable electricity. The product will be "green" diesel for cars but exactly the same technology will make "green" kerosene jetfuel, though it will be more expensive than its fossil equivalent. What is needed to introduce this fuel is a commitment to an escalating carbon price together with regulation which will require flight to be gradually decarbonised. This is electrically powered flight by another means and it can be done now if we really want to do it. Leon Di Marco London
· I left university in 1962, keen to take up what looked like a promising career with the UK Atomic Energy Authority working on fusion power generation. At the time it looked quite imminent, with the press observing that electricity would soon be too cheap to meter.
Now, over 50 years later, we are arguably on the brink of viable controlled fusion power generation. Virtually zero carbon content and virtually unlimited fuel resource. Surely it is now that we need a much greater commitment of resources to achieving a goal so long striven after.
Electricity thus generated could become almost unlimited in supply and would easily supplant the use of fossil fuels for heating and surface transport. It could eventually reduce the requirement for other renewable sources. Ian KingWestbury on Severn, Gloucestershire
· Now the week of special articles on climate change is over, without any mention of the consequences of population growth (except for one brief letter), may I refer back to your editorial of 1 March: "Hunger is coming. The temperature rises." This mentioned that according to revised UN figures, "by 2100, the world could be home to 12 billion and still rising." Please, is it not blindingly obvious that a figure less than that would be beneficial? And please, since several countries have successfully reduced their fertility by means that are scarcely controversial (ie education, organisation of clinics and a properly supported distribution of contraceptives), why is it not done to discuss this at the very least?
Over 40% of all pregnancies are unintentional: 225 million women have no access to modern contraception. Sort those two problems out and we would be more than halfway to a stable world population: but if we keep fudging this subject, then we will indeed face famine on a worldwide scale, together with a wholesale destruction of nature. Roger PlentyStroud, Gloucestershire
· Although not every country is giving a high-priority to reducing and halting population growth, a great many are, often with great success and with very great benefits to their people. The benefits of family planning, in both the short and long term, are well evidenced. Aid-giving countries should not be deterred by the existence of governments with anti-contraception policies, like the Philippines, but should push aid through the many doors that are open.
According to the UN publication World Population Policies 2013, in the least-developed countries, the percentage of governments having policies to lower the rate of population growth has increased steadily in Africa since the mid-1970s, from 25 per cent in 1976 to 60 per cent in 1996 and 72 per cent in 2013. These are among the poorest countries in the world, whose governments have the least resources to put their policies into practical action, and therefore the most able to benefit from aid. Chris Padley Lincoln
· As a regional climate campaigner, I salute the Guardian for its big new push on climate change, the greatest moral challenge of our age. How strange then to note the relative lack of engagement by the Christian community.
Recall that Wilberforce, Shaftesbury and Josephine Butler led veritable armies of believers into battle against the social evils of their day. More recently, black churches fought racism in the US and, as Madeleine Bunting noted: "The secret of Jubilee 2000's success [on poor country debt] is simple but unfashionable - it is the Christian churches."
These are people whose Scriptures command humanity to "care for the earth" (Genesis 2), and warn that the Almighty will "destroy those who destroy the earth" (Revelation). They are followers of the one who brought "good news to the poor" - whose protection is among their foremost responsibilities and who will be hit first and hardest by what is surely a crime against humanity surpassing all others.
Church leaders in the UK have generally said the right things, but I doubt if the subject gets so much of a mention in sermons and prayers from one year's end to another in most churches. And I don't get the impression that most believers ever spare a thought to the environmental impacts of their lifestyles. Could it be that we're good at charity, but lack commitment to justice? Or, worse, that our attachment to comfort and convenience now amounts to idolatry? Dr David GoldingWhitley Bay, Tyne and Wear
· The finite resources argument in relation to consumerism recalls RH Tawney's reference, in his public lectures 90 years ago, to the rejection of the attainment of material riches "as the supreme object of human endeavour and the final criterion of success." Today any suggestion that climate change requires the adoption of a simpler lifestyle in the west has no popular appeal. Notwithstanding the fact that Tawney was referring to incompatibility with Christ's teaching, I have found that even in the church talk of reduced consumption tends to evoke a horror stricken cry of "asceticism". We will have to wait for it to be forced upon us by natural disaster. Maurice VassieYork
· Waste is part of climate change and waste came thumping onto our doormat yet again this morning, this time in the form of two identical copies, each weighing 500gm and delivered by Royal Mail, of totally unwanted fashion brochures from Peter Hahn. There's nothing new to be said about advertisers who take absolutely no notice of requests to desist from sending unwanted literature, but is it beyond the wit of the law-makers to find a way to penalise - heavily - organisations that persistently and wilfully, through profligate and damaging mismanagement, cause waste? There must be millions of examples of this idiocy, millions of tons of wasted resources. Christopher Lucas Saxmundham, Suffolk
· I am a subscriber to the Guardian but even I can see that the best thing for the environment that you campaign so nobly for, is for you to stop publishing a physical daily newspaper entirely. Hugh HastingsFalmouth, Cornwall
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The Guardian
March 17, 2015 Tuesday 9:06 PM GMT
Climate change demands immense changes to the economic system
BYLINE: Letters
SECTION: SCIENCE
LENGTH: 2339 words
Mark Lynas says: "Solving climate change does not mean rolling back capitalism, suspending the free market or stopping economic growth" ( Save us from the miserabilists in the battle over climate change, 12 March).
This statement would have made much sense 35 years ago. The urgency for rapid action had not been established. But all this has changed. Whether or not the new "crisis" reinforces an ideological position on the left (despite splits over nuclear power and GM crops) leading to "an outright denialist position" on the right is now so much water under the bridge.
Immense changes to the economic system must be made over the next few years, and the blame game gets us nowhere. If Klein's belief that "corporate capitalism must be dismantled'" is wrong, it is up to the right to show how the new measures required can work under the present system. Governments should play a powerful role in facilitating compromises, where these can be made, and encouraging national debates on the basis of evidence rather than belief. David AndersonBingley, West Yorkshire
· It's people like Naomi Klein and the left generally who are responsible for runaway climate change because their policies for dealing with it are too radical, says Lynas. So they frighten all those fair-minded, reasonable people in the centre and on the right into not caring a fig about it.
Then the penny dropped. I realised Lynas was himself a Damascene convert, projecting all blame on to his erstwhile colleagues and comrades of "the left". The solution is staring us in the face: it is nuclear energy and GM crops. Funny, that's what big money has been telling (or selling) us all along. You don't have to be "anti-science" to suspect the alliance of money and power that the corporate world represents. Being suspicious of it seems a good, open-minded place to start. Richard KuperLondon
· Sound advice to non-tribal environmentalists from Mark Lynas: ignore both the flat-earth deniers and the eco-evangelists, and focus on good science, engineering, arithmetic and economics. If Keep it in the ground prompts a flight of capital away from fossil fuels and into clean, 21st-century energy solutions, we should investigage two constructive (and liquid) investment zones: small, modular, molten-salt reactors, being developed by the Canadians and the Chinese; and molten-metal, grid-level storage batteries, being piloted in Hawaii and Cape Cod. John McGrotherBuxton, Derbyshire
· Lynas uses the wrong end of the stick to beat the wrong dog. Since the mid-1960s the " war on science " has been waged against any change that might have an adverse impact on vested interest. It began with a campaign against the regulation of tobacco products, orchestrated by the marketing Company RJ Reynolds. This was followed by a war against the regulation of other health or environmental hazards reported by the scientific community, for instance, ozone depletion. State interference of any kind, including against the causes of acid rain, CFCs, greenhouse gases and secondhand smoke, was (and is still) seen as an attack on liberty, a dangerous step on the path to communism: "Environmentalists were like a watermelon, green on the outside, red within," Naomi Oreskes wrote in Merchants of Doubt (2010). Wiebina HeestermanBirmingham
· The scientific narrative has not been "captured by one, rather extreme, end of the political spectrum", but by global industries whose profits are threatened by the carbon bubble that will result if substantial fossil fuel deposits remain unexploited (the deniers) and by people who accept the scientific evidence but dwell on the apocalyptic image of a future world of runaway warming (the sensationalists). Apocalyptic images are exciting; they produce adrenalin, which is addictive. That is why disaster movies are big box-office. But this makes climate change just another spectacle. Lynas himself is a leading producer of this commodity in his books.
It is a bit rich, then, that he accuses Naomi Klein of pursuing an "ideological project", as if climate change could be anything else (but the right usually denies the politics of its own position). Klein has identified aspects of this late phase of global capitalism - the huge profits made from war and reconstruction, and the growth of a private security industry - that show it to be aggressively destructive.
Environmentalists do not have a monopoly on Enlightenment values - no one does - but when Lynas asserts that Klein makes environmental responsibility "politically toxic" he is insulting and, again, alarmist, which is another indication that he is a purveyor of the alienation to which he objects. He makes the debate a spectacle rather than a rational exchange. Professor Malcolm MilesTotnes, Devon
· The developing world's emergence from poverty is indeed non-negotiable. Climate chaos doesn't negotiate. But climate chaos is what will stop the developing world from acquiring, and the developed world from continuing to enjoy, unprecedented and lethal levels of material consumption. Our challenge is not to fantasise about technologies to save us from this future. It is to face it honestly, and start retrieving what we can. John FosterLancaster University
· Had Lynas attended the alternative people's summit at the COP 20 climate change talks in Lima last year, he would have heard a succession of speakers from Latin America's indigenous communities rejecting development models imposed on them by transnational capital. They are in the frontline of the fight against climate change and are struggling to stop the destruction of their environment by mining and mono-crop agriculture for export. They would not see themselves in terms of left or right, but fully understand that an economic model based on infinite growth, with the conmensurate depletion of the planet's natural resources, is incompatible with saving the Earth from the catastrophic effects of global warming.
This does not mean sufficient energy cannot be provided for the needs of future generations, but that it must be responsibly sourced and publicly owned instead of being left to market forces and monolithic corporations whose priorities lie in ripping off consumers and making money out of burning fossil fuels. As an energy trade union, we support the necessary, just transition to a low-carbon economy, and are members of the global network Trade Unions for Energy Democracy. As the slogan read in Lima: "Let's change the system - not the climate." Bert SchouwenburgInternational officer, GMB
· I went to the climate change march on Saturday 7 March expecting to be fired up. I came away disappointed. The issue, climate change, had been hijacked by multiple organisations pushing their own agendas - anti- nuclear, anti fracking, trade unions, political groups etc. Anyone viewing on TV would probably see several organisations they would not support.
Earth is not affected by politics, just by CO2 emissions. The climate change movement has to work from the bottom up to change the minds of people in every country, so as to cause each country's government to take action. Hugh BakerLeatherhead, Surrey
· I picked up a programme for the Edinburgh international science festival in the week that the Guardian ran its stark climate change cover features. I was surprised to note the low profile given in the brochure to the most pressing issue facing scientists, and humanity in general, until I looked at the sponsors page: Total, Scottish Gas, Senergy, Eon, Exxon Mobil, Cairn and half a dozen other fossil fuel extraction and provision companies are prominent. All the energy events, which mostly focus on technological responses, are directly sponsored by Eon. A typical example is a debate on "how much oil is really left in the North Sea and what its value is... supported by the Scottish Oil Club", the panel of which is entirely made up of oil industry representatives plus the shadow energy minister.
The National Gallery in London has attracted criticism for accepting BP sponsorship but at least there was no direct conflict of interest. Such financing makes a mockery of the objectivity the festival is designed to promote. Technological fixes are mostly a distraction from the urgent issue of drastically reducing emissions this decade, which extends beyond the boundaries of science. Climate scientists have attracted flak for not speaking out more. They have done their job. What about the scientists who are the crux of the fossil fuel industry, not to mention those who work directly in public engagement through events such as this festival? How can they be aware of the imminent catastrophe facing our planet and yet continue to facilitate it? Are their personal interests in their job not overridden by their personal interests in their future and that of their children? Andrew RubensEdinburgh
· Lynas's article does not do justice to the great campaign of concern the Guardian has embarked upon. By its very nature, climate change is an extreme situation that demands extreme measures. Now is not a time for fudging about, desperately trying to seek some kind of moderate consensus that has no hope of tackling this global threat. Does he really imagine that the rich and powerful will finally face up to what is already happening to us without an intensification of the international pressure for absolutely fundamental change to the way we live our lives? When have they ever given anything up without an enormous struggle?
The article could be read as some kind of PR appeal to take the debate back to square one on behalf of corporate interests. We have been discussing climate change for decades and, as Naomi Klein has said: "The only thing rising faster than our emissions is the output of words pledging to lower them."
Just because billions of us have long since recognised the link between capitalism's insatiable appetite for growth and consumption and its catastrophic effects on our resources and climate doesn't make that analysis wrong. Nor is it the preserve of "lefties". Accepting the doubling or trebling of energy consumption by 2050 as a "hard reality" in a world that supposedly must continue to go on developing and expanding will not help anyone, nor will being an apologist for capitalism's excesses. Can he not see that we may be forced to accept a simpler life, which, paradoxically, may make us more content in the long term? Have we really got an alternative to this? Peter StrotherUpper Finlarig, Highland
· Campaigning on climate change should not be aligned to the left. The crucial element of change in British society is the small-C conservative. The anti-roads campaign of the 90s stopped hundreds of roads because local people, often Conservatives, came out to defend their countryside. My father-in-law, a staunch Labour supporter, worked closely with the local Tory mayor to deliver a superb children's playground and a community bus service in Lichfield. Our conservative MP spent hours on the phone to persuade the local council to allow a community garden.
However, the issue is not about left or right but about thinkers and doers. The small-C conservative wants to make it happen, not to have a discussion about "inclusive proposals" and "social consensus". Environmentalists tend to be good at attending general meetings about renewable energy but, when an application for a real wind turbine is before a council, they rarely engage. The green NGOs need to stop concentrating on attracting the thinkers and e-petition signers but also to engage apolitically with the rest of society on practical solutions with local councils, planning, communities and MPs. Victoria HarveyLeighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire
· Lynas is spot-on. The triumph of ideology over scientific evidence hampers effective policy to slow down global warming. Opposition among greens to fracking is an outstanding example. Of course the location of fracking must take account of local geology and social factors, but the country that has recently done more than any other to slow global warning has been the United States, which has greatly reduced its carbon emissions by switching massively from coal to gas. It did so by unlocking vast reserves of shale gas through fracking.
The most urgent need in policy on climate change is to prevent the huge projected increase in the building of coal-fired power stations. Gas is still a fossil fuel and can be only a transitional solution. But its carbon impact is about half that of coal. It can give us a breathing space, more effectively and quickly than any alternative now on offer. We need time to develop the most effective long-term solutions to avoid a catastrophic rise in global temperatures. Dick TaverneHouse of Lords
· Lynas assumes the classic sophist mantle, exposed by Socrates some centuries ago, but regularly recycled as the comfort-zone from which to launch any "plague on both your houses" diatribe when serious change threatens or is needed.
Characteristically, for him it is the left that is most at fault, because "the left's global doom threats ... have made the right embrace denialism" - rather than any long-term corporate commitment to poorly controlled carbon release. His acerbic parody of Naomi Klein's analysis and intention raises questions about his own motives and affiliations, and are a gratuitous insult to people around the world who are coming together to keep up the pressure on governments and corporations to clean up their acts before it is too late. The scientists are predominantly on their side, too.
Is Lynas's real fear that the difficult processes of coping with climate change, in so far as they achieve success, will trigger new, more insistent questions about how we allowed our world to degenerate to this extent, and how the causes may correlate with those of other issues - inequality, educational opportunity, economic malfunction and so on?
Given his apparent views, these could well be the real questions keeping him awake at night. Ralph WindleArts Social Action, Witney
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The Guardian
March 17, 2015 Tuesday 8:47 PM GMT
Six changes to fuel consumption that could combat global warming;
A new report shows how widespread adoption of low-carbon fuels could stall climate change
BYLINE: Oliver Balch
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 979 words
Low-carbon fuels - think biofuel, hydrogen and electricity - currently comprise a mere 3% of today's fuel mix. That needs to increase to 35% by 2050 if irreversible climate change is to be avoided, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The business-led sustainability group BSR, a global nonprofit that counts oil giants Shell, Chevron and ENI among its more than 250 members, is trying to map how such a transition could occur. In January, the organization released its recommendations for transitioning to low-carbon, sustainable fuels in order to prevent global warming from climbing past the critical 2C mark.
With energy companies sitting on 1,688bn barrels of oil reserves from the Arctic ice caps and Canada's tar sands, it won't be easy to push a transition forward. But the BSR-managed Future of Fuels coalition believes it's doable, assuming organizations take the right steps at the right time. So, what's the plan?
Related: The argument for divesting from fossil fuels is becoming an overwhelming one | Alan Rusbridger
1. Get the trucks in the fast lane
Medium and heavy-duty vehicles make up just one in every 14 vehicles on the road, yet they account for more than 25% of road transportation fuel, according to the National Petroleum Institute's figures in the BSR report. Extend that to commercial vehicles of all kinds and the proportion jumps to 43%. This number isn't shrinking: a study commissioned by Exxon predicts that commercial vehicle demand will increase by 70% between now and 2040.
The conclusion: change won't happen without fleet operators and other major corporate fuel buyers getting onboard.
Fleet operators aren't deaf to such numbers, says Ryan Schuchard, associate director for BSR's climate change program. Nor are they clear what to do about them. "Fleet operators are all over the place," says Schuchard, who blames the mess on competing messages from scientists, activists and fuel providers. "Ultimately, we need a stronger and clearer voice from the users of these fuels that [sustainability] matters."
2. Make it viable
Despite huge advances in alternative fuels over recent years, commercial viability is still a long way off. Full commercialisation won't just happen - it requires massive investment, both in technology and infrastructure (think national networks of electric vehicle charging points, hydrogen filling stations and so on). Governments will have to pay up, but so too will the private sector - aided, most likely, by subsidies or other policy incentives.
3. Crunch the numbers
There are many knowledge gaps in the world of low-carbon fuels. Scientists, for example, are getting close to calculating the carbon intensity of different fuel types. But finding consensus (or even data) on the water, social or economic footprints of low-carbon fuels is hard. Those studies that have been done mostly exist in isolation. Alongside the need for hard science is the need for agreement around basic scientific parameters, Schuchard says. "There are so many different ways to think about the impacts of fuel. Direct or cumulative, probable or actual, objective or situational, chronic or acute: it's all a bit of a hodgepodge at present. The real challenge is to put these together into a unified framework."
4. Performance first
Proponents of various low-carbon fuels have plenty to say about why their fuel of choice is cheaper, betterand cleaner. Objective, performance-based data is what's missing. "We need to flip from companies thinking about the type of fuel they use to the performance criteria of the fuel," Schuchard says.
BSR hopes its proposed "fuel tool" will provide this. The tool, which is backed by Walmart, Coca Cola, UPS and PepsiCo, will aim to provide uniform lifecycle assessment information for all low-carbon fuels. It will start with carbon intensity, before expanding into other sustainability issues. A first iteration should be ready by the end of this year.
We need to flip from companies thinking about the type of fuel they use to the performance criteria of the fuel.
Ryan Schuchard
5. Everyone's a winner
Don't go betting on winners, BSR pleads. The last century might have been a one-horse petro-powered race, but the future is polyfuel. The rationale for a more diversified fuel mix is twofold. First, there's the so-called "locked in" problem: what if you throw all your eggs into the liquefied natural gas basket, only to watch an as-yet-unknown wonder fuel spring up?
Second, there are unintended consequences to consider. None of the current crop of low-carbon fuels is without question marks. For natural gas, it's methane leaks in production. For biofuels, it's land use. For electric, it's dirty power stations. These need to be ironed out before even thinking about which option might possibly win out.
6. Don't dawdle
As BSR's report makes clear, low-carbon fuel will only become a meaningful reality if systemic changes take place soon. The level of atmospheric carbon has already surpassed 400 parts per million. Exceed 450 parts per million and we're fried. Policymakers, scientists and businesses all have a role to play in preventing that.
Furthermore, overhauling today's fossil-fuel dependency is not a short-term game. But none of this should stop companies from acting now. Schuchard: "There are uncertainties, but not enough for us to delay."
As a recent BSR report clarifies, there are practical steps corporate fleet operators and truck operators can take. Establishing a fuel-sustainability policy is a starter. Accelerating low-carbon solutions through collaboration is another.
As for the laggards and naysayers? Tell them to go stick it in their tailpipes.
The values-led business hub is funded by SC Johnson. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled "brought to you by". Find out more here.
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The Guardian
March 17, 2015 Tuesday 8:01 PM GMT
Correction Appended
Ed Davey backs Guardian climate change campaign;
British pension and insurance funds should urgently consider divesting from coal and it's up to government to provide an incentive structure, says UK energy and climate change secretary
BYLINE: Terry Macalister
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 1360 words
Pension and insurance funds should consider urgent divestment from "very risky" coal assets and then gradually retreat from oil and gas, Ed Davey, the UK energy and climate change secretary, has warned.
Throwing his weight behind the Guardian's "Keep it in the ground" campaign, he said a recent analysis which suggested 82% of coal reserves must remain untouched if temperature increases are to be kept below 2C - the widely accepted threshold for dangerous climate change - was "realistic".
Davey said it was not up to an energy minister to tell fund managers how to run their businesses, but added that it was vital to introduce regulatory transparency that would drive investors from fossil fuels to renewables.
"If you invest in a lot of coal assets you may be over-exposed but it is up to you to make that decision and for government to ensure the information is available. The 82%... is quite a number. It seems to me to be relatively realistic," he argued.
"We are going to need a lot of oil and gas over the next two or three decades but increasingly over time I think these oil and gas assets will look risky as the world makes climate change treaties, as it will do, as carbon pricing becomes more ubiquitous and companies cut down on fossil fuel use far, far quicker than you expect and therefore this argument is really, really significant."
On Monday, the Guardian launched a campaign asking the two largest charitable foundations in the world - the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust - to move their investments out of fossil fuel companies. More than 72,000 people have signed the petition calling for the foundations to divest.
Introducing the campaign, editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger wrote : "This [campaign] will almost certainly be won in time: the physics is unarguable. But we are launching our campaign today in the firm belief that it will force the issue now into the boardrooms and inboxes of people who have billions of dollars at their disposal."
Davey wrote in a comment piece, "I'm strongly backing the Guardian's campaign to raise the profile of the divestment debate ahead of the December climate change negotiations in Paris."
His support comes amid signs that British pension funds, banks and insurance companies have not changed their behaviour since a major report warned last year they were much more financially exposed than their European counterparts to overvalued or "stranded" fossil fuels.
And it comes as members of the European parliament in Brussels plan to establish a specialist group to campaign in favour of carbon divestment and demand new carbon reporting requirements.
Davey said investors such as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, heirs to the Standard Oil fortunes, were already showing the way by divesting from coal and highly polluting oil or tar sands.
"Government cannot instruct these trillions of pounds and dollars that are in the control of private funds to move from x to y. What we can do is to put in place an incentive structure that will encourage people to think like that.
"Even modest swings out of fossil fuels into clean energy will have a dramatic effect. Carbon Tracker and Mark Carney [governor of the Bank of England] are not saying you cannot invest in fossil fuels but if you have a high level of disclosure it can be a game changer."
Asked whether it was compatible to issue these kinds of warnings and yet give short-term subsidies to keep coal plants open, support fracking and continue to give tax breaks to North Sea oil companies, Davey said coal had to be treated more urgently than oil or gas even though, for energy security reasons, the UK needed some coal-fired power plants for the very short term.
"I have been clear that coal assets are very risky but you are not going to get rid of cars and gas heating systems overnight and so we are going to need quite a lot of oil and gas. The question is would you like that to come from Russia and Qatar or locally where it is well regulated, gives us jobs and provides tax revenues."
Related: Britain can signal the beginning of the end for coal investment | Ed Davey
While the Bank of England is looking at the dangers of a carbon bubble, there is frustration that nothing has been heard from the European Central Bank on the same issue.
Reinhard Bütikofer, a Green MEP, said Europe's financial institutions were largely "asleep at the wheel" on this issue, in spite of numerous wake-up calls on the carbon bubble from stakeholders such as the the Bank of England.
Bütikofer and some of his colleagues are behind the establishment of a fossil fuel divestment group inside the European parliament.
They were also behind a report issued by the Green European Foundation, called Carbon Bubble: The Price of Doing Too Little Too Late published last year.
This report shows that a British pension funds such as the UK Universities Superannuation Scheme "stand out as the most vulnerable" across the European Union.
Current and former employees at British Airways and British Steel also have their pension investments more highly skewed towards coal, oil and gas investment than average, according to the report.
Meanwhile, Barclays Bank has a high share of outstanding corporate loans to companies involved in carbon activities while Lloyds Banking Group has a higher than average share of high-carbon equity and bond holdings.
The data and analysis concludes that up to (EURO)1tn of investments could be at risk from a sudden change to a low carbon economy triggered by a breakthrough in clean technology.
The carbon bubble refers to the overvaluation of fossil fuel reserves and related assets should the world meet its stated aim of limiting climate change.
The report points out that the objective of limiting any increase in the Earth's surface temperature to 2C makes it impossible to burn many of the reserves that have been found, leaving "stranded assets."
But the report says that equity, bond and credit exposures to companies holding fossil fuels are substantial across the European Union. It is estimated that pension funds hold up to (EURO)330bn (£238bn), banks (EURO)480bn and insurance firms (EURO)400bn.
"Such large figures raise serious concerns about the potential consequences of these investments if a large part of the oil, gas and coal reserves ends up stranded," argues the report, which was written by Profundo, a Dutch economic research consultancy, and partly funded by the European Parliament.
The overall impact of a carbon bubble is not seen as a likely source of systemic risk.
"However, in the case of continued economic fragility in the Eurozone, a carbon bubble shock would come on top of other causes of financial instability and would be more difficult to absorb."
The report highlights Britain as a particularly vulnerable country. "Although a precise ranking is not possible, analysis shows than many pension funds from the UK have a large exposure to the carbon bubble. These include the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) and BAE Systems Pension Scheme."
The Profundo research describes the fact that 12% of the USS, is invested in high carbon assets as remarkable, especially as the further education fund itself warned in its own report back of 2001 about the risk of climate change to investors. By comparison, the pension fund for Shell oil employees has less than 6% of its assets in high-carbon investments.
USS said it had been looking at climate change as an investment issue for many years. The fund was already encouraging companies to improve their disclosures of carbon emissions and how they were managing climate risks. "In addition, since 2000 the fund has also committed approximately $300m in renewable energy, low carbon and clean tech investments."
Some energy companies are already taking steps to reduce their exposure to carbon.
E.ON, one of the big six power suppliers in the UK, is splitting its business into two. The current name will remain with a business that will be dedicated to renewable power.
The United Nations organisation in charge of global climate change talks said earlier this week it was lending its "moral authority" to the carbon divestment campaign.
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CORRECTION: A missing word resulted in a piece about climate change saying that limiting the Earth's surface temperature to 2C would make it impossible to burn many fossil fuel reserves, according to a report by the Green European Foundation. The threshold is a surface temperature increase of 2C ( Davey backs switch from coal to green investments, 18 March, page 1).
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The Guardian
March 17, 2015 Tuesday 5:08 PM GMT
Losing paradise: the people displaced by atomic bombs, and now climate change;
People in the Pacific Marshall Islands and Kiribati are facing oblivion as the sea around them rises, and they are already suffering from food shortages, droughts and floods. Karl Mathiesen reports from the frontline of climate crisis
BYLINE: Karl Mathiesen in the Marshall Islands and Kiribati
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 2774 words
In 1946 an American commodore gathered Lirok Joash and her people together and asked them to temporarily leave their homes on Bikini Atoll. The US needed somewhere to test its atomic bombs. It would be, said the navy man, "for the good of mankind and to end all world wars".
Eight years later US scientists detonated Castle Bravo, the massive, bungled hydrogen bomb that would gouge a crater more than half a mile wide and make Bikini uninhabitable for decades, perhaps centuries. A calculating error created a blast equivalent to detonating 15 megatonnes of TNT, the bomb was the largest ever detonated by the United States - about 1,000 times larger than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of the second world war.
Joash was 20-years-old when she left Bikini. She has been forced to relocate by radiation or unsuitable living conditions five times - including a brief and disastrous return to a still radioactive Bikini in the 1970s. Now, at 89, she is the oldest of the Bikini population forced to move by the nuclear tests. Her memories of the atoll have now grown dim.
"I don't think she'll make it until the next return," says Joash's grandson Alson Kelen, a former mayor of the Bikinian council-in-exile. "I don't think I'll make it. I don't think my children or my grandchildren will make it. The dream that we would return already faded away a few years ago."
The Bikinians, most of whom will never see Bikini, live scattered across the Marshall Islands, a collection of 24 atolls in the Western Pacific. Joash, Kelen and 200 of their people now live on Ejit, a tiny low-lying islet set aside for the Bikinians near the Marshall Islands' capital atoll Majuro.
"We've been kicked around for a while, for the last almost 70 years," says Kelen. "And until now living in these tight communities here is the best we can get. And it's so sad. It's so sad. Because every time we look at this we feel like we're sailors on a voyage, we're still right in the middle of the ocean."
And the ocean, driven by climate change, is rising.
Across the Pacific, the subtle, unremitting first impacts of the climate crisis are already strangling lives. Later this year in Paris, the world's leaders will attempt to produce an agreement that will secure the global climate. But secure for whom?
Floods washed over Ejit three times in 2014. Kelen fears that before long, his people will be moving again.
"It's the same story. Nuclear time, we were relocated. Climate change, we will be relocated. It's the same harshness affecting us," he says.
In the Marshall Islands almost everyone lives within a few hundred metres of the sea and less than three metres above it. Inundations have destroyed homes and crops. Droughts of extraordinary intensity and length have necessitated food and water drops. Fresh water grows scarcer.
People are trying to defend their land by planting mangroves, and Sisyphean sea walls are built and rebuilt. But people's thoughts are turning from adaptation and resilience toward a climate exodus. Scientists predict that in 30 years, life here will be so uncomfortable most people will leave. A notion the Marshallese abhor. The Bikinian calamity serves as a national warning that homelands, once lost, cannot be replaced.
"If the land doesn't exist, what happens to these people for whom the land is the most integral thing? For the answer, just look at the Bikinians," says Jack Niedenthal, the liason officer for the Bikini Trust.
Marshallese foreign minister Tony de Brum, who has emerged as a champion of the global climate movement, says: "Displacement is not an option we relish or cherish and we will not operate on that basis. We will operate on the basis that we can in fact help to prevent this from happening."
But politics and atmospheric physics are running away from the Marshallese. In March 2014 almost 100 homes on the capital atoll Majuro were destroyed by a combination of high tide and big swell. More than 900 people were placed in shelters. Families have since returned to live in homes half collapsed into the sea.
"I can tell you right now that all of those [inundation] events that have occurred in the Marshall Islands can be attributed to sea level rise," says Reginald White, the director of the Marshall Islands National Weather Service. On the pancake flat atolls, three centimetres of sea level rise will cause a flood to spread inland a further 30 metres.
The higher sea level combines with seasonal high tides (known as king tides), large swells and high winds to push water on to the land. During La Niña years (part of the couple of ocean-atmosphere phenomenon that affects weather globally and includes El Niño) the seas can rise up to 30cm above normal. The last decade of predominantly La Niña conditions has offered a bleak curtain raiser for things to come.
"We are seeing more extreme events today than we used to see in the 60s, 70s and 80s. Even without La Niña we still receive inundations," says White.
Some scientists predict climate change will cause more intense and more frequent El Niño and La Niña events - although this is less certain than sea level rise. El Niño events are typically followed by dry periods in the Marshall Islands. During 2013, after a very weak El Niño, the northern atolls were hit by a severe drought. Food and water were delivered to desperate communities. Production of coconut oil, one of the countries only exports, fell by almost a third, a loss of close to US$2.5m (£1.6m) or 1.5% of GDP.
"If there is another drought then the industry will be gone. That will really effect everything here," says Mison Levai, the marketing manager of the national coconut oil producer Tobolar. This will not only be bad news for the 70 employees of Tobolar's refinery in Majuro. For the 20,000 people who live on the rural coconut-growing 'outer atolls' the equation is simple. No coconuts, no income.
On the outer atoll of Arno, families work together every day, six days a week, collecting fallen drupes, removing the husks, skilfully shucking the flesh (called copra) and drying it in makeshift ovens. It is then shipped to Majuro to be turned into oil and exported.
Torrak Anton, a copra farmer, uses a stick to scratch the arithmetic of his poverty in the dirt of the road. After food, rent and contributions to the copra dealer and island chief, he is left with $34 a week for the seven people in his household. During times of drought the coconuts shrink and the money for clothing, housing and education disappears.
Without copra, outer islanders will be reduced to a subsistence survival, eked from the land, supplemented by fishing and likely made impossible by tidal inundations. Already 1,200-1,400 people are reported to have moved from rural atolls to district centres - exacerbating overcrowding and making flooding in the capital Majuro more damaging.
Depending on how sharply the world cuts carbon emissions, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ( IPCC ) predicts the global mean sea level will rise by 26-82cm between now and 2100. The IPCC concluded in 2013 that even if the increasingly quixotic-looking "safe" limit of 2C of global warming were somehow achieved by the Paris talks, the sea would continue to wash over Kiribati and the Marshall Islands. What the rest of the world considers acceptable climate change is, quite simply, a disaster for atoll dwellers.
In spite of De Brum's refusal to countenance a national evacuation, White says the Marshall Islands are likely to become unliveable for all but a hardy few before the midway point of this century.
"What is the exact definition of habitable? It gets to a point where the extreme events become so frequent that it becomes very uncomfortable to make a good living," he says.
The people of Kiribati (pronounced Ki-ri-bas) are the Marshall Islands' fellows on the low road to climate oblivion. The capital atoll Tarawa is overcrowded and underdeveloped, even compared to Majuro. Rita Kaimwata, a 27-year-old mother of two (soon to be three), lives in a typical Kiribati home of driftwood, salvaged timber and palm thatching. Her tiny block of land in the village of Temwaiku is separated from the Pacific Ocean by a thin dirt road and a hump of sand less than a metre high.
Like many Tarawans, the Kaimwata's access to food and fresh water is tenuous. Their diet of rice and fish is supplemented by whatever vegetables they can grow. Every second day, for one hour, the government pumps treated drinking water and the family fill up a small tank. This precious water must be kept for keeping hydrated in the punishing equatorial heat.
For bathing, dishes, clothes and watering vegetables there is a well that taps the thin layer of fresh water (called a lens) a couple of metres below the ground. But last year (and again a few months ago) the sea swept over the road, through the Kaimwata's home, across their cabbages and into the well. Now nothing grows.
Set against scientific warnings of a future of catastrophic climate change events (such as typhoon Haiyan and hurricane Sandy ) the loss of a vegetable patch seems insignificant. But for Kaimwata's children the link between food, water and rising sea levels is profound and the margin between life and death could be as fine as the ability to grow a few cabbages.
Kaimwata, like many residents (called i-Kiribati), giggles to hide distress. "I laugh because sometimes we believe that in 20 or 30 years our country will be gone forever. But it's not funny." Devoid of rock and substantial natural defences, this is among the most marginal of all regular human habitats.
Nearly a decade of regular inundations has caused parts of Tarawa's already thin and polluted water lens to turn salty. Clean water is almost non-existent. Crops have died. Between 2005 and 2010, the number of malnourished multiplied eight times. In September, an outbreak of rotavirus from bad water infected 2,513 children under five years old. Seven were killed.
Kaimwata looks around at her children and her neighbours' children: "Only the children get sick. Many children die in Kiribati when they get the diarrhoea." More than a third of i-Kiribati are under 15.
The water situation is desperate. Water is being drawn from the freshwater lens 20% faster than rain replaces it. Bacteria from open defecation (there are few toilets), industrial and domestic chemicals and seawater contaminate all water sources - including the government supply. Only 60% of the atoll's population receive rations of 'clean' government water. The other 23,000 rely solely on well water that Tarawa's director of public health Patrick Timeon describes as "grossly unsafe".
"The enormity of water-associated disease and death has not been fully assessed," says Timeon, but the direct and indirect impacts are "colossal". He begs for assistance to raise just £70,000 for two desalination plants that could provide safe water to the entire population.
Kiribati's president Anote Tong is frank. Years of failed talks and prevarication by industrialised countries have shaken his belief in the UN process. The land, homes and futures of his people (like the Bikinians before them) have been deemed the price of doing business, the acceptable cost of delaying the end of the carbon economy. In contrast to De Brum, he is already working on encouraging his people to leave.
"If what will happen in Paris will deal with the case of the most vulnerable countries like us, then maybe we have some guarantee that we will be able to stay. But if we don't, I'm not going to put the future of my country on the outcome and the whims and wishes of those countries to decide. We've got to plan ahead. The old saying wish for the best but plan for the worst," he says.
The countries' contrary rhetoric on climate change is partly informed by their differing migration opportunities. The Marshallese have a compact of free association with the US, meaning they can resettle as they wish. But the i-Kiribati have few avenues of emigration. Tong's despairing statements are partly designed to goad Kiribati's major donor countries Australia and New Zealand to open their borders to his people.
His plan for the worst, encourages young people to learn a profession and 'migrate with dignity'. "We have to relocate people because the landmass is going to decline. That's common sense. Simple common sense ... I can say that I refuse to move, but that's being stupid isn't it? Because it will not be me that will be affected. It will be my grandchildren," he says.
Even now, it is not difficult to find the suffering grandchildren of Kiribati. Between Tong's modest parliament and Kaimwata's home is Tarawa's hospital. The overloaded facility desperately needs modernisation and expansion. People sleep on the floor or outside on the ground. Cats roam the wards and ants swarm around dripping taps. In a corner of the paediatrics wing, panting slowly in the heat, lies one-year-old Atanimatang Atanimatang.
He fell sick during the rotavirus outbreak in September and his little body has wrestled against the diarrhoea and fever caused by the virus for four months. He shows signs of kwashiorkor, a type of malnutrition commonly found in regions hit by famine. His mother Katewea Atanimatang watches her son's febrile sleep. They receive government water, she says, but when it is not available they are forced to drink from the well. She looks exhausted and sad.
When I contacted one of his nurses in the days before publication, Atanimatang had recovered slightly. He may yet live long enough to go to school, attend church, marry and have children - like most other i-Kiribati and Marshallese. But if he does, it's likely he'll also live to see his homeland evacuated.
The elders are distraught that this loss is being committed to their young. The Reverend Eria Maerierie is an old man. He won't live to see his country's loss. But he has a long enough memory to know that things have changed. If the tide is high on a Sunday he now conducts services in a church surrounded by water. And he rages against the apathy behind the rising sea.
"We are suffering in this part of the world from what those people in the rich world are working with gases. And its consequences fell on us in the Pacific. They have been selfish, thinking of what they can achieve with gas. What can we do? We just live with that dying feeling in our hearts. Our voice is nothing to them."
Will the atolls disappear?
The most widely-reported and possibly most misleading 'effect of climate change' in atoll nations is erosion. It's a striking, media-friendly narrative, climate change we can see. Homes undermined by rising seas, beaches scoured back to the coral shelf and coconut trees felled by salt poisoning. But the evidence showing a clear link between the last century of sea level rise and erosion is far from conclusive.
Research on the erosion of atolls really only began in 2011. The University of Aukland's Murray Ford has compared aerial photography from the second world war with current satellite images and the results may surprise some. Despite a small but significant sea level rise of 20cm last century, Ford found that the last half of the century saw a general (although not uniform) trend of accretion across 100 Pacific atolls. The islands are getting bigger.
"All the research that's come out in the last few years has shown that the islands aren't eroding away. It's kind of counter intuitive," says Ford. "The conventional models show that they should be eroding, but the current observations show that they aren't."
Rather than being the indisputable first effects of climate change, all the photos of dead palms and disappearing beaches attest to the extreme fragility of these landforms to change.
Related: Climate change in the Marshall Islands and Kiribati, before and after - interactive
It is likely that on densely-populated Tarawa and Majuro, causeways, shoreline developments and dredging have much more influence on local erosion than sea level. Confirmation bias also plays a part in both the islanders' perceptions and the reporting from these islands. The eye isn't drawn so easily to the places where the sand is piling up. Any erosion is accepted as proof of the climate change narrative.
But just because the islands are growing now, doesn't mean they won't suddenly begin eroding when the sea reaches a certain height. At the moment though, the disappearance of land is less of a threat than the loss of habitable land, says Ford.
"The inundation risk continues to rise and it's highly likely that they'll be frequently inundated well before they are eroded away," he says.
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The Guardian
March 17, 2015 Tuesday 2:48 PM GMT
Students occupy Oxford university in fossil fuel divestment protest;
University council says it needs to give further consideration to call from student's union to divest £2bn endowment fund from coal and tar sands
BYLINE: Karl Mathiesen
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
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Students occupied an administrative building at Oxford university on Monday in protest at the university's decision to defer a decision on whether to dump its shares in fossil fuels.
Around 15 student activists peacefully occupied the Clarendon Building and unveiled a banner. One activist told the Guardian that two police vans and two squad cars arrived at the university. "There's lots of police around. They've put two security guards inside here with us," she said.
No attempt was made to remove the protesters and the security staff made no attempt to block the protesters from entering the building just as it closed for the day. Despite their stated intention to stay the night, the activists left the building at around 8pm.
John Clements, who was Oxford's director of finance until 2004, joined the sit in. He said: "We are bitterly disappointed about the university's failure to come to a decision. Oxford should be leading the move away from investment in all world-destroying fossil fuel companies to more sustainable forms of energy."
The protest was prompted by the university saying it needed to give thorough consideration to a campaign asking it to divest from fossil fuels.
A student union resolution in October called on the council to drop its shares in coal and tar sands companies and shift its investments towards low-carbon industries.
A statement released by the council on Monday said: "Last October's Oxford university student union resolution has raised an important and multi-faceted matter which requires thorough consideration. The university council had a good discussion of the issues and agreed to consider the matter further at a future meeting."
In response to the students' request, the university's Socially Responsible Investment Review Committee last year conducted an inquiry on the divestment of the university's £2bn endowment. Their report has not been made public. The council discussed the committee's recommendations on Monday morning and decided to hold off on making a decision.
Oxford student campaigner Ellen Gibson said she was "disappointed" by the decision. "Choosing not to act at a time when inactivity is an increasingly risky and unethical move. Avoidance of divestment by the University will not slow our campaign or indeed the pressing need for meaningful action on the climate crisis."
The students' two-year campaign has been supported by a broad coalition of voices within the university. Alumni, donors and staff have all called on the university to join other educational institutions, including Stanford and Glasgow, in the divestment movement.
Guardian journalist George Monbiot has told the university he will hand back his degree should they fail to divest.
"I think Oxford has a moral responsibility to stop procrastinating and to engage with this issue now. Climate change is the great moral question of our age, and ducking it, as Oxford seems inclined to do, is an insufficient response. It's a simple matter: does the university continue to invest in the destruction of the benign climatic conditions to which we owe almost everything, or doesn't it?" he said.
Solar entrepreneur and Oxford alumnus Jeremy Leggett, who has similarly vowed to return his degree, said: "I don't think universities should be training young people to craft a viable civilisation with one hand and bankroll its sabotage with the other."
The university's relationship with fossil fuel companies goes beyond its investments. Royal Dutch Shell funds a geoscience laboratory at the university, which investigates, and may assist with the extraction of, "unconventional hydrocarbons" (shale gas, shale oil, tight sands, clathrates and coal bed methane). Shell said it did not want to comment on the divestment decision.
Campaigners said the imperative to divest from fossil fuels goes beyond morality. Scientists say more than two thirds of fossil fuel reserves must stay in the ground if catastrophic climate change is to be avoided. This means the companies that hold these reserves may be overvalued.
Oxford's own stranded assets programme identifies the fossil fuel campaign as the fastest growing divestment movement in history. A total of $50bn has been committed to move out of the industry as a result. High profile institutions to have committed to shift their money include the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation, the British Medical Association and the World Council of Churches.
Also on Monday, the Guardian launched its campaign calling on two of the world's biggest philanthropic funds, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust, to divest from fossil fuels.
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The Guardian
March 17, 2015 Tuesday 10:38 AM GMT
Everything you wanted to ask about the Guardian's climate change campaign;
The Guardian is calling on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust to divest from fossil fuels. We explain here everything you need to know about the campaign and why we are doing it
BYLINE: Emma Howard and Damian Carrington
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 3365 words
What is the Guardian asking for?
We are calling on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust to remove their investments from the top 200 fossil fuel companies and any commingled funds that include fossil fuel public equities and corporate bonds within five years. We are also asking them to immediately freeze any new investments in these companies.
Who are the Wellcome Trust and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation?
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust are respectively the largest and second largest charitable foundations in the world.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have provided billions in funding for global development, health and education. Their first project, which connected 99% of US libraries to the internet is now making similar progress in Africa, South America and Eastern Europe. They have tackled the devastating effects of malaria and polio and funded the experimental vaccines working to wipe them out.
The Wellcome Trust exists to fund medical research. They have led the fight against ebola, pouring millions into experimental vaccines and rapid-response humanitarian research. They are also a major funder of research into potential treatments for cancer and new therapies that could restore the sight of millions.
Why is the Guardian targeting them with this campaign?
Both organisations rate climate change as a serious threat. In its Strategic Plan 2010-20, the Wellcome Trust states that: "Global health is under serious threat from the interlinked issues of access to nutrition, food security and climate change." It lists "Connecting environment, nutrition and health" as one of its five challenges.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation states that : "The foundation believes that climate change is a major issue facing all of us, particularly poor people in developing countries... many of our global health and development grants directly address problems that climate change creates or exacerbates."
It also says that its investments are not simply there to make money: "when instructing the investment managers, Bill and Melinda also consider other issues beyond corporate profits, including the values that drive the foundation's work. They have defined areas in which the endowment will not invest, such as companies whose profit model is centrally tied to corporate activity that they find egregious. This is why the endowment does not invest in tobacco stocks."
Yet between them, these two foundations also have over $70bn (£47bn) worth of endowments, millions of which is funding exploration for new fossil fuel reserves. In 2013 the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation had invested at least $1bn of this in 35 of the top 200 carbon reserve companies, while in 2014 the Wellcome Trust had £564m invested in Shell, BP, Schlumberger, Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton alone.
These investments are undoing much of the untold good work these organisations do.
What is divestment?
Divestment is the opposite of investment - it is the removal of your investment capital from stocks, bonds or funds. The global movement for fossil fuel divestment (sometimes also called disinvestment) is asking institutions to move their money out of oil, coal and gas companies for both moral and financial reasons. These institutions include universities, religious institutions, pension funds, local authorities and charitable foundations.
Related: Climate fight won't wait for Paris: vive la résistance
Evidence shows that proven fossil fuel reserves are more than three times higher than we can afford to burn in order to stay below the generally agreed threshold for dangerous climate change. Fossil fuel companies are currently banking on extracting these reserves and selling them - and are actively prospecting for more. By supporting these companies, investors not only continue to fund unsustainable business models that are bound to make climate change worse, but they also risk their financial assets becoming worthless if international agreements on climate change are met. These investments are creating a " carbon bubble " worth trillions of dollars based on assets that could prove to be unusable. The Bank of England is conducting an investigation into whether these over-valued assets could plunge the world into another economic crisis. Although the impact of divestment on share prices may be relatively small, the reputational damage can have serious financial consequences.
Since 2010, the movement for fossil fuel divestment, started by 350.org, has persuaded 180 institutions, worth $50bn (£33bn) to divest, with Stanford University in the US, Glasgow University in the UK and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund among the most notable.
It is the fastest growing divestment campaign in history and could cause significant damage to coal, gas and oil companies according to a study by Oxford University. Previous divestment campaigns have targeted the tobacco and gambling industries and companies funding the violence in Darfur. Divestment is perhaps most well known for its role in the fight against apartheid in South Africa.
Bill McKibben on the growth of the divestment movement
Has anyone divested from fossil fuels already?
More than 200 institutions, worth over $50bn (£33bn), have committed to divest from fossil fuels, including universities, local authorities, faith organisations and pension funds.
A coalition of philanthropic foundations, including the heirs to the Rockefeller oil fortune, started to pull out their investments last year, while cities divesting include San Francisco, Seattle and Oslo. The world's largest sovereign wealth fund, Norway's Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), recently revealed it had dropped 114 companies, including tar sands producers, on climate grounds. The World Council of Churches and the Quaker movement in Britain have made commitments not to invest in fossil fuels, but campaigns targeting the Church of England and the Vatican are ongoing.
In October 2014, Glasgow university became the first in Europe to make the commitment, with the University of Bedfordshire following close behind. In the US, the New School in New York is divesting while Stanford University has committed to remove its assets from coal companies.
What is the Guardian itself doing?
Guardian Media Group manages a fund of around £600m that supports the Guardian's journalism. This fund has holdings in fossil fuel companies. The board has begun a process to review these investments with a view to potential future divestment.
How do I get involved?
Sign the petition below to receive regular updates on the campaign. You can also follow updates on the Keep it in the Ground blog. You can find all of our ongoing news stories on Keep it in the Ground here.
What is the threat posed by climate change?
"No challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change," said Barack Obama in January 2015.
2014 was the hottest year on record. 97% of scientific papers on climate change agree that the warming that has led to this peak was caused in large part by human activity.
No country will remain unaffected by climate change, but poorer areas of the globe are likely to be affected the most. Extreme weather events, such as heatwaves and intense storms are on the rise and will become normal. As sea levels rise, coastal cities and communities will will be more susceptible to flooding.
Diseases affected by temperature, such as malaria, will spread to new regions. Severe droughts will lead to food and water shortages - by as much as 50% by the end of the century, according to the World Bank. This could create billions of climate refugees, displaced by conflict triggered by these shortages. For example, a study by Columbia University argues that climate change was a key driver of the conflict in Syria.
The United Nations and climate negotiators representing governments around the world agree that in order to avoid dangerous climate change, the temperature of the planet must not rise more than 2C above pre-industrial levels. According to the World Bank, without immediate concerted action, we are currently on track to reach this within two or three decades and to reach a 4C rise by the end of the century.
This, according to Prof Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, is "incompatible with any reasonable characterization of an organized, equitable and civilized global community".
For more information see the Guardian's Ultimate Climate Change FAQ.
Why should we keep some fossil fuels in the ground?
The risk posed by today's fossil fuel industry to the climate comes down to simple arithmetic using just three numbers, or "doing the math', as campaigner Bill McKibben puts it.
The first number is 2C, the amount of global warming the world's governments have set as a limit. Beyond 2C, the world's scientists project "severe, widespread, and irreversible impacts" on people. The 2C number began life in 1995 as a round number that was useful in political negotiations. But since then scientists have warned that even 2C of warming will bring damaging impacts.
The second number is 565bn tonnes (gigatons or GT) of carbon dioxide, which scientists estimate is the maximum amount that can be produced by future fossil fuel burning if we are to have an 80% chance of keeping global warming under 2C. If you use a lower chance, say 50% or 66%, the amount of allowable CO2 gets a bit bigger.
But whatever the amount, they are all dwarfed by the third number. This is the total CO2 that would be released if today's proven reserves of coal, oil and gas are burned: 2,795 GT. That is the fossil fuel identified and ready to extract.
So here's the arithmetic. To stay under 2C, only 565 GT of CO2 can be emitted, but there is already 2,795 GT - fives times more - ready to burn.
This simple analysis has global implications. If climate change is to be tamed, most existing fossil fuel reserves must be kept in the ground.
What is the carbon bubble?
The " carbon bubble " is a term that has been used by regulators, financial companies and campaigners to describe the over valuation of stocks in coal, gas and oil reserves owned by fossil fuel companies around the world. If governments pursue international targets on carbon emissions in order to curb climate change, then between two-thirds and four-fifths of these reserves cannot be used, rendering them worthless. As fossil fuel companies are among the richest in the world these "stranded assets" have the potential to trigger a new global economic crisis if investors pull out in quick succession.
The carbon bubble could be inflating stocks worth trillions of dollars, according to a study published in 2013 by think-tank Carbon Tracker and economist Lord Nicholas Stern who authored a landmark 2006 report commissioned by Gordon Brown, then UK chancellor of the exchequer, into the economic consequences of climate change.
Shell has refuted the concept, predicting in a letter to its shareholders that fossil fuels would account for between 40% and 50% of the energy supply in 2050 and beyond. The Bank of England is currently conducting an investigation into the potential of a "carbon bubble" to damage the economy.
What is the carbon budget?
The carbon budget is the amount of greenhouse gas that can still be released into the atmosphere without exceeding dangerous levels of climate change - the 2C target agreed by international governments. In 2013, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) put a figure on the carbon budget for the first time, announcing that the world burns through about 50bn tonnes of greenhouse gases every year. It is also very likely that more than 20% of emitted CO2 will remain in the atmosphere longer than 1,000 years after manmade emissions have stopped. This means that if we continue to emit at current levels, we will "spend" the carbon budget within 15 to 25 years. Given that we have already used two-thirds of the budget, the IPCC have urged governments to act quickly, using the carbon budget as the basis for international negotiations.
You don't seriously think you're going to bankrupt the oil, coal and gas companies do you?
No. Although the impact of divestment on share prices may be relatively small, the reputational damage can have serious financial consequences.
"Stigmatisation poses a far-reaching threat to fossil fuel companies - any direct impacts of divestment pale in comparison." said Ben Caldecott, the author of a report on fossil fuel divestment published by the University of Oxford in October 2013. It said: "stigmatisation poses the most far-reaching threat to fossil fuel companies and the vast energy value chain. In every case we reviewed, divestment campaigns were successful in lobbying for restrictive legislation."
Related: 10 myths about fossil fuel divestment put to the sword
Won't divestment from fossil fuels result in the end of modern civilisation?
It is true that most of today's energy, and many useful things such as plastics and fertilisers, come from fossil fuels. But the divestment campaign is not arguing for an end of all fossil fuel use starting tomorrow, with everyone heading back to caves to light a campfire. Instead it is arguing that the burning of fossil fuels at increasing rates is driving global warming, which is the actual threat to modern civilisation. Despite already having at least three times more proven reserves than the world's governments agree can be safely burned, fossil fuel companies are spending huge sums exploring for more. Looked at in that way, pulling investments from companies committed to throwing more fuel on the climate change fire makes sense.
Isn't divestment hypocritical because we all use fossil fuels?
Again, no-one is arguing for an overnight end to all fossil fuel use. Instead, the 350.org group which is leading the divestment campaign calls for investors to commit to selling off their coal, oil and gas investments over five years. Fossil fuel burning will continue after that too, but the point is to reverse today's upward trend of ever more carbon emissions into a downward trend of ever less carbon emissions. Furthermore, some of those backing a "divest-invest" strategy move money into the clean energy and energy efficiency sectors which have already begun driving the transition to a low-carbon world.
Isn't this just gesture politics rather than meaningful action?
The dumping of a few fossil few stocks makes no immediate difference at all to the amount of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere. But this entirely misses the point of divestment, which aims to remove the legitimacy of a fossil fuel industry whose current business model will lead to "severe, widespread and irreversible" impacts on people. Divestment works by stigmatising, as pointed out in a report from Oxford University: "The outcome of the stigmatisation process poses the most far-reaching threat to fossil fuel companies. Any direct impacts pale in comparison."
The "gesture politics" criticism also ignores the political power of the fossil fuel industry, which spent over $400m on lobbying and political donations in 2012 in the US alone. Undercutting that lobbying makes it easier for politicians to take action and the Oxford study showed that previous divestment campaigns - against apartheid South Africa, tobacco and Darfur - were all followed by restrictive new laws.
Those comparisons also highlight the moral dimension at the heart of the divestment campaign. Another dimension is warning investors that their fossil fuel assets may lose their value if climate change is tackled. Lastly, backing divestment does not mean giving up putting direct pressure on politicians to act or any other climate change campaign.
More divestment myths
Won't the fossil fuel stocks be bought cheaply by others who care less about climate change?
They may do but the stocks being divested are too small to flood the market and cut share prices, so they won't be going cheap. Those who do purchase these stocks are prioritising short-term financial gain over long-term investment. As the president of the World Bank has said, an investment portfolio that recognises the financial risk of climate change is "acting in simple self-interest". More to the point, the strategy of the divestment movement is not to bankrupt the fossil fuel industry by the removal of shares but to cause reputational damage.
Is my own money invested in fossil fuels?
Highly likely. 350.orgprovide information on taking your own money out of fossil fuels. Most of the high street banks, including HSBC, Lloyds, Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland and Santander, have millions invested in fossil fuel companies. Most investment funds, including pension funds are heavily invested in fossil fuels and do not offer savers a fossil free option. ShareAction are currently running a campaign asking investment managers, pension providers and savings platforms to offer consumers a way to divest their own savings. They can support you to approach your own pension provider, while Move your Money are campaigning for banks to divest.
Where can I find more information about the divestment movement?
The global fossil fuel divestment campaign is a project started by 350.org, which is coordinating an international network of climate campaigns in 188 countries. You can find more information on their Fossil Free website about divestment, about campaigns in your local area or about starting your own campaign.
Can I donate to the campaign?
The Guardian is not seeking donations for its Keep it in the Ground campaign but if you want to donate to 350.org you can do so here. If you are based outside the UK, you can donate here.
I have an idea for the Guardian's campaign
We'd love to hear from you. Email us at keep.it@theguardian.com
Why is the Guardian doing this now?
You can read more about Alan Rusbridger's decision to put the climate crisis front and centre of the Guardian in 2015 here.
What have people said about fossil fuel divestment?
Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England
The vast majority of reserves are unburnable,
Valerie Rockefeller Wayne, great-granddaughter of John D Rockefeller Sr, founder of Standard Oil
If you look back, when John D Rockefeller Sr got into the business, we got our oil from whales. His big breakthrough was to get oil out of the ground. The breakthrough now is going to be in clean energy. You should be there at the forefront. Those are the investors who are going to make the most money.
Jim Yong Kim, World Bank president, at Davos 2014
Rethink what fiduciary responsibility means in this changing world. It's simple self-interest. Every company, investor, and bank that screens new and existing investments for climate risk is simply being pragmatic.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu
People of conscience need to break their ties with corporations financing the injustice of climate change. We can encourage more of our universities and municipalities and cultural institutions to cut their ties to the fossil fuel industry.
Christiana Figures, UN climate chief
The pensions, life insurances and nest eggs of billions of ordinary people depend on the long-term security and stability of institutional investment funds... Climate change increasingly poses one of the biggest long-term threats to those investments and the wealth of the global economy.
Barack Obama
Science is science, and there is no doubt that if we burned all the fossil fuel that's in the ground right now that the planet's going to get too hot and the consequences could be dire... We're not going to be able to burn it all.
Hank Paulson, former Treasury secretary for George Bush's administration and former CEO Goldman Sachs
Climate change is the challenge of our time. Each of us must recognise that the risks are personal. We've seen and felt the costs of underestimating the financial bubble. Let's not ignore the climate bubble.
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The Guardian
March 17, 2015 Tuesday 10:10 AM GMT
How companies make us forget we need to consume less to stop climate change;
We will have to consume less, not more, if we are serious about tackling climate change. So how do businesses like Coca-Cola lure us into forgetting that inconvenient truth?
BYLINE: Stephen Devlin
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 902 words
Recycle more, opt for "sustainable" products, offset your flights. In short, do anything, just please don't stop buying our product.
Companies know that most of us have a basic instinct to protect the environment. Some also know that our doing so could well be a serious threat to their business model. Why? Because a determined attempt to stave off climate change and resource depletion would require radical changes, not only to what we consume, but also - crucially - to how much we consume.
Here are four ways companies frame their marketing messages to make sure we keep buying their products despite our green instincts.
Related: Five ways that people frame climate change debates
1. The packaging pretence
For the easily convinced, it might be enough to do absolutely nothing other than colour the packaging green and employ environmentally-inspired language. Coca-Cola Life is a case in point: while clearly designed to engage environmental and natural values, nowhere does it claim to actually reduce planetary destruction. The ultimate natural beverage - tap water - isn't quite so profitable.
2. The not-so-green greener alternative
Statoil, the Norwegian energy company, wants you to think that natural gas will help solve climate change, ignoring the fact that we need to reduce the use of all fossil fuels. The NFU's Buy British campaign proclaims the superior welfare standards of British meat, but neglects the possibility that we ought to just stop eating so much of it.
Car manufacturers trumpet the improving fuel use per mile, but keep schtum about whether we might need a wholesale transition away from road transport. And easyJet implores you to " Fly greener, fly easyJet ", saying its fleet is newer and more energy-efficient, while disregarding the need to drastically reduce flight volumes.
In many cases, governments are complicit in this messaging, championing incremental changes as long as they don't encroach on our perceived right to consume as much as we like.
3. The feel-good factor
Recycling is the ultimate act of environmental absolution. When you ask people what they are personally doing to tackle climate change, the most common response is: "I recycle".
Related: Communicating sustainability is a subtle attempt at doing good
And yet, in environmental terms it is infinitely preferable to prevent waste altogether, rather than recycle it. Recycling alone is not going to do much to prevent disastrous climate change, but it makes people feel good and doesn't threaten core corporate interests.
Sometimes the attempt to co-opt sustainability frames is shameless: think back to Topshop's blatant rebranding of a popular slogan : 'Reshop. Reuse. Recycle.' Or Shell's ludicrous 2007 claim to recycle CO2 into flowers. Others are more subtle, like Jigsaw's current For Life Not Landfill campaign, which instructs you to "invest" in your wardrobe, but offers no serious advice on why buying more clothes from Jigsaw might reduce the number of garments in landfill sites.
4. There is no alternative
If all else fails, just tell your customers that they have no choice but to buy your product. Seriously unsustainable industries that can't hide their dirty practices are the most likely offenders here.
For example, fossil fuel companies are fond of reminding us that demand for their product will keepincreasing, and the food industry tells us we will need 100% more food by 2050. This framing sidelines the question of whether we should be trying to constrain that demand and implicitly tells you that since everyone else is going to be doing it, you might as well join the party.
The exception that proves the rule?
The outdoor equipment company Patagonia famously urged its customers not to buy their products if they didn't need them in their Don't Buy This Jacket campaign. Corporate framing is so deliberately devoid of anti-consumption messages that when one does crop up it feels completely jarring and causes a media splash.
A cynic might argue that Patagonia is, in fact, the supreme master of greenwash here, but, whatever Patagonia's aims, the campaign raised an interesting question: can retail brands ever be the ones to encourage truly sustainable practices?
Next steps
The current framing of climate change doesn't generally accept that there are some things we simply need to do less or consume fewer of. The story pushed by businesses and governments is that we need to fit the problem of climate change into the continuation of our normal lives and simply make better choices at the checkout.
Related: Growth is not the answer to inequality
In this narrative, the biggest change you might have to make is to buy British lamb chops, not ones from New Zealand, exchange your gas-guzzling car for a Prius and, above all, remember to do your recycling.
Ultimately, we can't expect businesses to advocate constraining consumption. But we must recognise the way they exploit our environmental instincts in their marketing. It's time we start questioning whether to buy, not just what to buy.
The rethinking prosperity hub is sponsored by DNV GL. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled "brought to you by". Find out more here.
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The Guardian
March 17, 2015 Tuesday 9:46 AM GMT
Climate change aggravating cyclone damage, scientists say;
Rising sea levels making island nations such as Vanuatu more vulnerable to storms and amplifies the impact of tropical cyclones
BYLINE: Karl Mathiesen
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 767 words
Scientists say the devastation caused by Pam, the most powerful cyclone to hit the South Pacific since records began, was aggravated by climate change. However, the effect the changing climate is having on tropical storms remains largely unresolved.
The president of Vanuatu told a conference in Japan on Monday that climate change had contributed to Pam's impact on his nation. There are reports that 90% of the buildings in the capital Port Vila have been destroyed or damaged after the cyclone hit over the weekend. Six people are reported to have been killed.
President Baldwin Lonsdale told delegates at a UN conference on disaster risk his people were being affected by more cyclones. He said this was a symptom of the climate crisis.
"We see the level of sea rise ... The cyclone seasons, the warm, the rain, all this is affected... This year we have more than in any year ... Yes, climate change is contributing to this."
Professor Richard Betts, head of climate impacts research at the Met Office Hadley Centre, said the human contribution to sea level rise over the past 100 years was well documented and makes island nations more vulnerable to storms and particularly storm surge.
"When cyclones and other storms occur, there is already a greater risk of coastal flooding because the background sea level has risen, largely due to human-induced global warming. How much more flooding has occurred due to human action is unclear, but ongoing sea level rise can be expected to further increase this risk unless coastal protection can be improved."
Professor Myles Allen a climate scientist from the University of Oxford said while there is a suggestion cyclones may become more intense, the president's assertion that climate change was causing more storms was not supported by science.
"It is a perfectly reasonable question for the president to be raising. Basic thermodynamics means that a warmer atmosphere, all other things being equal, makes more intense cyclones possible," said Allen.
"But this does not mean cyclones have necessarily become more likely: indeed, the latest assessment of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated explicitly that there is no clear evidence at present for any human-induced increase in tropic-wide cyclone frequency.
"On a personal level, I sympathise with the president's evident frustration: he and the people of Vanuatu deserve an authoritative answer to the question of the role of past greenhouse gas emissions in cyclone Pam. The science isn't there yet, but we are getting there."
By March it would be normal for around four cyclones to have formed in the South Pacific. But, as Lonsdale said on Monday, the 2015 season has been particularly bad. Six cyclones have hit the region since the beginning of the year.
Dr Pete Inness, a tropical meteorologist from Reading University, said it was impossible make any inference from a single season.
"It is a very active year, but a single active year doesn't in itself indicate a trend. There isn't apparently a long term trend."
In fact, he said, modelling expects cyclones in the South Pacific to shift southward and become 20-30% less frequent by the end of the century as a result of climate change.
"The things that control the number of cyclones are other things like the wind speeds at different levels in the atmosphere," he said. "There's really complicated changes projected to happen to the winds speeds in [the South Pacific], which, in concert to the changes in sea temperature, actually seem to indicate that we would expect fewer cyclones in this area in the next 50 to 100 years."
Dr Chris Holloway, a tropical storm expert at the University of Reading, said that while the total number of storms may reduce, the number of very intense storms, like Pam, may increase slightly.
"Tropical cyclone Pam had the strongest winds of any South Pacific tropical cyclone on record, and is tied for having the strongest winds of any southern hemisphere tropical cyclone on record.
"Globally it is most likely that the total number of tropical cyclones will decrease with climate change while the number of the most intense storms, like Pam, will increase."
Dr Ilan Kelman, reader in risk at University College London, said rising sea levels made it imperative that island states were supported in resilience building.
"We could have done much more to work with Vanuatu long before the cyclone struck in order to reduce the disaster potential. That is the point of this week's disaster risk reduction conference in Japan. A cyclone alone does not create a disaster unless we are not ready for it," he said.
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The Guardian
March 17, 2015 Tuesday 8:38 AM GMT
EU should start legal case over UK failure on energy-saving laws, say campaigners;
Campaigners say that the UK is the West Ham of carbon-cutting efforts after falling to 13 thplace in 'disturbing' new energy-saving league table
BYLINE: Arthur NeslenBrussels
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 629 words
Energy waste campaigners are calling for Brussels to file legal proceedings against the UK for flouting EU energy-saving laws, following new research by the AEA Ricardo consultancy.
Across Europe, the industry body the Coalition for Energy Savings says that a "disturbing" pattern of poor implementation has emerged from analysis of actions that EU states are taking to meet the bloc's energy efficiency goals.
An energy wastage league table the group has compiled shows the UK occupying 13 thplace out of 28 countries. While Britain is on equal points with Greece and the Netherlands, it is far below pace-setters such as Denmark (1 st) and Ireland (2 nd).
Crucially, it is accused of relying on measures such as an existing building code that predates the EU energy efficiency directive for around half of its CO2-saving efforts. On a bloc-wide basis these measures are supposed to help prevent the equivalent of 94 million tonnes of oil from being burned by 2020.
"Only half of what the UK has done so far is eligible," Stefan Scheuer, the coalition's secretary-general told the Guardian. "It is a clear case for the commission to start an investigation with a view to launching an infringement proceeding against the UK for a bad application of EU legislation."
Brook Riley, a campaigner at Friends of the Earth Europe added: "The UK is in danger of becoming the West Ham of European energy efficiency [middle of the table], when it should be aiming for the Champions League."
A government spokesman insisted that the new research did not call into question the UK's ability to meet EU energy efficiency targets. "We have a strong track record on energy demand reduction and are recognised as a global leader in this area," the spokesman said.
But the UK has been accused of bad behaviour over the directive before, having played hard ball in negotiations to get an exemption from its binding annual 1.5% energy saving obligation. Before signing up, British negotiators also insisted on a 'banking and borrowing' clause that allowed them to count measures taken four years before and three years after the directive's 2014-2020 remit.
This time, while Germany has lowered its energy savings obligations target, the UK has raised it by 7%. But the coalition analysis indicates this will likely be met by 'double counting' savings from the Climate Change Levy.
A quadrupling of energy savings expected from UK policy on climate change agreements in place since 2001 was by the UK's own admission not "reliable".
"The UK is trying to outsmart the system by reporting measures which may not go beyond European minimum standards," said Dora Petroula, an officer at Climate Action Network Europe. "But tackling wasteful energy use will not happen by manoeuvring around the directive's requirements. With the Paris [UN] climate deal on the horizon, it is high time to get serious about energy efficiency measures."
Energy-guzzling buildings alone are responsible for some 40% of European carbon emissions and the bloc's climate commissioner, Miguel Canete, has promised an "energy efficiency first" agenda to tackle the issue.
But European officials have long accused the continent's energy ministries of talking the talk on efficiency, while in practice seeing energy waste action as a "luxury", safe in the knowledge that documents submitted to Brussels would rarely be read.
EU sources say that contrary to claims that stronger enforcement of efficiency legislation would be discussed at a summit later this week, a narrowly-defined energy security agenda is likely to dominate the agenda.
The Guardian understands that a 'gentleman's agreement' will probably prevent either energy efficiency or the UK's preferred shale gas and nuclear solutions to supply problems being openly discussed.
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The New York Times
March 17, 2015 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final
The Optimist
BYLINE: By JOHN SCHWARTZ
SECTION: Section D; Column 0; Science Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1966 words
NASHVILLE -- Al Gore wants to make a point about cellphones, and he has a helpful set of slides on his laptop. ''Do you want to see that?'' he asks, and starts to turn the MacBook around.
''It's not two hours -- don't worry.''
Mr. Gore knows he is The Guy With the Slides, the man who will talk about the environment until you can no longer remember the color of the sky. He long ago mastered the self-deprecating gestures that let you know that he knows what you are thinking. And then he shows you the slides anyway.
Slides have been very good to the former vice president of the United States, almost president, environmental activist and now successful green investor. His slide show on the threat of climate change, presented in the movie ''An Inconvenient Truth,'' won an Academy Award. His efforts to spread the word about global warming earned him, along with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a Nobel Peace Prize. His was a dire call to strenuous and difficult action.
Over the last year, however, the prophet of doom has become much more a prophet of possibility -- even, perhaps, an optimist. Still an object of derision for the political right, Mr. Gore has seen support for his views rising within the business community: Investment in renewable energy sources like wind and solar is skyrocketing as their costs plummet. He has slides for that, too. Experts predicted in 2000 that wind generated power worldwide would reach 30 gigawatts; by 2010, it was 200 gigawatts, and by last year it reached nearly 370, or more than 12 times higher. Installations of solar power would add one new gigawatt per year by 2010, predictions in 2002 stated. It turned out to be 17 times that by 2010 and 48 times that amount last year.
''I think most people have been surprised, even shocked, by how quickly the cost has come down,'' Mr. Gore says in his office in an environmentally friendly building in the prosperous Green Hills neighborhood of Nashville. He sports a style that might be called Southern business casual: a blazer and dress shirt, bluejeans and cowboy boots. At age 66, he is also trimmer than he was during his bearish, bearded period after the 2000 election, thanks in part to a vegan diet he has maintained for two years. In this city? Home of heavenly meat-and-three platters?
He smiles and says proudly, ''There are 10 vegan restaurants in Nashville now.''
Over an hour and a half, he delivers an endless stream of facts and trends from around the globe. Every minute in Bangladesh, two more homes get new rooftop solar panels. Dubai's state utility accepted a bid for a solar power plant with a cost per kilowatt-hour of less than six cents. ''Wow,'' he says, his eyes wide. ''That just set everybody on their ear.''
Such changes, he says, represent a sharp break with the past, not a slow evolution. That is the point of those slides on his laptop. In 1980, one shows, consultants for AT&T projected that 900,000 cellphones might be sold by 2000. In fact, there were 109 million by then. Today there are some seven billion. ''So the question is: Why were they not only wrong, but way wrong?'' he says. He presses a button, and up pops an old photo of a young Al Gore with a helmet of hair and an early mobile phone roughly the size of one of Michael Jordan's sneakers.
The same kind of transformation that turned those expensive, clunkers into powerful computers in every pocket is happening now in energy, he says, with new technology leapfrogging old infrastructure. ''It's coming so fast,'' he says. ''It's very, very exciting.''
All of this means, he adds, that the worst effects of climate change can be blunted. ''We've got a lot of work to do,'' he says. ''We're going to win this.'' He pauses and repeats for effect, part preacher and part TED talk. ''We're going to win this.
''The only question is how long it takes.''
He is pleased to see the Obama administration becoming more active on climate issues. President Obama's advocacy of climate change action was overshadowed by the push for health care legislation, a disappointment for Mr. Gore and other environmentalists. ''He did not use the bully pulpit in quite the way many of us would have wanted in his first term,'' Mr. Gore says. But since Mr. Obama's re-election, his stronger voice on global warming, tougher carbon emission regulations and major climate agreement with China have the former vice president smiling. ''He's doing a terrific job on it now,'' he says.
Mr. Gore is continuing to spread the word. Last month, at the end of an optimistic talk about climate change at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, he and the singer Pharrell Williams announced a Live Earth concert to be held on all seven continents on June 18. The concert will include a moment, Mr. Williams told those at the forum, when ''we are literally going to have humanity harmonize all at once.''
In the meantime, Mr. Gore will keep his frenetic schedule of training programs around the world. He has met with large groups in Australia, Indonesia, Brazil, India and elsewhere to present local versions of his climate change slide show. Those who attend, in turn, make the presentation to their own countrymen, spreading the word far more broadly than the documentary ever did. ''The work of the trainees is not the sort of thing you see on the front page of the newspaper, but they are reaching networks of colleagues and friends in a most powerful way,'' said Don Henry, a professor at the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute and former head of the Australian Conservation Foundation. ''Those people are out there changing the world.''
Those presentations are exhaustive -- and exhausting, says Orin Kramer, a New York hedge fund manager and friend of Mr. Gore. He attended a training program with some 600 people that was scheduled to run from 8:30 in the morning until 5 p.m. ''I assumed there's going to be a 40-minute warm-up'' by Mr. Gore, he says, and then the rest of the day's activities would be led by assistants.
Instead, ''he stands up there in front of this group of people for eight and a half hours and 164 climate slides,'' Mr. Kramer says. Many members of the audience were scientists who asked pointed questions, citing specific studies; Mr. Gore answered study with study, point for point. ''He knew more about the academic literature than any of the academics in the audience,'' Mr. Kramer says. ''He basically out-nerded all the other nerds in the room.''
At the same time, Mr. Gore is a less visible leader of the environmental movement in the United States. While he participated in the enormous march before the climate summit in New York City in September, he was not a focus of coverage. But his voice is still being heard, said Reed E. Hundt, a close friend of Mr. Gore who served as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission during the Clinton administration. ''Give me the top three global leaders in opinion shaping climate change,'' he says. ''If you don't put Gore in that group, I'd be surprised.'' But being the lone voice, he adds, means ''being a prophet without honor.''
''Nobody wants that job,'' Mr. Hundt says. ''When you go from being the one guy that says this and that and the other to being the first among equals, to being part of a group of like-minded people, that's called success.''
Mr. Gore has also become very rich. He co-founded Generation Investment Management, a firm that takes positions in companies that manage themselves along principles of sustainability, including the effects of climate change. He also sits on the board of the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which invests heavily in green start-ups. He sold his cable channel, Current TV, to Al Jazeera America in 2013 in a deal that earned him a reported $100 million. (He and his fellow shareholders sued Al Jazeera last year over the deal, alleging fraud and breach of contract.)
His success in the business world has surprised many people, Mr. Kramer says. ''I didn't think of him as a business guy -- I'm sure nobody did,'' he says, adding that ''he is a phenomenally deep student of critical forces that ultimately change society.''
This success has also been the subject of howls from those who find much to dislike about Mr. Gore. His old foes eagerly take aim when his name comes up. Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, who has called climate change ''the greatest hoax,'' now heads the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. When asked his view of Mr. Gore, he issued a lengthy diatribe against the former vice president's ''alarmism campaign.'' Through a spokeswoman, he said in part, ''Al Gore's immense wealth is largely due to his shameless and incessant promotion of the liberal global warming agenda.'' He added that the federal climate policies Mr. Gore endorses ''would infuse his business ventures with large sums of taxpayer dollars and set him up to become the first climate billionaire.'' Mr. Inhofe also referred to a challenge he issued to Mr. Gore in 2007 to reduce the carbon footprint of his Nashville mansion and extensive travel.
When Mr. Gore is asked whether he will respond to Senator Inhofe's comments, Mr. Gore calls him a ''nice man.'' As the first words are read to him, he chuckles, but his smile grows tense. As the statement ends, he sighs and says, ''Where to start?''
He lets out a breath. ''The most powerful advocate for solving the climate crisis is not me, but Mother Nature,'' he says. ''The reality of the climate crisis is overwhelming, and more and more people see it and feel it every day.''
As for the senator's challenge, Mr. Gore says he does not remember the exchange, but describes the ways he has reduced the environmental impact of his home. He buys electricity from a utility that generates its power from wind and solar sources and has 32 solar panels on his home, as well as insulating windows and LED light bulbs. There are 10 geothermal wells under the driveway. ''I do walk the walk, and don't just talk the talk,'' he says.
Is participating in the green economy a conflict of interest? ''I think that having a consistent outlook in my advocacy and in the way I invest is a healthy way to live,'' he says. Much of what he makes, including all salary from his early stage investing work as a partner at Kleiner Perkins and his Nobel Prize money, goes to his advocacy group, the Climate Reality Project. ''I never imagined when I was younger that this would become the principal focus of my life,'' he says. ''But once you pick up this challenge, you can't put it down. I can't. Don't want to.''
Anthony Leiserowitz, the director of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, says Mr. Gore has become a symbol of climate change, which is both good and bad. He energized Democrats on climate issues, but alienated many conservatives, with the eager help of groups like the Heartland Institute and its allies like Mr. Inhofe, who demonize Mr. Gore as part of their campaign to undercut the scientific consensus on the human role in global warming.
''Al Gore cannot ever reinvent himself from the fact that he became one of the country's most polarizing political leaders,'' Dr. Leiserowitz says. ''Even as he is trying to explain climate change, he is reminding people, amplifying the conservative response around him.''
Mr. Gore has learned to live with the scorn. ''Anyone who carries this banner is going to get shot at,'' he says. ''And I could say it's an honor to be the object of such ire from those who are so on the wrong side of history,'' he adds, laughing.
''It doesn't feel like a great honor,'' he says. He spreads his arms. ''I'm certainly no longer surprised by it.''
Another pause. ''Let them have at it.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/17/science/the-new-optimism-of-al-gore.html
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GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: PHOTO (PHOTOGRAPH BY AMANDA MARSALIS/TRUNK ARCHIVE, 2010) (D1)
Clockwise from top, Al Gore meeting with his team in Nashville
with the singer Pharrell Williams in January at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland
a globe being held at the People's Climate March in New York in September
a protest in Monterey, Calif., where Mr. Gore was to speak in 2010
with the anthropologist Jane Goodall and Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York at the 2014 march
and with his then-wife, Tipper, at the Academy Awards in 2007. ''An Inconvenient Truth'' won for best documentary. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOE BUGLEWICZ FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
LAURENT GILLIERON/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY
EDUARDO MUNOZ/REUTERS
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The Guardian
March 16, 2015 Monday 5:25 PM GMT
Drought-stricken California only has one year of water left, Nasa scientist warns;
As backup supply dwindles, Jay Famiglietti says state has about one year of water left and calls for a more 'forward-looking process' to deal with crisis
BYLINE: Amanda Holpuch in New York
SECTION: US NEWS
LENGTH: 445 words
Related: California farmers resign themselves to drought: 'Nobody's fault but God's'
As California experiences the fourth year of one of the most severe droughts in its history, a senior Nasa scientist has warned that the state has about one year of water left.
In an LA Times editorial published last week, Nasa Jet Propulsion Laboratory senior water cycle scientist Jay Famiglietti called for a more "forward-looking process" to deal with the state's dwindling water supply.
Famiglietti, who is also a professor at University of California at Irvine, said the state had about one year of water in reservoir storage and the backup supply, groundwater, was low.
"California has no contingency plan for a persistent drought like this one (let alone a 20-plus-year mega-drought), except, apparently, staying in emergency mode and praying for rain," Famiglietti wrote. "In short, we have no paddle to navigate this crisis."
Nasa data shows that water storage has been in steady decline in California since at least 2002, before the drought began.
Famiglietti called for specific measures to combat the crisis, including accelerated implementation of a law that requires groundwater sustainability, a state taskforce focused on long-term solutions and immediate, mandatory rationing. He also said there was a need for the public to be more involved in the issue.
A Field poll released in February showed that 34% of California voters supported a mandatory rationing policy, though 94% agreed that the drought is "serious". The majority of respondents - 61% - favored the voluntary reductions the state currently encourages.
On Tuesday, the State Water Resources Control Board is scheduled to vote on a conservation measure that would limit landscape watering, the strictest mandate directed at such water use the state has considered.
"Our state's water management is complex, but the technology and expertise exist to handle this harrowing future," Famiglietti said. "It will require major changes in policy and infrastructure that could take decades to identify and act upon. Today, not tomorrow, is the time to begin."
Scientists are working to determine what role climate change has played in California's drought. Earlier this month, a study by Stanford researchers showed that high temperatures increase the risk of drought conditions. Last year, two research teams said in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society that they could not definitively pin the drought on climate change.
A third team, which includes a Stanford researcher from the previous study, said that rare atmospheric conditions are exacerbating the drought.
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The Guardian
March 16, 2015 Monday 4:49 PM GMT
Don't look away now, the climate crisis needs you;
The Guardian is embarking on a major series of articles on the climate crisis and how humanity can solve it. In the first, an extract taken from the Introduction to THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING by Naomi Klein, the author argues that if we treat climate change as the crisis it is, we don't just have the potential to avert disaster but could improve society in the process
BYLINE: Naomi Klein
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 4102 words
A voice came over the intercom: would the passengers of Flight 3935, scheduled to depart Washington DC, for Charleston, South Carolina, kindly collect their carry-on luggage and get off the plane. They went down the stairs and gathered on the hot tarmac. There they saw something unusual: the wheels of the US Airways jet had sunk into the black pavement as if it were wet cement. The wheels were lodged so deep, in fact, that the truck that came to tow the plane away couldn't pry it loose. The airline had hoped that without the added weight of the flight's 35 passengers, the aircraft would be light enough to pull. It wasn't. Someone posted a picture : "Why is my flight cancelled? Because DC is so damn hot that our plane sank four inches into the pavement."
Eventually, a larger, more powerful vehicle was brought in to tow the plane and this time it worked; the plane finally took off, three hours behind schedule. A spokesperson for the airline blamed the incident on "very unusual temperatures".
The temperatures in the summer of 2012 were indeed unusually hot. (As they were the year before and the year after.) And it's no mystery why this has been happening: the profligate burning of fossil fuels, the very thing that US Airways was bound and determined to do despite the inconvenience presented by a melting tarmac. This irony - the fact that the burning of fossil fuels is so radically changing our climate that it is getting in the way of our capacity to burn fossil fuels - did not stop the passengers of Flight 3935 from re-embarking and continuing their journeys. Nor was climate change mentioned in any of the major news coverage of the incident.
I am in no position to judge these passengers. All of us who live high consumer lifestyles, wherever we happen to reside, are, metaphorically, passengers on Flight 3935. Faced with a crisis that threatens our survival as a species, our entire culture is continuing to do the very thing that caused the crisis, only with an extra dose of elbow grease behind it. Like the airline bringing in a truck with a more powerful engine to tow that plane, the global economy is upping the ante from conventional sources of fossil fuels to even dirtier and more dangerous versions - bitumen from the Alberta tar sands, oil from deepwater drilling, gas from hydraulic fracturing (fracking), coal from detonated mountains, and so on.
Meanwhile, each supercharged natural disaster produces new irony laden snapshots of a climate increasingly inhospitable to the very industries most responsible for its warming. Like the 2013 historic floods in Calgary that forced the head offices of the oil companies mining the Alberta tar sands to go dark and send their employees home, while a train carrying flammable petroleum products teetered on the edge of a disintegrating rail bridge. Or the drought that hit the Mississippi river one year earlier, pushing water levels so low that barges loaded with oil and coal were unable to move for days, while they waited for the Army Corps of Engineers to dredge a channel (they had to appropriate funds allocated to rebuild from the previous year's historic flooding along the same waterway). Or the coal-fired power plants in other parts of the country that were temporarily shut down because the waterways that they draw on to cool their machinery were either too hot or too dry (or, in some cases, both).
Living with this kind of cognitive dissonance is simply part of being alive in this jarring moment in history, when a crisis we have been studiously ignoring is hitting us in the face - and yet we are doubling down on the stuff that is causing the crisis in the first place.
I denied climate change for longer than I care to admit. I knew it was happening, sure. Not like Donald Trump and the Tea Partiers going on about how the continued existence of winter proves it's all a hoax. But I stayed pretty hazy on the details and only skimmed most of the news stories, especially the really scary ones. I told myself the science was too complicated and that the environmentalists were dealing with it. And I continued to behave as if there was nothing wrong with the shiny card in my wallet attesting to my "elite" frequent flyer status.
A great many of us engage in this kind of climate change denial. We look for a split second and then we look away. Or we look but then turn it into a joke ("more signs of the Apocalypse!"). Which is another way of looking away. Or we look but tell ourselves comforting stories about how humans are clever and will come up with a technological miracle that will safely suck the carbon out of the skies or magically turn down the heat of the sun. Which, I was to discover while researching this book, is yet another way of looking away.
Or we look but try to be hyper-rational about it ("dollar for dollar it's more efficient to focus on economic development than climate change, since wealth is the best protection from weather extremes") - as if having a few more dollars will make much difference when your city is underwater. Or we look but tell ourselves we are too busy to care about something so distant and abstract - even though we saw the water in the subways in New York City during Superstorm Sandy, and the people on their rooftops in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and know that no one is safe, the most vulnerable least of all. And though perfectly understandable, this too is a way of looking away.
Or we look but tell ourselves that all we can do is focus on ourselves. Meditate and shop at farmers' markets and stop driving - but forget trying to actually change the systems that are making the crisis inevitable because that's too much "bad energy" and it will never work. And at first it may appear as if we are looking, because many of these lifestyle changes are indeed part of the solution, but we still have one eye tightly shut.
Or maybe we do look - really look - but then, inevitably, we seem to forget. Remember and then forget again. Climate change is like that; it's hard to keep it in your head for very long. We engage in this odd form of on-again-off-again ecological amnesia for perfectly rational reasons. We deny because we fear that letting in the full reality of this crisis will change everything. And we are right.
We know that if we continue on our current path of allowing emissions to rise year after year, climate change will change everything about our world. Major cities will very likely drown, ancient cultures will be swallowed by the seas, and there is a very high chance that our children will spend a great deal of their lives fleeing and recovering from vicious storms and extreme droughts. And we don't have to do anything to bring about this future. All we have to do is nothing. Just continue to do what we are doing now, whether it's counting on a techno-fix or tending to our gardens or telling ourselves we're unfortunately too busy to deal with it.
All we have to do is not react as if this is a full-blown crisis. All we have to do is keep on denying how frightened we actually are. And then, bit by bit, we will have arrived at the place we most fear, the thing from which we have been averting our eyes. No additional effort required.
There are ways of preventing this grim future, or at least making it a lot less dire. But the catch is that these also involve changing everything. For us high consumers, it involves changing how we live, how our economies function, even the stories we tell about our place on earth. The good news is that many of these changes are distinctly uncatastrophic. Many are downright exciting. But I didn't discover this for a long while.
In 2009, when the financial crisis was in full swing, the massive response from governments around the world showed what was possible when our elites decided to declare a crisis.
We all watched as trillions of dollars were marshaled in a moment. If the banks were allowed to fail, we were told, the rest of the economy would collapse. It was a matter of collective survival, so the money had to be found. In the process, some rather large fictions at the heart of our economic system were exposed (Need more money? Print some!). A few years earlier, governments took a similar approach to public finances after the September 11 terrorist attacks. In many western countries, when it came to constructing the security/surveillance state at home and waging war abroad, budgets never seemed to be an issue.
Related: The argument for divesting from fossil fuels is becoming an overwhelming one | Alan Rusbridger
Climate change has never received the crisis treatment from our leaders, despite the fact that it carries the risk of destroying lives on a vastly greater scale than collapsed banks or collapsed buildings. The cuts to our greenhouse gas emissions that scientists tell us are necessary in order to greatly reduce the risk of catastrophe are treated as nothing more than gentle suggestions, actions that can be put off pretty much indefinitely. Clearly, what gets declared a crisis is an expression of power and priorities as much as hard facts. But we need not be spectators in all this: politicians aren't the only ones with the power to declare a crisis. Mass movements of regular people can declare one too.
Slavery wasn't a crisis for British and American elites until abolitionism turned it into one. Racial discrimination wasn't a crisis until the civil rights movement turned it into one. Sex discrimination wasn't a crisis until feminism turned it into one. Apartheid wasn't a crisis until the anti-apartheid movement turned it into one.
In the very same way, if enough of us stop looking away and decide that climate change is a crisis worthy of what some have called a "Marshall Plan for the Earth," then it will become one, and the political class will have to respond, both by making resources available and by bending the free market rules that have proven so pliable when elite interests are in peril. We occasionally catch glimpses of this potential when a crisis puts climate change at the front of our minds for a while. "Money is no object in this relief effort. Whatever money is needed for it will be spent," declared British prime minister David Cameron - Mr Austerity himself - when large parts of the UK were underwater from historic flooding in February 2014 and the public was enraged that his government was not doing more to help.
I have begun to understand how climate change - if treated as a true planetary emergency akin to those rising flood waters - could become a galvanising force for humanity, leaving us all not just safer from extreme weather, but with societies that are safer and fairer in all kinds of other ways as well. The resources required to rapidly move away from fossil fuels and prepare for the coming heavy weather could pull huge swaths of humanity out of poverty, providing services now sorely lacking, from clean water to electricity, and on a model that is more democratic and less centralized than the models of the past. This is a vision of the future that goes beyond just surviving or enduring climate change, beyond "mitigating" and "adapting" to it in the grim language of the United Nations. It is a vision in which we collectively use the crisis to leap somewhere that seems, frankly, better than where we are right now.
Once the lens shifted from one of crisis to possibility, I discovered that I no longer feared immersing myself in the scientific reality of the climate threat. And like many others, I have begun to see all kinds of ways that climate change could become a catalysing force for positive change - how it could be the best argument progressives have ever had to demand the rebuilding and reviving of local economies; to re-claim our democracies from corrosive corporate influence; to block harmful new free trade deals and rewrite old ones; to invest in starving public infrastructure like mass transit and affordable housing; and to take back ownership of essential services like energy and water. All of which would help to end grotesque levels of inequality within our nations and between them.
There is a rich populist history of winning big victories for social and economic justice in the midst of large-scale crises. These include, most notably, the policies of the New Deal after the market crash of 1929 and the birth of countless social programs after the second world war. This did not require the kind of authoritarian trickery that I described in my last book, The Shock Doctrine. On the contrary, what was essential was building muscular mass movements capable of standing up to those defending a failing status quo, and that demanded a significantly fairer share of the economic pie for everyone. A few of the lasting (though embattled) legacies of these exceptional historical moments include: public health insurance in many countries, old age pensions, subsidised housing, and public funding for the arts.
I am convinced that climate change represents a historic opportunity on an even greater scale. As part of the project of getting our emissions down to the levels many scientists recommend, we once again have the chance to advance policies that dramatically improve lives, close the gap between rich and poor, create huge numbers of good jobs, and reinvigorate democracy from the ground up.
But before any of these changes can happen - before we can believe that climate change can change us - we first have to stop looking away.
"You have been negotiating all my life." So said Canadian college student Anjali Appadurai, as she stared down the assembled government negotiators at the 2011 United Nations climate conference in Durban, South Africa. She was not exaggerating.
The world's governments have been talking about preventing climate change for more than two decades; they began negotiating the year that Anjali, then 21 years old, was born. And yet as she pointed out in her memorable speech on the convention floor, delivered on behalf of all of the assembled young people: "In that time, you've failed to meet pledges, you've missed targets, and you've broken promises." In truth, the intergovernmental body entrusted to prevent "dangerous" levels of climate change has not only failed to make progress over its 20-odd years of work (and almost 100 official negotiation meetings since the agreement was adopted), it has overseen a process of virtually uninterrupted backsliding. Our governments wasted years fudging numbers and squabbling over start dates, perpetually trying to get extensions like undergrads with late term papers.
The catastrophic result of all this obfuscation and procrastination is now undeniable. In 2013, global carbon dioxide emissions were 61% higher than they were in 1990, when negotiations toward a climate treaty began in earnest. Indeed the only thing rising faster than our emissions is the output of words pledging to lower them. Meanwhile, the annual UN climate summit, which remains the best hope for a political breakthrough on climate action, has started to seem less like a forum for serious negotiation than a very costly and high-carbon group therapy session, a place for the representatives of the most vulnerable countries in the world to vent their grief and rage while low-level representatives of the nations largely responsible for their tragedies stare at their shoes.
Related: Guardian Live stream: Naomi Klein
Though momentum is picking up slightly ahead of December's critical negotiations in Paris, this has been the mood ever since the collapse of the much-hyped 2009 UN climate summit in Copenhagen. On the last night of that massive gathering, I found myself with a group of climate justice activists, including one of the most prominent campaigners in Britain.
Throughout the summit, this young man had been the picture of confidence and composure, briefing dozens of journalists a day on what had gone on during each round of negotiations and what the various emission targets meant in the real world. Despite the challenges, his optimism about the summit's prospects never flagged. Once it was all over, however, and the pitiful deal was done, he fell apart before our eyes. Sitting in an overlit Italian restaurant, he began to sob uncontrollably. "I really thought Obama understood," he kept repeating.
I have come to think of that night as the climate movement's coming of age: it was the moment when the realisation truly sank in that no one was coming to save us. The British psychoanalyst and climate specialist Sally Weintrobe describes this as the summit's "fundamental legacy" - the acute and painful realisation that our "leaders are not looking after us... we are not cared for at the level of our very survival." No matter how many times we have been disappointed by the failings of our politicians, this realisation still comes as a blow. It really is the case that we are on our own and any credible source of hope in this crisis will have to come from below.
In Copenhagen, the major polluting governments - including the US and China - signed a nonbinding agreement pledging to keep temperatures from increasing more than 2C above where they were before we started powering our economies with coal. This well-known target, which supposedly represents the "safe" limit of climate change, has always been a highly political choice that has more to do with minimising economic disruption than with protecting the greatest number of people. When the two degrees target was made official in Copenhagen, there were impassioned objections from many delegates who said the goal amounted to a "death sentence" for some low-lying island states, as well as for large parts of Sub-Saharan Africa. In fact it is a very risky target for all of us : so far, temperatures have increased by just 0.8C and we are already experiencing many alarming impacts, including the unprecedented melting of the Greenland ice sheet in the summer of 2012 and the acidification of oceans far more rapidly than expected. Allowing temperatures to warm by more than twice that amount will unquestionably have perilous consequences.
In a 2012 report, the World Bank laid out the gamble implied by that target. "As global warming approaches and exceeds two degrees Celsius, there is a risk of triggering nonlinear tipping elements. Examples include the disintegration of the West Antarctic ice sheet leading to more rapid sea-level rise, or large-scale Amazon dieback drastically affecting ecosystems, rivers, agriculture, energy production, and livelihoods. This would further add to 21st-century global warming and impact entire continents." In other words, once we allow temperatures to climb past a certain point, where the mercury stops is not in our control.
But the bigger problem - and the reason Copenhagen caused such great despair - is that because governments did not agree to binding targets, they are free to pretty much ignore their commitments. Which is precisely what is happening. Indeed, emissions are rising so rapidly that unless something radical changes within our economic structure, two degrees now looks like a utopian dream. And it's not just environmentalists who are raising the alarm. The World Bank also warned when it released its report that "we're on track for a 4C warmer world [by century's end] marked by extreme heat waves, declining global food stocks, loss of ecosystems and biodiversity, and life-threatening sea level rise." And the report cautioned that, "there is also no certainty that adaptation to a 4C world is possible." Kevin Anderson, former director (now deputy director) of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, which has quickly established itself as one of the UK's premier climate research institutions, is even blunter; he says 4C warming is "incompatible with any reasonable characterisation of an organised, equitable and civilised global community".
We don't know exactly what a 4C world would look like, but even the best-case scenario is likely to be calamitous. Four degrees of warming could raise global sea levels by one or possibly even two meters by 2100 (and would lock in at least a few additional meters over future centuries). This would drown some island nations such as the Maldives and Tuvalu, and inundate many coastal areas from Ecuador and Brazil to the Netherlands to much of California and the northeastern US, as well as huge swaths of South and south-east Asia. Major cities likely in jeopardy include Boston, New York, greater Los Angeles, Vancouver, London, Mumbai, Hong Kong, and Shanghai.
Meanwhile, brutal heat waves that can kill tens of thousands of people, even in wealthy countries, would become entirely unremarkable summer events on every continent but Antarctica. The heat would also cause staple crops to suffer dramatic yield losses across the globe (it is possible that Indian wheat and US corn could plummet by as much as 60%), this at a time when demand will be surging due to population growth and a growing demand for meat. When you add ruinous hurricanes, raging wildfires, fisheries collapses, widespread disruptions to water supplies, extinctions, and globe-trotting diseases to the mix, it indeed becomes difficult to imagine that a peaceful, ordered society could be sustained (that is, where such a thing exists in the first place).
Keep in mind that these are the optimistic scenarios in which warming is more or less stabilized at 4C and does not trigger tipping points beyond which runaway warming would occur. And this process may be starting sooner than anyone predicted. In May 2014, Nasa and University of California, Irvine scientists revealed that glacier melt in a section of West Antarctica roughly the size of France now " appears unstoppable". This likely spells eventual doom for the entire West Antarctic ice sheet, which according to lead study author Eric Rignot "comes with a sea level rise of between three and five metres. Such an event will displace millions of people worldwide." The disintegration, however, could unfold over centuries and there is still time for emission reductions to slow down the process and prevent the worst.
Much more frightening than any of this is the fact that plenty of mainstream analysts think that on our current emissions trajectory, we are headed for even more than four degrees of warming. In 2011, the usually staid International Energy Agency (IEA) issued a report projecting that we are actually on track for 6C - 10.8F - of warming. And as the IEA's chief economist Fatih Birol put it : "Everybody, even the school children, knows that this will have catastrophic implications for all of us."
These various projections are the equivalent of every alarm in your house going off simultaneously. And then every alarm on your street going off as well, one by one by one. They mean, quite simply, that climate change has become an existential crisis for the human species. The only historical precedent for a crisis of this depth and scale was the Cold War fear that we were heading toward nuclear holocaust, which would have made much of the planet uninhabitable. But that was (and remains) a threat; a slim possibility, should geopolitics spiral out of control. The vast majority of nuclear scientists never told us that we were almost certainly going to put our civilisation in peril if we kept going about our daily lives as usual, doing exactly what we were already doing, which is what the climate scientists have been telling us for years.
As the Ohio State University climatologist Lonnie G Thompson, a world-renowned specialist on glacier melt, explained in 2010, "Climatologists, like other scientists, tend to be a stolid group. We are not given to theatrical rantings about falling skies. Most of us are far more comfortable in our laboratories or gathering data in the field than we are giving interviews to journalists or speaking before Congressional committees. Why then are climatologists speaking out about the dangers of global warming? The answer is that virtually all of us are now convinced that global warming poses a clear and present danger to civilisation."
It doesn't get much clearer than that. And yet rather than responding with alarm and doing everything in our power to change course, large parts of humanity are, quite consciously, continuing down the same road. Only, like the passengers aboard Flight 3935, aided by a more powerful, dirtier engine. What is wrong with us?
Extracted from THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING : Capitalism vs the Climate by Naomi Klein published this week in paperback by Penguin, £8.99
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March 16, 2015 Monday 3:50 PM GMT
Peruvian farmer demands climate compensation from German company;
RWE asked to pay for costs of protecting home lying in the floodpath of a glacial lake as its historical emissions are linked to glacial retreat in the Andes
BYLINE: Dan Collyns in Lima
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 568 words
A Peruvian farmer is demanding that a German energy company pay him compensation for its role in causing historical climate change which, he claims, leaves his home "acutely threatened" by a glacial lake which could burst its banks.
In an unprecedented legal claim in Europe, Saul Luciano Lliuya demands that RWE pay part of the costs for urgent protective measures as his home lies in the floodpath of the Palcacocha lake which is damming glacial melt-water upstream of his home in the town of Huaraz, in Peru's Cordillera Blanca, or white mountain range.
"Two glaciers could collapse into the lake, that would cause a big flood wave which would destroy the house of my family and many other houses in Huaraz. This is an unacceptable risk," he told the Guardian.
"For a long time, my father and I have thought that those who cause climate change should help solve the problems it causes. Peru is a poor and vulnerable country. The big polluters who have contributed to climate change should now contribute to the solutions of our problems," Lliuya said.
The claim alleges that RWE - one of Europe's biggest historical emitters according to a 2013 report in the journal Climatic Change - contributed to the greenhouse effect and, in turn, glacial retreat in the Andes.
The Palcacocha lagoon has grown in size by eight times and in volume by 30 times in less than 40 years due to glacial melt, the claim details.
Local authorities in Huaraz say there is an acute risk of flooding and have repeatedly declared a state of emergency. In 1941, about 5,000 inhabitants were killed when an earthquake caused chunks of ice to collapse into the lake, which was much smaller than it is today. However, there is no early warning system in place, unlike in the nearby town of Carhuaz.
Roda Verheyen, a Hamburg-based environmental lawyer representing Lliuya, said her client plans to sue RWE through Germany's civil courts in what would be an unprecedented legal proceeding in Europe.
"We have a solid case with respect to RWE's contribution to greenhouse gases and how that leads to the risk in which Mr Lliuya's home finds itself," Verheyen told the Guardian.
"My client approached me with one question: 'Do you think it is correct that polluters never own up to their responsibility?' As a lawyer and as a human being, I have to say, it is not fair. Can we do something about it?" she said.
Lliuya is demanding that RWE pay him for its contribution to global total emissions from 1751 to 2010, which is calculated to be 0.47%, according to the 2013 report.
To avert the risk of flooding, the Palcacocha lake would need to be drained until further safety works could be put in place, such as building new dams and modernising existing ones.
In order to undertake these measures, Lliuya asks the company to contribute around (EURO)20,000 ( £14,250 ), an amount equivalent to 0.47% of the projected total costs to drain or reinforce the lake and install a glacial flood outburst early warning system.
"The company has to pay its fair share of financing measures to protect those in danger," said Christoph Bals, of German NGO, Germanwatch, which is supporting the claim. "Companies that create risks for others through their business activity have to shoulder their responsibility," he said.
Michael Murphy, a spokesman for RWE Group said on Monday that the company could not comment as it had yet to receive the legal claim from Lliuya.
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March 16, 2015 Monday 3:40 PM GMT
What is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation?;
The $43.5bn trust is the largest philanthropic organisation in the world and is committed to the eradication of malaria and polio, and controlling the spread of tuberculosis and HIV
BYLINE: Karl Mathiesen
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 472 words
The story of the world's largest private foundation begins with a couple reading a news article about suffering in the developing world. The husband clipped the article and sent it to his father, the philanthropist William H Gates, writing: "Dad, maybe we can do something about this."
It was the first step towards the creation of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Since beginning their great philanthropic mission in 1997, the husband and wife team have become a powerful catalyst for the improvement of lives in the world's poorest countries.
The foundation's trust endowment of $43.5bn (£29.5bn) makes grant payments in excess of $3bn every year ($3.9bn in 2014). Its focus has been on bridging the enormous health deficit between rich and poor countries and on fights it sees as vast, but ultimately winnable. Among its goals are the eradication of malaria and polio, and controlling the spread of tuberculosis and HIV.
Investor Warren Buffet joined the foundation as a trustee in 2006 with a £30bn pledge. In 2008, Bill Gates resigned as chief software architect at Microsoft, the technology company he built, to focus solely on the work of the foundation.
In total, the fund has given $32.9bn in grants to health programmes around the world. Its work focusses on prevention, immunisation and vaccination.
Since the turn of the century, partly thanks to the work of the foundation, four countries have eradicated malaria. Mortality from the disease has dropped 42% in that time. Bill said in 2014 that malaria could be eliminated within a generation.
In 2014, after a massive coordinated effort between the Indian government, the Gates Foundation and Rotary International, India announced it was officially polio-free. The programme employed 2m vaccinators who spread out across the country. Just five years before, India had more than half the world's polio cases. It was "the greatest global health achievement I have ever witnessed", said Bill. The foundation now aims to eradicate polio worldwide by 2018.
The foundation has also funded the Guardian's award-winning Global Development website since 2010.
As well as his work on health through the foundation, Bill has made climate change and clean energy a personal mission. The foundation's annual letter for 2015 says their achievements could be undone by the advancing climate crisis.
"It is fair to ask whether the progress we're predicting will be stifled by climate change. The most dramatic problems caused by climate change are more than 15 years away, but the long-term threat is so serious that the world needs to move much more aggressively - right now - to develop energy sources that are cheaper, can deliver on demand, and emit zero carbon dioxide. Bill is investing time in this work personally (not through our foundation) and will continue to speak out about it."
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March 16, 2015 Monday 3:09 PM GMT
The argument for divesting from fossil fuels is becoming overwhelming;
As progressive institutions, the Gates Foundation and Wellcome Trust should commit to taking their money out of the companies that are driving global warming, says the Guardian's editor-in-chief as he launches our climate campaign
BYLINE: Alan Rusbridger
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 1973 words
The world has much more coal, oil and gas in the ground than it can safely burn. That much is physics.
Anyone studying the question with an open mind will almost certainly come to a similar conclusion: if we and our children are to have a reasonable chance of living stable and secure lives 30 or so years from now, according to one recent study 80% of the known coal reserves will have to stay underground, along with half the gas and a third of the oil reserves.
If only science were enough.
If not science, then politics? MPs, presidents, prime ministers and members of congress are always telling us (often suggesting a surrender of civil liberties in return) that their first duty is the protection of the public.
But politics sometimes struggles with physics. Science is, at its best, long term and gives the best possible projection of future risk. Which is not always how politics works, even when it comes to our security. Politicians prefer certainty and find it difficult to make serious prudent planning on high probabilities.
On climate change, the public clamour is in inverse proportion to the enormity of the long-term threat. If only it were the other way round. And so, year after year, the people who represent us around the UN negotiating tables have moved inches, not miles.
When, as Guardian colleagues, we first started discussing this climate change series, there were advocates for focusing the main attention on governments. States own much of the fossil fuels that can never be allowed to be dug up. Only states, it was argued, can forge the treaties that count. In the end the politicians will have to save us through regulation - either by limiting the amount of stuff that is extracted, or else by taxing, pricing and limiting the carbon that's burned.
If journalism has so far failed to animate the public to exert sufficient pressure on politics through reporting and analysis, it seemed doubtful whether many people would be motivated by the idea of campaigning for a paragraph to be inserted into the negotiating text at the UN climate talks in Paris this December. So we turned to an area where campaigners have recently begun to have marked successes: divestment.
There are two arguments in favour of moving money out of the biggest and most aggressive fossil fuel companies - one moral, the other financial.
The moral crusaders - among them Archbishop Desmond Tutu - see divestment from fossil fuels in much the same light as earlier campaigners saw the push to pull money out of tobacco, arms, apartheid South Africa - or even slavery. Most fossil fuel companies, they argue, have little concern for future generations. Of course, the companies are run by sentient men and women with children and grandchildren of their own. But the market pressures and fiduciary duties involved in running public companies compel behaviour that is overwhelmingly driven by short-term returns.
So - the argument goes - the directors will meanwhile carry on business as usual, no matter how incredible it may seem that they will be allowed to dig up all the climate-warming assets they own. And, by and large - and discounting recent drops in the price of oil - they continue to be reasonably good short-term businesses, benefiting from enormous subsidies as they search for even more reserves that can never be used.
The pragmatists argue the case on different grounds. It is simply this: that finance will eventually have to surrender to physics.
If - eventually - the companies cannot, for the sake of the human race, be allowed to extract a great many of the assets they own, then many of those assets will in time become valueless. So people with other kinds of fiduciary duty - people, say, managing endowments, pension funds and investment portfolios - will want to get their money out of these companies before the bubble bursts.
Of course, the financial risk comes not simply from the threat of regulation, but could also be hastened by the march of alternative clean energy. Global investment in clean energy jumped 16% in 2014 to £205bn, but because of the rapid drop in the price of that energy (the cost of solar has dropped by two-thirds in 6 years ), the money invested last year bought almost double the amount of electricity capacity as in 2011.
So there's a risk calculation to be done by anyone invested in fossil fuels - which, one way or another, is probably most of us. Get out too early and you might forgo the reasonable returns based on current performance and the book value of the assets that are notionally exploitable.
But what of the risk of being a late exiter? Do you wait and judge when the politicians could finally summon the will to start making regulatory and market interventions ... and then get out? And at the same time as everyone else is trying to do the same?
This is why the divestment movement has changed from being a fringe campaign to something every responsible fund manager can no longer ignore. How could they, when even the governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, has warned that the " vast majority of reserves are unburnable " and the bank itself is conducting an inquiry into the risk that inflated fossil fuel assets pose to the stability of the financial system ?
Related: The biggest story in the world
When the president of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, urges : "Be the first mover. Use smart due diligence. Rethink what fiduciary responsibility means in this changing world. It's simple self-interest. Every company, investor and bank that screens new and existing investments for climate risk is simply being pragmatic"?
When the Bank of England's deputy head of supervision for banks and insurance companies, Paul Fisher, warns, as he did this month : "As the world increasingly limits carbon emissions, and moves to alternative energy sources, investments in fossil fuels - a growing financial market in recent decades - may take a huge hit"?
Or listen to Hank Paulson, no bleeding liberal, but secretary of the Treasury under Bush and former CEO of Goldman Sachs: "Each of us must recognise that the risks are personal. We've seen and felt the costs of underestimating the financial bubble. Let's not ignore the climate bubble."
President Obama puts it most pithily : "We're not going to be able to burn it all."
So the argument for a campaign to divest from the world's most polluting companies is becoming an overwhelming one, on both moral and pragmatic grounds. But the divestment movement is sometimes misunderstood. The intention is not to bankrupt the companies, nor to promote overnight withdrawal from fossil fuels - that would not be possible or desirable.
Related: 'If you read the Guardian, join the Guardian'
Divestment serves to delegitimise the business models of companies that are using investors' money to search for yet more coal, oil and gas that can't safely be burned. It is a small but crucial step in the economic transition away from a global economy run on fossil fuels.
The usual rule of newspaper campaigns is that you don't start one unless you know you're going to win it. This one will almost certainly be won in time: the physics is unarguable. But we are launching our campaign today in the firm belief that it will force the issue now into the boardrooms and inboxes of people who have billions of dollars at their disposal.
It's clear, from our researches over the past few weeks, that many company directors and fund managers have had a nagging feeling that this is something coming up the agenda that - one day - they will have to think about. As the Guardian's campaign mounts, we hope they will appreciate that there is some urgency about the choices they make.
Who will take the lead? Some huge endowments and investment funds have already announced that they will be decarbonising their portfolios, exiting fossil fuels altogether and/or investing in cleaner alternatives.
They include the Rockefeller Brothers Fund ; Stanford, Glasgow and Australian National Universities ; the British Medical Association; Norway's Government Pension Fund Global, which has sold off 32 coal companies on climate and environmental grounds ; AP4, the giant Swedish pension fund; and many other faith groups, local councils and asset managers. The World Council of Churches has committed not to invest.
Our own campaign will give readers the information they need to make their own investment decisions and to apply pressure on the workplaces, unions, schools, colleges, churches, NGOs, pension advisers and charities in their lives. But we also want to try to change minds at one or two institutions that have demonstrated inspiring thought leadership in other spheres of life.
The Wellcome Trust handles a portfolio of more than £18bn and invests around £700m a year in science, the humanities, social science education and medical research. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has an endowment of $43.5bn. Last year it gave away $3.9bn in grants towards health and sustainable development.
In 2014 the Wellcome Trust had £564m invested in Shell, BP, Schlumberger, Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton alone. The Gates Foundation has a financial stake of over $1bn in fossil fuel companies.
By most standards, these are huge sums of money, helping to fund the extraction of unusable oil gas and coal on a massive scale. But, as a proportion of the foundations' own endowments, they are relatively small - just a few percent for the fossil fuel investments we know about. So they could, we think, be divested without damaging overall returns. Indeed, we think they could achieve higher and, over time, safer returns by putting their money into other investments with real opportunities for growth in a world tackling climate change
Because both foundations are a) so progressive in their aims and actions and b) have human health and science at the heart of everything they do, we hope they, of all institutions, will see the force of the call for them to move their money out of a sector whose actions, if unchecked, could cause the most devastating harm to the health of billions. A landmark report by the Lancet and University College London concluded in 2009: "Climate change is the biggest global health threat of the 21st century."
Related: Everything you wanted to ask about the Guardian's climate change campaign
The ask of them is, we think, both modest and simple. We understand that fund managers do not like to make sudden changes to their portfolios. So we ask that the Gates Foundation and Wellcome Trust commit now to divesting from the top 200 fossil fuel companies within five years. And that they immediately freeze any new investment in the same companies.
We will, of course, suggest that the Guardian Media Group does the same, and keeps you informed about its own deliberations and decisions.
Please sign, retweet and generally spread news about the petition. In everything we say to these foundations, we will emphasise that we come in admiration for what they have done, and continue to do for human health and wellbeing. They aren't the "bad guys". But they could certainly show themselves to be the good guys in this matter of life and death.
One final thing. This campaign is going to be backed up by much reporting and analysis. We would be very pleased to hear from anyone working in the fossil fuel industries at a senior level, either currently or recently. We are interested, for instance, to learn about internal discussions and papers about the state of knowledge and debate about the environmental harm caused by the extractive industries. You can email me confidentially at alan.rusbridger@theguardian.com ; see my PGP key on @arusbridger on Twitter; or use the Guardian's encrypted securedrop platform, which enables anyone to send us documents without being traced.
Follow the campaign on #keepitintheground
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The Guardian
March 16, 2015 Monday 2:00 PM GMT
Cyclone Pam: solutions to the human cost of climate change;
Cyclone Pam is only the latest event calling for an effective response at global level - it must begin with acknowledgement that this is a shared responsibility
BYLINE: Mary Robinson and Gro Harlem Brundtland
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 734 words
"No man is an island," wrote the English poet John Donne. The devastating scenes from Vanuatu in the wake of cyclone Pam show how acutely relevant his lines remain given the threat posed to all humanity by climate change. Small islands are particularly vulnerable to cyclones and rising sea levels, but increased emissions and temperatures mean we are all more vulnerable to climate-related disasters and their devastating consequences.
It is a grim coincidence that cyclone Pam struck as the World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction being held in Sendai, Japan. There is a global consensus that a changing climate leads to changes in the frequency, intensity, duration and timing of extreme weather and climate events, and can result in unprecedented events. Moreover, these disasters hit the poorest people and their communities hardest as we see now in Vanuatu, and previously from typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines to the recent floods in Malawi.
Yet even the richest countries of the world have struggled to cope with the increasing ferocity of climate-related natural disasters, from hurricanes Katrina and Sandy in the United States to the damage wrought to the UK's economy from flooding in 2014.
An effective response needs to be conceived at a global level and to start with an acknowledgement that this is a shared challenge and responsibility. "Every man is a piece of the continent," added Donne. In 2015, we can add that every man and woman is a piece of the whole planet. The Sendai conference should serve as a starting point for a coherent and integrated disaster risk reduction framework that builds on the Hyogo Framework for Action adopted in 2005 and promotes a people-centred preventive approach to disaster risk.
The backdrop is stark. Since 2005, omore than 700,000 people have lost their lives, over 1.4 million have been injured and around 23 million have been made homeless as a result of disasters, including natural disasters and climate and other human-made disasters. This undermines the enjoyment of the full range of human rights by millions of people. The total economic loss is more than $1.3tn, whilst between 2008 and 2012 some 144 million people have been displaced from their homes.
The international community has an environmental, economic and a moral imperative to act. This year sees the launch of the UN's sustainable development goals. They cover a broad range of issues from poverty reduction to nutrition, gender equality and environmental protection. It is obvious that credible progress in all these areas goes hand in hand with an effective approach to disaster risk reduction. There is no point, for example, in establishing a new maternal health clinic in a coastal village which risks being swept away entirely by rising sea waters.
As Elders, we believe that reducing vulnerability to both natural and human-made hazards is the key to building resilient communities and societies. Only empowered and resilient communities operating in the context of global solidarity can ensure a just and equitable policy framework for tackling disaster risk and climate change.
We call on the UN to place greater emphasis on disaster risk reduction so that it receives greater emphasis in the SDGs and their measurement metrics, and for policymakers to base their work on meeting the needs of people living in vulnerable situations all over the world. More attention needs to be given to the underlying drivers of risk such as poverty, inequality, weak governance, declining ecosystems and conflict. Above all disaster response has to aid recovery and reduce the risk of future disasters.
An effective, holistic approach to disaster risk reduction must be people-centred and take into account gender inequality and the vital role women play in building community resilience. Women are not only particularly vulnerable to disasters, they are also frontline actors in disaster preparation and response; their participation in disaster planning needs to become common practice.
The stakes at Sendai are high, but we remain optimistic that a positive outcome will be reached. People around the world, from civil society to corporations, are increasingly aware that 2015 is the year when tough decisions need to be taken. As Elders, we will continue to campaign for a just and equitable solution to the world's climate challenge with human rights and solidarity at its centre.
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The Guardian
March 16, 2015 Monday 1:29 PM GMT
Correction Appended
Meet the man leading Britain's fight against Ebola;
From his lab in Liverpool, Professor Tom Solomon is heading part of the UK efforts to combat Ebola. He's hopeful we'll have a treatment and vaccine within a year. But that's only the beginning of our worries...
BYLINE: Simon Hattenstone
SECTION: WORLD NEWS
LENGTH: 4656 words
Professor Tom Solomon was in the shower when he got a sinking feeling in his stomach. It was July 2014 and Radio 4's Today programme was reporting on Ebola. As director of the University of Liverpool's Institute of Infection and Global Health, he was already well acquainted with the outbreak, which had been first reported in March, in Guinea. But there had been outbreaks of Ebola every few years in Africa since the mid-70s, and they were normally brought under control fairly quickly. True, this outbreak looked bigger than on previous occasions - there had already been a few hundred deaths - but Solomon put this down to the fact that it was the first time Ebola had hit west rather than central Africa, and people were unprepared.
That morning, Solomon heard two things that gave him pause. First, the doctor who was leading the response in Sierra Leone, Sheik Humarr Khan, had caught Ebola himself; he later died. And second, for the first time, an airline passenger had unwittingly carried Ebola to a new country, Nigeria.
By now Solomon's mind was racing. If Khan had caught the disease, and he was meant to be leading the response, there was no way this outbreak was going to be controlled without much more help from outside. And the fact that an airline passenger had carried Ebola was also highly significant: this was the first time it had happened. If Ebola could be carried on a plane to Nigeria, where next?
He'd had that sinking feeling twice before in his life - when he didn't think he'd be able to escape from a hotel fire in Vietnam, and as a junior doctor, when a patient was bleeding out in front of him. He knew something needed to be done quickly. If it wasn't, the consequences would be disastrous.
Three months earlier, in April 2014, the institute had won a £4m grant to open a new health protection research unit specialising in emerging infections. As part of the application, Solomon had gone into great detail about any number of dangerous infections - Japanese encephalitis, tick encephalitis, influenza, dengue, West Nile virus, enterovirus 71, hantavirus, hepatitis E, Lyme disease. Did he mention Ebola? Solomon smiles. "Yes. Ebola was a footnote in our application... Little did we know."
Now, Solomon and his team immediately got to work. By August, the World Health Organisation declared the epidemic to be an international public health emergency - the largest outbreak in history. It was a disease with an appalling mortality rate, estimated at 70% by the WHO last October. Official figures record that almost 10,000 people in west Africa have died so far; unofficially, that figure is feared to be far higher. And although the numbers of cases appear to be coming under control, they could go up again.
The institute's new health protection research unit expected to divide its £4m among the many infections it has been researching over the years. Not surprisingly, things haven't worked out like that. "Much of our activity has been diverted to Ebola," Solomon says. For the infectious diseases industry, the pace of research has been astonishing. It often takes decades to develop vaccines against deadly infections, and some of the deadliest bugs, such as malaria, are still taunting the world's top scientists more than a century after being discovered. "As a community, we have shown that when we need to set up drug and vaccine trials quickly, we can respond," Solomon says. "And we hopefully will have a vaccine and treatment at the end of this terrible disaster, so some good will have come out of it." His team is supporting several studies, including one led by his colleague Dr Peter Horby in Oxford, and another led by Belgian scientists.
The first thing Solomon's team assessed was where the disease would spread next. They predicted that the US would be the first non-African country to import Ebola, which it did in September, and, with eerie accuracy, that Britain would have one case by the end of 2014.
***
Perhaps the most astonishing thing about Ebola is that, despite it first being identified in the 1970s, and despite regular outbreaks, so little work has been done until now to combat it - no effective drugs, no vaccine, just the standard procedures of isolating patients, not touching them, regular dousing in chlorine bleach for the uninfected.
Look at it from the parasite's viewpoint; it doesn't want to kill you, it just wants to hang out in there
The primary source, where the Ebola virus hangs out naturally, is still not completely clear. It has long been thought to circulate in fruit bats, which then pass it to other animals including monkeys and antelopes. Humans can become infected from the bats directly, or from eating bushmeat. The first known patient in the current outbreak, two-year-old Emile Ouamouno, is thought to have caught the disease from playing with infected fruit bats in a hollow tree in Meliandou, a tiny village deep in the Guinean forest. It was then transmitted to others via a classic, deadly pattern: through human-to-human contact, often during preparation for funerals, when families wash their loved ones' bodies. At the point when Ebola victims die, they are at their most infectious. There were only 31 houses in Meliandou, but within four months of Emile's death, 13 others in the village had been buried.
The WHO reports that the spread of the disease has now slowed, from a peak of hundreds of new cases a week to less than 100 cases a week in late January, but by the beginning of March had risen to 132 - 81 of them in Sierra Leone. A vaccine is being trialled and earlier predictions of 1 million people being infected will hopefully prove to have been an unhappy blip for the statisticians.
But whatever you do, Solomon says, don't underestimate how serious the epidemic has been - and continues to be. "It's been an emergency, a crisis, a catastrophe, all of those things. To have 10,000 deaths... it's been a disaster."
***
The institute's base, the Ronald Ross Building, is in the centre of a building site in downtown Liverpool. At a glance, it's hard to know whether the buildings are going up or coming down. In fact, this is one of the city's growth areas, known as the Knowledge Quarter. Biomedical research is booming here. More than 300 people work in the institute - medics, scientists, managers. Every room is a melting pot of accents and nationalities. Solomon prides himself on recruiting from far and wide: if you want the best, he says, you've got to go global.
When the institute was formed in 2010, it brought together medics, vets and scientists working on infection and global health problems. "We're probably the only UK institute that has these groups working side-by-side at the bench," Solomon says. "Zoonotic bugs - those that jump from animals to humans - are becoming more and more important. So the One Health approach, which recognises that the health of humans, animals and the environment are interconnected, is key." Another thing that makes the institute unusual is its gender balance: almost 50% of the scientists here are women. (Recent statistics show that in the UK only one-third of science graduates are female, and just 9% of professors.)
Britain, France and the US have led the way in tackling Ebola - and the institute is one of Britain's leading research units working on the virus, alongside Public Health England, Oxford University, Imperial College London, and the two schools of tropical medicine in London and Liverpool. Liverpool has been at the heart of research into infectious diseases for more than 100 years. As one of the country's leading port cities, it did extensive trade with Africa and Asia, and as a result attracted more than its share of tropical diseases. The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine was founded in 1898 by Sir Alfred Lewis Jones, a local shipowner, a year before its London counterpart. It was the first institution in the world to specialise in teaching and researching tropical diseases. And the city's own Ronald Ross was the first British winner of the Nobel prize in physiology or medicine, for showing that mosquitoes transmit malaria.
Ross is one of Solomon's heroes. A cabinet on the ground floor of the institute contains his antique microscope, the one he took into the field in India. "There are not a lot of positives about mosquitoes," Solomon says. "When people say what animal is the biggest killer of man, some say sharks, some tigers, but it's actually mosquitoes. They kill through malaria, they kill through encephalitis, they kill through dengue. Some other insects such as ticks and midges also carry bugs, but mosquitoes are far and away the nastiest."
I first met Solomon in 2013, at a fundraising function for the Encephalitis Society. We are both ambassadors (he because he is one of the country's top experts on this infection of the brain, me because I survived it). In a brightly coloured waistcoat and oversized spectacles, he had something of the children's TV presenter about him. He addressed a room of City bankers who knew nothing of the disease. Solomon captivated his audience - he was clear, accessible, moving and, at times, even amusing about this often potentially fatal brain infection. Next time I heard of him, he was presenting a video to publicise encephalitis in which he broke a Guinness world record for the biggest organ made of people: a human brain composed of hundreds of people in multicoloured cagoules.
Solomon grew up in Manchester to an accountant father and teacher mother. He was bright enough as a schoolboy, but nothing special. Ditto university, he says. It was only when he discovered bugs that he came into his own.
It's not easy to stop Solomon, 49, when he's talking about infections. This isn't a job, it's a vocation. Possibly an obsession. It all goes back to his first trip to Africa as a medical student. He had thought he would be a GP until he started working with malaria patients. "Occasionally, you'll sit in a clinic in this country and think some of these people haven't got that much wrong with them, but it wasn't like that out there. There were massive challenges that you could do something about if you were lucky."
He had planned to conduct a study to see if malaria patients had low blood sugar. However, just as he was heading to Mozambique, someone published a paper in the Lancet showing exactly that. So he broadened his research question to look at the relationship between blood sugar levels and all serious childhood diseases. He tested every child who presented, through day and night, to the point of being ill himself. He discovered that many sick children had low blood sugar levels, not just those with malaria, and his findings made it into the Lancet, too.
Solomon returned from Africa, underwent clinical training and then, in his late 20s, headed to Vietnam with his girlfriend Rachel, to work on the Japanese encephalitis epidemic. Three years later, he returned to Britain with Rachel, by now his wife, and two adopted Vietnamese babies. Leah, now 19, was brought to the hospital with tetanus when she was 10 days old. Solomon and Rachel adopted her. Just before they left Vietnam, baby Daisy was brought to a local orphanage and they adopted her, too. They also have two younger biological daughters, Rosie and Eva - they're "home-grown," Solomon says.
Solomon's office is a testament to his many passions. On his desk is a glass kukri full of rum, a gift from his research fellow in Nepal. "I'll only give you a little bit because it's very strong," he says, "but at least you get a flavour." He pours and clinks glasses. "Cheers. I don't normally drink it at work."
On his cabinet is a picture of Rachel and the girls, behind his chair is a signed Liverpool football shirt, and balanced precariously on a high shelf is an Olympic torch (he was an official torchbearer in 2012). His bookshelves are crammed with medical textbooks, a number of which he has written or edited. He shows me a certificate of which he is particularly proud, stating that: "The Guinness world record for the fastest marathon dressed as a doctor was achieved by Tom Solomon in four hours 21 minutes and nine seconds." He ran as The Running Mad Professor (his Twitter handle is @RunningMadProf ), raising £21,000 for the Encephalitis Society.
On the wall are framed photographs of heroes from history. " Sir William Osler is the man who essentially defined medical science as we're still doing it 150 years later. He was one of the guys who said: 'We need to study diseases by looking at people who are sick, at the bedside.' Before that, a lot of it was just theory, pure fancy, learned in the lecture theatres." He points to another photograph. "That's Alexandre Yersin, who was in Vietnam. He discovered that plague was caused by a bacteria. I was in Vietnam 100 years after him. Then, not long after, we had Sars happening in south-east Asia, and there were a lot of parallels."
Solomon is a great fan of practitioner-scientists such as Osler and Yersin. These days, he spends two days a week working with patients at the Walton Centre and Royal Liverpool University hospital, and three at the institute. For the past 20 years, he has specialised in encephalitis - another infection with a shocking mortality rate. Encephalitis is an inflammation of the brain that, in Britain, is often caused by the herpes virus (unlike Japanese encephalitis, which is passed on through mosquitoes). Survivors of encephalitis are often left with complex, untreatable problems. Solomon tells me of a patient who cannot lay down new memories. "He can't remember anything since the 1970s. His hard drive, if you like, has lost 30 years' worth of memories."
We head for lunch in the Victoria Gallery & Museum, the original Liverpool University building. "Just think," Solomon says, "the building next to us is where Ronald Ross worked, and 100 years on we're still working on emerging diseases spread by mosquitoes." A sit-down lunch is a luxury - he normally grabs a sandwich. Over lunch, it becomes apparent that he has quite an affection for infections. He anthropomorphises viruses, tells me why we have to look at things from their point of view rather than from ours - they are just trying to get on with life, reproduce and survive. People assume that they want to kill humans, but the truth couldn't be more different. Those viruses that know what is good for them may make people ill or lie latent for years, surviving off humans, but not destroying us. After all, if they kill us, they kill themselves.
Ebola isn't stupid - it's pretty good at duping the immune system. But millions of people get malaria
Back at the institute, Chris Moxon, a scientist in his 30s, is sitting at his computer, studying cerebral malaria. Three years ago he was in Malawi working with malaria patients. Now he's applied for a £600,000 grant to further his research. Does he hope to find a solution to the disease? Moxon, a quietly spoken intellectual, is amused by the question. "You can't apply for a grant saying you're going to solve cerebral malaria, because people will laugh."
Solomon: "It's all incremental."
Moxon: "Yes, you just chip away."
Solomon: "When I was a youngster, there were 2 million deaths a year from malaria. Now it's half a million deaths a year."
Moxon is not entirely convinced. "It depends on who you go with. Chris Murray [a researcher in public health and global health at the University of Washington] said [there were] 1.2 million deaths a year in 2012. He thought the WHO underestimated it."
While Moxon and Solomon quibble over figures, they agree that Ebola is far more likely to be cured than malaria. "The difference with Ebola is that, potentially, within a short cycle, by the end of 2015, we might well have a treatment that works and a vaccine," Solomon says. A team led by Professor Julian Hiscox at the institute, in collaboration with Public Health England, has been looking for possible treatments. They examined which proteins inside a cell are hijacked by the virus to help it reproduce, and discovered that one virus protein, known as VP24, disrupts signalling in infected human cells and so impairs the fight against the virus. In September, Hiscox suggested that a drug known as ouabain, traditionally used for severe heart disease, could reduce the virus's replication.
Is Moxon surprised by the pace of progress with Ebola? "It is extraordinary. It is wonderful to have the huge world interest and everybody coming together. But even with that amount of money and attention, you couldn't make that amount of headway on malaria." You get the impression that neither Solomon nor Moxon much respects Ebola as a virus, whereas malaria is held in awe.
Malaria is simply smarter, Solomon says. "It has been learning how to avoid our immune system for millennia, because we are the natural host for it. I remember when I was an even younger student than you," he tells Moxon, "in Mozambique, we went to a village and bled all the kids there. They were playing football and having fun, yet one in three of them had malaria parasites in their blood. So this parasite has learned how to live in the human body without making you so sick that you die, because it doesn't want to kill you. You've got to look at it from the parasite's viewpoint; it just wants to hang out in there."
"And occasionally, unfortunately, it makes someone really sick," Moxon adds.
"Don't get me wrong," Solomon says, "Ebola isn't stupid - in fact, it's pretty good at duping the immune system." But malaria is more sophisticated in that it can infect the host again and again. Ebola either kills the human or is killed by the human. "Millions of people get malaria. The only people who get Ebola are those who are caring for somebody who is ill with Ebola. Unless you're mopping up after them, you're not so much at risk."
We've been tracking Japanese encephalitis, and one possibility is that climate change is allowing it to spread
The problem in west Africa is that so many of the medics were infected. "The healthcare services there are falling apart. In some places, half the doctors and nurses are dead." For this reason, Solomon says, it is vital that UK healthcare workers continue going to west Africa to diagnose and treat patients. He mentions the nurse Pauline Cafferkey, who was diagnosed only once she had returned to Britain, acknowledging that her story is enough to put some off going out to help. "She was protected, working for Save the Children, she shouldn't have got sick. And if someone like that is getting ill, it makes people think, blimey. The original west African doctors and nurses who died, it was because they didn't have proper gear to protect themselves. If Pauline Cafferkey had died, it would have a bad impact on people's willingness to go. But, in some ways, this isn't new: medics have always been at risk of infectious diseases. A lot of doctors used to die of TB just because they were exposed to it."
Thankfully, Cafferkey made a good recovery, but does he feel anxious when his staff go to west Africa? Yes, of course, he says - and slightly guilty. "If I've got people going out there, obviously I'd like to think I'd lead by example." Solomon has volunteered to go, but it has been decided that he is needed more at the institute, running things there.
Is there any chance of an Ebola epidemic in Britain? No, he says, this is when the NHS comes into its own. "The government can say, 'This is the kind of hospital that can take patients, this is how they should be set up', whereas in America it's a series of states that do their own thing, so patients turned up and they were not prepared for it."
Twenty-six-year-old biotechnologist Raquel Medialdea Carrera has been at the institute for four months and is about to fly out to Sierra Leone, where she will be working in the diagnostics laboratory set up by Public Health England. Is she nervous? "Not yet. I got very nervous when I had to tell my parents, who are back in Spain. That was scary. First I told my father, and he said don't tell your mother until you're there. But I told her. And they understood."
What do her friends think when she tells them she is going? "Most of them are like, 'Are you crazy?' The second reaction is, 'Don't get close to me for a few months after you're back.'"
Medialdea Carrera will be in Sierra Leone for five weeks - the maximum stint allowed. She will wear a full body suit to work, and is allowed to do only three one-hour shifts a day. "Because it's absolutely exhausting," Solomon explains. "It's like stepping into an oven dressed in this plastic suit."
When she returns, she will get time off work to ensure she's healthy and to readjust. It is not uncommon for people to return traumatised after what they've seen. The horror is not just in the number of deaths, but in their manner.
***
We're heading towards the containment level three lab. This is the highest containment level at the institute (the absolute highest is containment level four, run by Public Health England at Porton Down - full body suits are needed even to enter, and that is where the actual Ebola virus is worked on). To enter containment level three, we have to pass through the kind of air-locked doors you would find in a high-security prison. The room is freezing, and the only noise is the constant mechanical whirring of the negative pressure cabinet that pulls in the air flow, so if there is a spillage of virus, it will rise up through the filters and keep workers safe. Solomon points to a massive freezer regulated at -77C to keep all the viruses in peak condition (home freezers work at -20C). On the door of the freezer are the names of all the viruses deposited (dengue, Japanese encephalitis, chikungunya ) and the scientists who have been working on them (Lucy, Daniel, Denis, Jenny, Neil and Kevin). The casual intimacy of the first names next to the deadly disease labels is unnerving.
Of all the diseases Solomon has worked with, it's Japanese encephalitis that continues to fascinate him most. Another clever bug, he says, and one that he has enjoyed most success combating.
When he went to Vietnam in 1991, the children who were unwell, in comas or having fits, were thought to have cerebral malaria, but it turned out to be Japanese encephalitis. Others looked as if they had polio, even though polio had been pretty well eradicated. These children also proved to be infected with the Japanese encephalitis virus. The disease manifests itself in different forms, making it tricky to diagnose. Twenty years ago, there was only one international lab in south-east Asia where they could test for it, so Solomon and his colleagues at the University of Malaysia in Sarawak developed a new diagnostic kit: a simple test they could do by the bedside.
"We call it a dot blot kit," Solomon says. "Essentially, you were putting blood on blotting paper and looking at the colour change. Tests like that are now used across the whole of south-east Asia." They also devised a simple way of measuring the outcome of Japanese encephalitis, now known as the Liverpool Outcome Score. This score means that governments can work out how much disability there is, how much Japanese encephalitis is costing them, and decide whether it is cost-effective to vaccinate. And most have decided it is. The end result is that manufacturers have brought down the cost of the vaccine and are producing millions of doses.
But Japanese encephalitis remains incredibly difficult to treat. While it is estimated that over the past 10 years up to 800,000 case have been prevented through the use of vaccines, there is still no drug to treat those who get infected. In one trial, interferon, a drug traditionally used for cancers and hepatitis, slowed down the illness, but did not stop people dying. Solomon and his team, the Brain Infections Group, are still working on other treatments.
Meanwhile, the virus is spreading to new geographical areas. The last decade has seen the disease creep up towards the highlands of Nepal. Previously, it was found only in the low-lying rice paddy areas. "We've been tracking it," Solomon says, "and one possibility is that climate change is allowing the disease to spread."
There was a time we thought, give antibiotics for everything. Bugs are becoming resistant. It's Darwinian evolution
Japanese encephalitis, which is carried by mosquitoes, is unlikely to become a problem in the UK, but Solomon wouldn't rule anything out. "With climate change, some diseases that couldn't come here because it was too cold might be able to in the future. Dengue is another disease carried by mosquitoes that we're seeing in Europe a bit, and that might come to the UK eventually. There is also lots of tick-born encephalitis in Europe, and the UK is at risk from that, too. So it's about looking at what the risks are and trying to mitigate them."
So what is the greatest threat facing people in the UK? Ah, Solomon says, the biggest threat is not a single disease. He takes me down to a huge laboratory to explain. This is only containment level two, meaning we can walk around in white coats, but the work going on here is vital for our future. "There was a time when we thought we had infections cracked - we could just give antibiotics for everything." That is, until we started to overuse them, both in treating human infections, but also in the farming industry.
Now, antimicrobial resistance, also known as antibiotic resistance, is one of our greatest threats. "Bugs are becoming resistant to antimicrobials," Solomon says. "It's just Darwinian evolution." The rise of these antimicrobial-resistant bugs is a terrifying prospect, and that is why places such as the institute are dedicating so much energy to tackling it.
We meet Elaine Waters, who is counting bacteria in a small dish to see how many are resistant. She is part of a team led by Aras Kadioglu looking for alternatives to antibiotics. Their findings have just been published in the science journal Nature, showing a new way of treating bacterial infections. Instead of antibiotics, liposomes - tiny, lab-produced bubbles of fat - are used to vacuum up the toxins.
These liposomes could be lifesavers for millions. But, as with most medical research, we are talking long-term, Solomon says. "The next step is to show it works in animals, then to show it's safe in humans. The clinical trials take years to set up and do, which is why the Ebola thing is so remarkable: it's all been done over months."
Meanwhile, to control antimicrobial resistance, we have to make better use of the antibiotics we have. "We've got to somehow encourage GPs and the public to reserve them for those who are really unwell. Convince farmers globally not to use them ad lib to make animals grow more quickly."
Solomon hopes that during 2015 scientists will get the better of Ebola. And then they will focus on the many other perils, known and unknown, that follow in its wake. Yes, there may be other potential Ebolas out there, but one of the most important battles to be fought in the world's laboratories over the next few years will be antimicrobial resistance. If antibiotics do fail us, it could be catastrophic for mankind - pneumonia, for example, would once again become a common killer.
But Solomon is an optimist: rather than focusing on the threat, he prefers to see it as an opportunity. He looks at the liposomes dancing in their tiny dish of bacteria and toxins rather lovingly: "In 10 years' time, if you're unfortunate enough to get a severe bacterial infection, you may well be cured with the treatment that has come from this institute."
· This article was amended on 16 March 2015. An earlier version quoted Tom Solomon as saying that Pauline Cafferkey, the British nurse who contracted Ebola, worked for Médecins sans Frontières. In fact she worked at a Save the Children treatment centre in Sierra Leone.
LOAD-DATE: March 16, 2015
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
CORRECTION-DATE: March 20, 2015
CORRECTION: A feature in last Saturday's Weekend magazine about Professor Tom Solomon, director of the Institute of Infection and Global Health at the University of Liverpool, quoted him as saying that Pauline Cafferkey, the British nurse who contracted Ebola in west Africa, worked for Médecins sans Frontières. In fact she worked at a Save the Children treatment centre in Sierra Leone ( Going viral, page 32).
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The Guardian
March 16, 2015 Monday 1:15 PM GMT
Norway's sovereign wealth fund drops over 50 coal companies;
Government Pension Fund Global sold off coal holdings in 2014, but campaigners are disappointed that investment in coal is only down marginally
BYLINE: Damian Carrington
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 591 words
The world's richest sovereign wealth fund divested from over 50 coal companies in 2014, new analysis has revealed.
Norway's Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), founded on the nation's oil and gas resources and worth now £580bn in total, is being targeted by fossil fuel divestment campaigners.
The GPFG sold off its holdings in 53 coal companies in 2014, dumping 16 US companies including Peabody Energy and the mountain-top-removal companies Arch Coal and Alpha Natural Resources. The fund also dropped 13 Indian companies, including the giant Coal India.
But only three Chinese coal companies were removed from the fund's portfolio and the total value of its coal holdings fell by only 5% to £6.5bn. On Friday, it was revealed that the fund's stake in major oil and gas companies rose to £20bn in 2014.
"The GPFG divested from 53 coal companies, which is a third of the number of coal companies we found in the portfolio the year before," said Heffa Schuecking, director of the German NGO Urgewald, which did the analysis. "While this is a laudable first step, the overall result is very disappointing as the GPFG's total investments in the coal industry show only a marginal decrease."
Truls Gulowsen of Greenpeace Norway said: "We are happy to see that the GPFG divested £60m by dropping 13 Indian coal companies, but at the same time, it has increased its investments in the Chinese coal sector by £61m." China's coal consumption fell for the first time this century in 2014, helping to end the upward trend of global carbon emissions.
Norway's largest private pension fund KLP divested from coal in 2014 and Gulowsen said: "It is shameful that Norway's private pension funds are far more willing to take action on the coal issue than the GPFG. Investing oil proceeds into the coal industry is the worst possible use of our nation's money."
A series of analyses have shown existing coal, oil and gas reserves are several times the amount that can be burned whilst keeping global warming under the internationally agreed 2C limit. A recent study found 80% of coal reserves would have to be kept in the ground.
Many senior figures and institutions in the financial world, including the World Bank, Bank of England, HSBC, Goldman Sachs and Standard and Poor's, have warned that only a fraction of known fossil fuel reserves can be safely burned and that the remainder could plummet in value posing huge risks to investors.
The Go Fossil Free divestment campaign received a significant boost on Sunday, when it received the support of the UN organisation in charge of global climate change negotiations.
"We support divestment as it sends a signal to companies, especially coal companies, that the age of 'burn what you like, when you like' cannot continue," said Nick Nuttall, the official spokesman for the UN framework convention on climate change (UNFCCC). "We have lent our own moral authority as the UN to those groups or organisations who are divesting."
The GPFG revealed in February that it had shed 32 coal companies due to concerns that environmental action would cut their value, but did not name those companies.
Arild Hermstad from the Future in Our Hands, Norway's largest environmental organisation, said that in the lead-up to the crucial UN climate summit in Paris in December, Norway's parliament had a unique chance to show what responsible investment means by excluding, coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel: "The GPFG's coal investments are tiny in relationship to its total holdings, but the problems they cause around the world are huge."
LOAD-DATE: March 16, 2015
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The Guardian
March 16, 2015 Monday 5:00 AM GMT
Cyclone Pam: Vanuatu president says climate change contributed to death and destruction;
Aid agencies assess the death toll and extensive damage in South Pacific islands ravaged by category five cyclone· Kiribati president: 'There will be a time when the waters will not recede'· All the latest coverage here
BYLINE: Paul Farrell and Claire Phipps in Sydney
SECTION: WORLD NEWS
LENGTH: 6038 words
block-time published-time 3.54pm AEST
We are going to wrap up this rolling blog for now but please visit here for further news from Vanuatu. The situation on the ground is still very uncertain but as it changes we will be updating our stories.
For a good summary of the events of today so far click here.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 4.00pm AEST
block-time published-time 3.39pm AEST
A Facebook page has been set up to try to help those who have lost relatives and friends in the chaos of the aftermath of the storm. The page is in its infancy but already has a number of pleas from residents of Vanuatu as well as relatives of those who have been visiting the country. It can be found here.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 3.43pm AEST
block-time published-time 3.35pm AEST
There is still scant news from some of the islands which form Vanuatu. Tanna, which has a population of around 29,000, is said to have been very badly affected. It lay directly in the path of Cyclone Pam. The Australian Red Cross has put out this tweet.
Red Cross reports "utter devastation" on southern island of Tanna with most homes destroyed. #vanuatu 4/5
- Australian Red Cross (@RedCrossAU) March 16, 2015
block-time published-time 3.15pm AEST
Meanwhile, if any more evidence was needed of the power of Cyclone Pam, even in its weakened state, here is what it is doing to the east coast of New Zealand.
More than 100 people have now been evacuated as ex-Cyclone Pam hits the East Coast http://t.co/nsbS7nITejpic.twitter.com/UBFLQ5I5lZ
- Newstalk ZB (@NewstalkZB) March 16, 2015
block-time published-time 2.52pm AEST
Frances Cook, a political reporter for a New Zealand radio station, was on holiday in Vanuatu when the storm struck. She has documented some of the aftermath in Port Vila.
Major queues for fuel in Port Vila #CyclonePampic.twitter.com/KMgd1NEbBI
- Frances Cook (@FrancesCook) March 16, 2015
Main market in Port Vila roped off. Nowhere for farmers to sell, but probably nothing to sell either. #CyclonePampic.twitter.com/QgidW5R7C6
- Frances Cook (@FrancesCook) March 16, 2015
This sums up a weird situation - evacuated resort in the background, what's left of homes in foreground. #CyclonePampic.twitter.com/V9jb3YX3nv
- Frances Cook (@FrancesCook) March 16, 2015
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 2.57pm AEST
block-time published-time 2.34pm AEST
Summary
Here's a round-up of what we know so far, as Vanuatu begins the long process of recovering from the worst cyclone to hit the island chain.
Six people are confirmed dead in Port Vila and more than 30 injured. There are still no casualty figures from outside the capital.
Baldwin Lonsdale, Vanuatu's president, said climate change was contributing to the severe weather his country is experiencing:
We see the level of sea rise ... the cyclone seasons, the warm, the rain, all this is affected ... This year we have more than in any year ... yes, climate change is contributing to this.
He was backed by Anote Tong, president of Kiribati, who said it was "time to act" on climate change:
For leaders of low-lying island atolls, the hazards of global warming affect our people in different ways, and it is a catastrophe that impinges on our rights ... and our survival into the future. There will be a time when the waters will not recede.
Lonsdale said Vanuatu had been "wiped out" by the catastrophe and would have to build "a new paradise again".
Though reports are still sketchy, Tuvalu is thought to have suffered extensive damage, with three islands in Kiribati also affected.
Reports are filtering in from aid workers on the ground in Vanuatu of widespread devastation. A Unicef officer said it looked as though some areas had been "hit by a bomb". ADRA Australia reported that most evacuation centres lacked even basic handwashing facilities.
Two more military aircraft are leaving Australia today for Port Vila, as foreign minister Julie Bishop pledged long-term support for the recovery effort.
Communications have been almost fully restored in the capital, although outlying islands remain cut off.
Cyclone Pam - now lessened in intensity - has moved on to New Zealand, where parts of the north island have seen sea swells and gales, and hundreds of people are without power.
block-time published-time 2.17pm AEST
The Associated Press has filed a transcript of the interview with Baldwin Lonsdale, president of Vanuatu. You can read our report on this here. I've taken from AP the section in which Lonsdale discusses what is know about the scale of destruction in his country:
Q: What is the situation in Vanuatu now?
A: Cyclone Pam has devastated Port Vila. More than 90% of the buildings and houses in Port Vila have been destroyed or damaged. The state of emergency that has been issued is only for Port Vila. Once we receive an update on the extent of the damage in the provinces then another state of emergency will be issued for the outer islands.
Q: Is there an update on casualties and damage?
A: More than 1,000 people have been evacuated to evacuation centres and will be returning to their homes some time later today, if their homes still stand. That's in Port Vila alone. Confirmed dead in Port Vila is six and more than 30 injuries. I do believe the number of casualties will not be high.
Q: What are the urgent needs for Vanuatu?
A: The first priority is the humanitarian needs. People have lost many of their properties. Clothing, eating utensils, bathing. most of the necessary items of the households, all this has been destroyed and damaged. I really request for humanitarian needs and assistance at this stage. Tarpaulins, water containers, medical needs, gathering tools, construction tools all these are very important right now.
Q: Vanuatu is vulnerable to many disaster risks, including earthquakes, volcanoes, extreme weather and sea level rises due to climate change. Do you see the impact of climate change yourself?
A: Climate change is contributing to the disasters in Vanuatu. We see the level of sea rise. Change in weather patterns. This year we have heavy rain more than every year.
block-time published-time 2.01pm AEST
In this video that has been sent to us by World Vision's Chloe Morrison, who is based in Vanuatu, residents describe the horror of the storm as they survey the damage to their homes.
Cyclone Pam survivor: 'I was afraid, I didn't know if I'd face another day.'
block-time published-time 1.49pm AEST
Kiribati president: 'time to act' on climate change
Anote Tong, president of Kiribati, is at the UN disaster risk conference in Sendai, Japan, and has been speaking about the effects of Cyclone Pam on his country.
Cyclone Pam struck the Pacific ... with Vanuatu bearing the full savagery of Pam, with effects also experienced in the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu and of course in my country, in Kiribati ...
We have heard that precious lives have been lost and a great deal of damage was done to infrastructure: homes, food sources, drinking water and communication and transport devastated.
Because of the scattered nature of the small islands that make up the Pacific island communities, it is not always easy to know full well the extent of the damage ... It will take a few days to provide much needed help because no one knows what the situation is in these remote island communities.
It is sad but it is the most vulnerable who have been affected the most and we cannot help them when they need us most.
He extended his condolences to the president of Vanuatu, who is returning home from Japan today.
It is time to act ... Let us match the rhetoric of these international gatherings with pledges and commitments as leaders to do our best to improve conditions and lives of those who need it most.
For leaders of low-lying island atolls, the hazards of global warming affect our people in different ways, and it is a catastrophe that impinges on our rights ... and our survival into the future.
There will be a time when the waters will not recede.
Climate change has exacerbated the severity of natural disasters and frequency, that is worsening the impact on different communities in different parts of the world.
I argue ... that climate change and disasters are so integrated and so related.
Anote Tong, president of Kiribati, at the UN disaster risk conference in Sendai, Japan. Photograph: UN web TV/screengrab
You can see the full video of the speech here.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 1.54pm AEST
block-time published-time 1.38pm AEST
Bishop: Kiribati and Solomon Islands 'are coping'
Julie Bishop said Australia was also providing some assistance to Tuvalu and was on standby to offer the same to the Solomon Islands and Kiribati, though she said that at present they were believed to be "coping".
block-time published-time 1.35pm AEST
Bishop: Australia 'ready to assist in the long term'
Julie Bishop, Australia's foreign minister, is speaking about the government's latest response to the disaster.
She says she is hoping to visit Vanuatu shortly. Outlining the aid dispatched since the cyclone hit this weekend, Bishop stressed that Australia would offer long-term assistance:
We are aware that this has been a most devastating cyclone; the impact will be felt for quite some time ... We expect that the impact will be quite severe.
We stand ready to assist in the long-term recovery efforts ... We will contnue to invest.
We are longstanding friends of Vanuatu ... We have expressed our support to the president ... The government of Vanuatu is in no doubt that Australia stands ready to support this Pacific island in its time of need
She denied that wider Australian funding to Vanuatu had been cut.
Bishop set out the current Australian response:
We have now sent three Australian military planes to Port Vila ... with humanitarian supplies and teams of personnel.
Today two more military planes will leave Australia and land in Port Vila.
Together with France ... we are carrying out surveillance flights in the southern islands of Vanuatu to assess the extent of the damage.
We have a medical team on the ground and they are assessing the situation at Port Vila hospital, which was quite badly damaged in the storm.
Our concern was to get immediate relief to the people of Vanuatu.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 1.38pm AEST
block-time published-time 1.09pm AEST
Brisbane flight to Vanuatu cancelled
Although Air Vanuatu successfully flew into Port Vila this morning from Sydney, we are just hearing that Virgin's planned flight from Brisbane to the island has been cancelled "due to safety concerns".
Military aircraft have been arriving in Port Vila this morning, too, but commercial aircraft are also essential to the relief effort, carrying aid workers and supplies, as well as reporters.
Some Australians and others in Vanuatu may have been hoping to leave the islands on the outbound flight, too, as Brisbane journalist Katrina Blowers reports:
Virgin's first flt out of Bris to Vanuatu has been cancelled due to safety concerns. I'm told Austns were hoping to fly out at other end.
- Katrina Blowers (@katrinablowers) March 16, 2015
block-time published-time 1.03pm AEST
Information is starting to come through from other islands in the South Pacific affected by the cyclone.
This image shows flood waters in Kiribati, from where there are reports that three islands have been severely hit :
Flood waters move inland following a storm surge on the island of Kiribati. Image provided by Plan International Australia. Photograph: Handout/Getty Images
Anote Tong, president of Kiribati, is also at the UN disaster risk conference in Sendai, Japan, and has been speaking about the effects of Cyclone Pam on his country. I will listen in and report his speech on this blog shortly.
block-time published-time 12.40pm AEST
'Climate change a key factor'
AFP files this report on the comments made by Vanuatu president Baldwin Lonsdale this morning, in which he spoke of the connection between cylone Pam and climate change. You can read more from his interview here. AFP reports:
Vanuatu's president Baldwin Lonsdale said on Monday that climate change was a key factor in the devastation wrought on the Pacific nation by Super Cyclone Pam, which left six dead and 30 injured in the capital Port Vila alone.
Cyclone Pam smashed into the island archipelago late Friday, bringing sustained winds of more than 250 kilometres (155 miles) per hour and causing widespread damage.
"Climate change is contributing to the disaster in Vanuatu," he said in comments carried on Australian television ahead of his departure from Japan to Sydney.
Pacific island nations regard themselves as the frontline of climate change, given that as low-lying islands they are dangerously exposed to rising sea levels which they say threaten their very existence.
"This is a very devastating cyclone that has crossed Vanuatu," Lonsdale said from Sendai, where he had been attending a United Nations conference.
"I term it as a monster. It's a monster that has hit the republic of Vanuatu," he said as he called for humanitarian assistance ahead of his departure for Sydney, from where he will travel to Vanuatu.
"It means that we have to start anew again."
block-time published-time 12.31pm AEST
Kenny Ang, an Australian living in Vanuatu, spoke to my colleague Joshua Roberton yesterday. Today he is tweeting as people on the islands attempt to patch their lives together again:
Insanity as Bon Marché opens its doors for the first time since #TCPam hit. pic.twitter.com/XQcz9YuXlI
- Kenny Ang (@kenny_ang) March 16, 2015
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 12.31pm AEST
block-time published-time 12.22pm AEST
ReliefWeb, part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, has issued a new report on the state of communications and power in Vanuatu.
The Emergency Telecommunications Cluster says that today internet, radio and GSM (mobile phone) communications remain offline across the country, with the exception of the capital, Port Vila, where the network is almost fully restored ( read more about that here ).
The report goes on:
While information from the provinces and outlying islands is still unavailable, the situation in Port Vila indicates that many homes made of natural and local materials are damaged or destroyed.
It has been reported that Cyclone Pam destroyed all mobile towers except one in Port Vila, resulting in a complete lack of communication between Efate and both north and south provinces. There has also been damage to the HF radio at NDMO [the National Disaster Management Office] preventing them from communicating with any provinces or emergency services or sending community announcements.
Preliminary estimates suggest that up to 80% of power lines are down in Port Vila and will not be fully restored for several weeks.
It says five Telecoms Sans Frontieres responders are on their way to Vanuatu.
block-time published-time 12.06pm AEST
Communications in Port Vila 'almost fully restored'
Communications provider Digicel reports that its phone network in Port Vila is now "almost fully restored", allowing local people to make calls, and send texts and emails.
It says it will now be moving on to the rest of Efate, Tanna, Santo and the other islands.
The lack of communications between the islands is a huge obstacle to the relief effort, as reports from outlying islands have been scarce. Many people have been unable to make contact with friends and family on the islands since cyclone Pam hit.
Digicel says its "off-island fibre connectivity has been fully restored and bandwidth capacity over satellite has been increased by 500%, ensuring domestic towers have sufficient network capacity available".
It is also deploying public charging stations across Vanuatu for people to recharge their phones. In addition, Digicel says it is providing US$250,000 (AU$328,000/£169,000) in free credit "so that customers can get in touch with their loved ones as services are restored".
block-time published-time 11.47am AEST
We are beginning to hear more details from relief workers engaged in the difficult early stages of setting up evacuation centres for those displaced by the cyclone.
ADRA Australia, which had staff stationed in Vanuatu before the storm, says it is beginning its role as co-lead for water and sanitation at evacuation centres on Efate, part of the Shefa province, close to Port Vila. It reports that 80% of evacuation centres are without hand-washing facilities, with up to 309 people sharing a toilet.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in the Pacific says it has 40 volunteers in Port Vila working across 26 evacuation centres.
block-time published-time 11.29am AEST
Cyclone Pam has now turned its attentions to New Zealand, where the north island and the Chatham Islands archipelago are experiencing strong winds, heavy rains and sea swells. Cyclone Pam has been downgraded from the category five storm that battered Vanuatu and other Pacific islands, and any damage inflicted in New Zealand is not expected to be on the same scale.
So far, Gisborne in the north-east of New Zealand is worst hit, with some 40 people evacuated from their sea-level homes, and all schools closed. The port is closed and ferry services cancelled.
According to the MetService, there was around 200mm of rain in Gisborne overnight, and 130mm today. Hundreds of people are currently without power.
Satellite image of Cyclone Pam over the North Island. Gusting up to 145 kph at Hicks Bay at the moment. ^EB pic.twitter.com/8WEFBauqAy
- MetService (@MetService) March 16, 2015
Radio New Zealand has live coverage here for those wanting in-depth updates from the region.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 11.33am AEST
block-time published-time 11.16am AEST
Encouraging news of progress being made in Port Vila, where relief work is underway to restore power and communications in the battered capital.
Digicel says phone network almost fully restored in Vila. Still working on rest of Efate and outer islands. #TCPam
- Sam Bolitho (@SamBolitho) March 16, 2015
Power is slowly - SLOWLY - being turned on. We need to get the water pumps going because the next problem will be mosquitoes. #TCPam
- Kenny Ang (@kenny_ang) March 16, 2015
block-time published-time 11.07am AEST
Information from other Pacific islands beyond Vanuatu is still very sketchy.
Radio New Zealand International says Tuvalu has suffered "extensive damage":
NZ's foreign minister says he is looking at getting medical supplies to Tuvalu, which has suffered extensive damage http://t.co/qC07gO81ry
- RNZ International (@RNZInews) March 15, 2015
And in Kiribati, three of the southern islands have reportedly been hit:
The Kiribati government says it has reports of severe damage on 3 of the nation's southern islands #CyclonePamhttp://t.co/aRW91gMKhR
- RNZ International (@RNZInews) March 15, 2015
RNZI quotes a Kirabati government spokesman, Rimon Rimon :
We have reports coming in from three of the southern islands: some have had to move from one side, they've been residing on one side of the island and due to the wind and the waves, they had to, all the village had to relocate to the other end.
So it's affecting their lives, their livelihoods. I think it's going to take quite a long time for them to get back to normal.
block-time published-time 10.53am AEST
Vanuatu president: 'My heart hurts for the people'
Baldwin Lonsdale, Vanuatu's president, is speaking in Sendai, Japan, where he is - by coincidence - at the UN world conference on disaster risk reduction.
It was an emotional interview, in which he spoke movingly about being so far from his devastated nation and his plans to return today. He said he had not heard the full extent of the destruction:
We still have to get the full reports from the other islands.
This is a very devastasting cyclone ... I term it a monster that has hit Vanuatu.
It is a setback for the government and for the people of Vanuatu ... All the development that has taken place has been wiped out ... We will have to start again.
Lonsdale said the response from around the world to Vanuatu's appeals for help had been "fantastic".
The first priority right now is the humanitarian needs ... People have lost their properties, clothing ... the necessary items of the household that they need.
As far as food is concerned, we need food right now, but after 2 or 3 months the food [will need to] be provided for people.
He said the country would need tarpaulins, containers, medical supplies and construction tools.
Vanuatu president Baldwin Lonsdale at the third UN world conference on disaster risk reduction in Sendai. Photograph: Toshifumi Kitamura/AFP/Getty Images
The Japan conference on natural disasters was a good thing, Lonsdale said, adding that "this [the cyclone] is the reality":
We didn't know the power or the strength of the cyclone that was coming.
We see the level of sea rise ... the cyclone seasons, the warm, the rain, all this is affected ...
This year we have more than in any year ... yes, climate change is contributing to this.
He said he was keen to return home, as were colleagues who had travelled to Japan with him:
It is more appropriate and right for us to be back in the country ... We will be leaving sometime today or tonight.
I am very emotional ... Everyone has that same feeling. We don't know what happened to our families ... We cannot reach our families; we do not know if our families are safe.
As the leader of the nation, my heart hurts for the people of the whole nation.
And he asked the world to continue to visit his country:
Vanuatu is a paradise in the world ... If you want to see paradise on earth you have to come and see Vanuatu ... We will build again the new paradise.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 10.58am AEST
block-time published-time 10.44am AEST
Two more military planes are scheduled to leave Australia today to deliver aid and support to Vanuatu.
Despite damage to Port Vila's airport, flights have been able to land and relief is making its way to those affected. But with roads and bridges out of the capital damaged or destroyed, and communications down, it will be slow progress.
block-time published-time 10.33am AEST
Unicef, the UN children's fund, has issued an update setting out its concerns for the fate of children in the areas hit by the devastating cyclone.
It estimates that at least 60,000 children could be at risk in Vanuatu alone.
Further afield, "hundreds of children" have been affected in Tuvalu, Solomon Islands and Kiribati.
Unicef says some US$3m (AU$3.9m/£2m) is required immediately to address urgent maternal and child health needs, food, water, sanitation, shelter and education.
Oxfam Australia reported yesterday that most schools in the Vanuatu capital, Port Vila, had been damaged.
Children run across muddy ground near their homes damaged by Cyclone Pam in Port Vila. Photograph: Handout/Reuters
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 10.34am AEST
block-time published-time 10.27am AEST
Good morning, this is Claire Phipps taking over from Paul Farrell.
I'll be continuing to cover developments in Vanuatu today, along with news as we have it from other islands affected by Cyclone Pam, and the latest from New Zealand.
I'll be tweeting key updates @Claire_Phipps. My colleague Joshua Robertson is currently on his way to Vanuatu and you'll be able to follow his reports @jrojourno.
block-time published-time 10.19am AEST
I'm handing over our continuing coverage of events in Vanuatu to my colleague Claire Phipps. Here's a summary of events as they stand so far:
Aid organisations are beginning to report of catastrophic scenes of damage in some parts of the island nation as they begin an assessment of the damage. A Unicef officer said it looked as though some areas had been "hit by a bomb." Widespread damage has been reported to infrastructure and housing.
Eight deaths have been confirmed, and it is anticipated this number will rise throughout the day as events unfold. Many people are still unaccounted for, including aid workers. World Vision said on Monday morning that two thirds of their staff were still unaccounted for.
Australia has pledged a $5m aid package, and promised to provide additional disaster assistance to the stricken nation. New Zealand has also promised $2.5m in additional funding.
block-time published-time 10.02am AEST
Australian Associated Press is also reporting more accounts of the damage in their latest report.
An American law lecturer working in cyclone-ravaged Vanuatu says he is astounded at the optimism shown by locals whose houses have been "wiped from the face of the earth".
Dr Wes Kendall, who works at the University of the South Pacific, said Cyclone Pam only caused relatively minor damage to his own home at Port Vila when it tore through the region on Friday.
His close friend, however, lives in a nearby village of 3,000 people who have lost everything.
"His house was wiped from the face of the earth," Dr Kendall told ABC Radio on Monday.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 10.23am AEST
block-time published-time 10.01am AEST
More reports are starting to emerge of the devastation in Vanuatu as aid groups survey the damage.
Alice Clements, a Unicef communications officer, told the ABC in an interview that the Port Vila province looked as though it had been hit by a bomb.
The country has suffered the most incredibly crippling blow in terms of destruction, absolute devastation and impact on peoples lives.
I'm driving through the streets of Port Vila now and it looks like the town centre has been hit by a bomb.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 10.22am AEST
block-time published-time 9.58am AEST
The Auckland Civil Defence & Emergency Management team has posted a somewhat wry update as Cyclone Pam passed beyond Auckland.
GOODBYE PAM, REGARDS AUCKLAND @MetService radar showing rain clearing #Auckland#TCPam still affecting parts of NZ pic.twitter.com/WsGQNfsV6O
- Auckland CDEM (@AucklandCDEM) March 15, 2015
block-time published-time 9.55am AEST
350 Pacific has been posting updates about the situation in Vanuatu. The group has also provided a small update on how people can help.
Pacific are overwhelmed by the number of people who are offering to drop everything and go to Vanuatu to assist with the relief work. We have this update to share with those people who have made these offers.
"People/volunteers need to be approved by Vanuatu Humanitarian Team... they will require a CV, and statement of their intent, and a host agency here in Vanuatu. send to van.humanitarian.team@gmail.com Help will be urgently needed and a call for specific skills we be going out soon.
The food security cluster urgent needs are: (check nab.vu )
Thanks to Luke Ablett for pointing this out.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 10.22am AEST
block-time published-time 9.44am AEST
Save the Children's media manager in Australia, Evan Schuurman, has just posted that the first commercial flight into Vanuatu since the cyclone has landed.
Another plane being loaded with Australian aid for #Vanuatu#CyclonePampic.twitter.com/ZQwTzUXJQ4
- Evan Schuurman (@evanschuurman) March 15, 2015
The first commercial flight into #Vanuatu after #CyclonePam has just landed in Port Vila
- Evan Schuurman (@evanschuurman) March 15, 2015
block-time published-time 9.29am AEST
Niwa Weather has also been providing some further information on the weather conditions as Cyclone Pam shifts southeast of New Zealand.
As #TCPam shifts southeast of NZ, rain will end Auckland & Northland areas as gusty wind remains. Nasty weather Gisborne/Hawke's Bay stays
- Niwa Weather (@NiwaWeather) March 15, 2015
Pretty nasty along the Gisborne coast, reports of sustained winds greater than 90 km/hr or nearly 50 knots = storm force winds.
- Niwa Weather (@NiwaWeather) March 15, 2015
Need to watch East Cape coast (Tokomaru-Tolaga Bay area) re:high tide 2:45-3:00 pm today & swell at highest. Critical watch from 1-3:30 pm
- Niwa Weather (@NiwaWeather) March 15, 2015
The site has also posted a useful chart that shows the highest wind speeds since midnight on Monday.
Where have the highest winds #TCPam been since midnight? Note: these are 10 minute wind speeds NOT gusts. pic.twitter.com/25yrdedEY5
- Niwa Weather (@NiwaWeather) March 15, 2015
block-time published-time 9.20am AEST
For some further context, Vanuatu is a small Pacific Island nation located north-east of Australia and north of New Zealand.
Vanuatu is a republic nation with a president and prime minister. A substantial portion of Vanuatu's aid has come from Australia, the United Kingdom, France and New Zealand.
It is an archipelagic state, which means it is made up of a number of smaller islands.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 9.24am AEST
block-time published-time 9.15am AEST
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs also posted a situation report earlier on Monday morning. It provides furthers details on the assessment of damage, displacement and other information. Here are some of the key points from a summary of the report:
Tropical cyclone Pam struck Vanuatu, hitting the capital of Port Vila, as an extremely destructive category 5 cyclone on the evening of 13 March.
Winds are estimated to have reached 250kmph with gusts peaking at around 320kmph, causing serious damage to infrastructure and leaving debris strewn across the capital.
Shefa Province has been declared a state of emergency, with other areas to be determined following aerial assessments.
There are six confirmed fatalities.
In Efate, an estimated 90% of structures are either damaged or destroyed.
More than 2,000 people are sheltering in over 25 evacuation centres in Efate, Torba and Penama.
All commercial flights in and out of Port Vila are currently grounded, with only military flights landing.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 10.22am AEST
block-time published-time 9.12am AEST
There are some also reports beginning to emerge about missing aid workers who were on the ground when the cyclone passed through.
Stuff.co.nz is reporting that a substantial number of World Vision's workers are still unaccounted for.
Two thirds of World Vision's aid workers are currently unaccounted for in the cyclone-ravaged Vanuatu.
Laura Gemmell of World Vision New Zealand said there were 80 World Vision staff stationed in Vanuatu, of which 54 were unaccounted for. She was waiting to board a Hercules aircraft headed to Vanuatu.
"We're really concerned obviously for our staff and for the people they serve."
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 10.22am AEST
block-time published-time 9.09am AEST
We're still waiting for more word to come through from the ground. Aid organisations like the New Zealand Red Cross are playing a substantial role in the effort, along with a number of other organisations. Many of these groups are also en route now.
1200 tarps, 250 shelter kits, 900 water containers & 2 @Federation@NZRedCross aid workers for #Vanuatu#CyclonePampic.twitter.com/M4Kzj3jEzK
- Hanna Butler (@hannarosebutler) March 15, 2015
Waiting at the air force base in Auckland for the plane to take me and @NZRedCross aid to #Vanuatu#CyclonePampic.twitter.com/sCL1mtV3rA
- Hanna Butler (@hannarosebutler) March 15, 2015
block-time published-time 9.05am AEST
My colleague Shalailah Medhora in Canberra has also provided this update on some additional comments Australia's foreign minister Julie Bishop made on Monday morning.
We understand that there are no casualties from Australia. There are no Australians among those listed as casualties, but we are ensuring that we are making contact with all Australians who we know are in Vanuatu.
About 1,400 Australians have registered with the government at this stage. But we expect that at any one time there could be up to 3,000 Australians in Vanuatu.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 10.22am AEST
block-time published-time 9.02am AEST
Australia is a substantial contributor in aid to many Pacific Island nations. Below is a small graph that shows its contributions to Vanuatu and other countries over time.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 9.02am AEST
block-time published-time 8.59am AEST
The Australian foreign minister Julie Bishop announced on Sunday that Australia would be providing a substantial aid package to the stricken country. Here's a short summary of the key points from the initial aid package from Bishop's release:
$5m to assist the efforts of Australian non-government organisations, the Red Cross and United Nations partners.
The deployment of humanitarian supplies from Australia to assist up to 5,000 people, including water and sanitation and shelter kits.
The deployment of an Australian medical team and an urban search and rescue assessment team.
The deployment of a Dfat crisis response team, comprising eight officials to boost consular support to Australian citizens and coordinate Australia's humanitarian assistance.
The deployment of an Australian disaster expert to the United Nations disaster assessment and coordination team.
An aerial photo showing the extent of the damage caused by Cyclone Pam on the outskirts of the Vanuatu capital of Port Vila. Photograph: Tom Perry/AFP/Getty Images
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 11.43am AEST
block-time published-time 8.58am AEST
Many aid and relief workers are still finding their way to areas of Vanuatu affected by the cyclone.
Relief workers and Media wait for flights to Vila from Whenua Pai. Much needed relief supplies are being flown first pic.twitter.com/zCnZBJ13Gj
- RNZ International (@RNZInews) March 15, 2015
New Zealand has also announced it will be contributing to the aid effort. It has now pledged $NZ2.5m of funding, and is also providing assistance from the navy and airforce.
Royal NZ Airforce C130 just taken off from Auckland loaded with supplies bound for #Vanuatu#CyclonePampic.twitter.com/WrevSZiQuG
- Mark Stone (@Stone_SkyNews) March 15, 2015
block-time published-time 8.53am AEST
The extent of the devastation in Vanuatu is still to be determined, and we'll continue to provide you with updates throughout the day. Our Brisbane correspondent Joshua Robertson is currently en route to provide updates from the ground.
Here's his latest report from Sunday evening:
The first aid agencies to reach Vanuatu reported a scene of widespread devastation on Sunday after a huge cyclone tore through the Pacific island nation, leaving thousands homeless. Dozens are feared to have died.
Air force planes began to arrive with supplies from Australia and New Zealand as officials struggled to establish the full scale of the disaster, thought to have affected more than 265,000 people spread over 65 islands. President Baldwin Lonsdale said the "monster" Cyclone Pam had wiped out most buildings in the capital Port Vila, including schools and clinics.
Making an impassioned plea for international help from the World Conference on Disaster Risk and Reduction in Japan, Lonsdale appealed for international support. "I am speaking to you today with a heart that is so heavy," he said in a televised address. "I stand to appeal on behalf of the government and the people to give a helping hand in this disaster."
Aid agencies said that more than 2,000 people were sheltering in 25 evacuation centres on the island of Efate as well as in Torba and Penama provinces after their homes were destroyed by the category-five cyclone.
block-time published-time 8.50am AEST
Welcome to our rolling coverage of events in Vanuatu after cyclone Pam tore through the island nation this weekend. We'll be bringing you the latest updates of events as they continue to develop, but here is a short summary so far:
Aid agencies have begun to arrive on the pacific island nation, amid scenes of widespread devastation. The confirmed death toll last stood at eight, however that number is expected to rise in coming days.
The New Zealand Red Cross has estimated that approximately 103,000 people in Vanuata have been affected by the cyclone, with substantial losses to infrastructure and housing.
Neighbouring Pacific Island nations also faced severe damage from the cyclone, and the prime minister of Tuvalu, Enele Sopoaga, said that around 45% of the population has been displaced.
The foreign minister Julie Bishop said Australia has promised a $5m aid package and would providing be assistance in the region.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 10.21am AEST
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The New York Times Blogs
(City Room)
March 16, 2015 Monday
New York Today: Pothole Season
BYLINE: ANNIE CORREAL
SECTION: NYREGION
LENGTH: 475 words
HIGHLIGHT: Monday: The city’s streets are looking rough, a little bit of sun, and a climate change demonstration.
Good morning on this chilly Monday morning.
On Saturday around midnight, several police officers stood looking at something on Court Street in Brooklyn.
"They're everywhere," said one officer, who was not authorized to give his name.
"They're bad."
The object of their investigation was a two-foot pothole.
We are now in high season: Thousands of potholes open up as vehicles pass over asphalt compromised by water - say, melted snow - that has seeped beneath cracked surfaces.
The Department of Transportation has filled more than 145,000 potholes since mid-December.
Nearly 500,000 were repaired in 2014.
The department began a "pothole blitz" this weekend, with 50 crews out on Sunday.
The city's guide to street defects defines a pothole as "a hole in the street with a circular or ovular shape and a definable bottom."
An "actionable" pothole is one that's "at least 1 foot in diameter and 3 inches deep."
You may report one online or by calling 311.
Follow the city's progress in repairing potholes on The Daily Pothole (complete with comic-book sound effects: "Whack! Whack!" "Whoooosh!" "Voila!)
For devotees of the subject, The Staten Island Advance has "employed" a garden gnome to sit in reported potholes as a way to track response time.
He is known as Pothole Paulie.
Here's what else is happening.
WEATHER
The sun peeks out, with a high of 50, though it will feel cooler on account of the wind.
COMING UP TODAY
Prekindergarten enrollment begins.
A symposium on raising the age of criminal responsibility in the state, at New York Law School. 8:30 a.m.
City officials voice opposition to a proposal to build a liquid natural gas terminal off Long Island. City Hall. Noon.
Mayor de Blasio hosts a news conference with Police Commissioner Bratton at police headquarters downtown. 2:45 p.m.
Advocates call for local government action on climate change, near City Hall, followed by a community forum. 4:30 p.m., 6 p.m.
The mayor is on the Tavis Smiley show on PBS. 11 p.m.
For more events, see The New York Times Arts & Entertainment guide.
COMMUTE
Subway and PATH
Railroads: L.I.R.R., Metro-North, N.J. Transit, Amtrak
Roads: Check traffic map or radio report on the 1s or the 8s.
Alternate-side parking: in effect until April 2, weather permitting.
Ferries: Staten Island Ferry, New York Waterway, East River Ferry
Airports: La Guardia, J.F.K., Newark
Kenneth Rosen contributed reporting.
New York Today is a weekday roundup that stays live from 6 a.m. till late morning. You can receive it via email.
For updates throughout the day, like us on Facebook.
What would you like to see here to start your day? Post a comment, email us at nytoday@nytimes.com, or reach us via Twitter using #NYToday.
Follow the New York Today columnists, Annie Correal and Andy Newman, on Twitter.
You can find the latest New York Today at nytoday.com.
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The Guardian
March 15, 2015 Sunday 9:53 PM GMT
Climate change: UN backs fossil fuel divestment campaign;
Framework convention on climate change says it shares aim for strong deal on fighting global warming at Paris summit
BYLINE: Damian Carrington
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 827 words
The UN organisation in charge of global climate change negotiations is backing the fast-growing campaign persuading investors to sell off their fossil fuel assets. It said it was lending its "moral authority" to the divestment campaign because it shared the ambition to get a strong deal to tackle global warming at a crunch UN summit in Paris in December.
"We support divestment as it sends a signal to companies, especially coal companies, that the age of 'burn what you like, when you like' cannot continue," said Nick Nuttall, the spokesman for the UN framework convention on climate change (UNFCCC).
The move is likely to be controversial as the economies of many nations at the negotiating table heavily rely on coal, oil and gas. In 2013, coal-reliant Poland hosted the UNFCCC summit and was castigated for arranging a global coal industry summit alongside. Now, the World Coal Association has criticised the UNFCCC's decision to back divestment, saying it threatened investment in cleaner coal technologies.
Several analyses have shown that there are more fossil fuels in proven reserves than can be burned if catastrophic global warming is to be avoided, as world leaders have pledged. Divestment campaigners argue that the trillions of dollars companies continue to spend on exploration for even more fossil fuels is a danger to both the climate and investors' capital.
"Everything we do is based on science and the science is pretty clear that we need a world with a lot less fossil fuels," Nuttall told the Guardian. "We have lent our own moral authority as the UN to those groups or organisations who are divesting. We are saying 'we support your aims and ambitions because they are fairly and squarely our ambition', which is to get a good deal in Paris."
The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, sent a related message to investors in November, saying: "Please reduce your investments in the coal- and fossil-fuel-based economy and [move] to renewable energy." But he stopped short of backing the divestment campaign itself.
Many religious groups are among the 180 organisations that have already divested their funds from fossil fuels, as well as city authorities and universities. "We see the divestment of churches very much as a moral imperative for them," Nuttall said. "If their goal is relieving the suffering of millions of people, then divestment is in line with how they want the world to be."
A recent tweet from the UNFCCC said: "Divestment worked to free [South Africa] of apartheid. Now it can help free us of fossil fuels." The tweet carried a quote and image of the archbishop Desmond Tutu, who in 2014 told the Guardian : "People of conscience need to break their ties with corporations financing the injustice of climate change."
Divestment campaigners say their aim is to bankrupt fossil fuel companies morally, not financially. "No one is saying divestment by churches and universities will shift the market in a one-to-one way," said Nuttall. "The message now is that you can get off fossil fuels without undermining your investments. It's a different world now. You can save the world and get a good return on your investment."
Many senior figures and institutions in the financial world, including the World Bank, Bank of England, HSBC, Goldman Sachs and Standard and Poor's, have warned that only a fraction of known fossil fuel reserves can be safely burned and that the remainder could plummet in value posing huge risks to investors.
Benjamin Sporton, acting chief executive of the World Coal Association, rejected the linking of divestment from fossil fuels with divestment from tobacco and apartheid South Africa. "The coal divestment campaign is not comparable to any other divestment campaign," he said. "Active and responsible investors play a vital role in encouraging investment in cleaner coal technologies. Demand for coal is not going away."
Sporton said the divestment campaign was a concern: "There are economic and social dimensions that mean divesting from fossil fuels - and in particular coal - comes with significant risks, not least when 1.3 billion people are still without access to electricity." The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in November that global warming is set to inflict severe and irreversible impacts on people and that "limiting its effects is necessary to achieve sustainable development and equity, including poverty eradication".
"Meeting the demand projected by the International Energy Agency will call for $18.5tn (£12.6bn) of cumulative investment between 2014 and 2035," said a spokesman for the International Association of Oil and Gas Producers. "This doesn't support an argument for divestment." Replacing coal-fired power stations with gas can halve carbon emissions, he added.
IPIECA, the global oil and gas industry association for environmental issues and "the industry's principal channel of communication with the UN", declined to comment.
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The Guardian
March 15, 2015 Sunday 1:01 PM GMT
Cyclone Pam: Vanuatu death toll rises as Australia pledges $5m in aid - as it happened;
Latest updates as emergency response teams head to the Pacific island chain to assess the damage wrought by devastating storm
BYLINE: Claire Phipps
SECTION: WORLD NEWS
LENGTH: 8581 words
block-time published-time 9.27pm AEST
Summary
It is now night time in Vanuatu and information from the capital Port Vila and beyond is scarce. We are closing the liveblog down but here is the Guardian's latest report on the devastating effects of cyclone Pam.
Here is what we know so far:
Confirmed deaths in Vanuatu currently number eight, with a further 20 people injured. This does not include any casualty figures from outlying islands, and this number is expected to rise. Routes out of the capital Port Vila are blocked and bridges torn down.
Aid agencies reported that around 90% of houses in Port Vila have been destroyed, many people displaced, and schools ripped apart.
An estimated 103,000 people in Vanuatu have been affected by Cyclone Pam, with thousands more blighted in nine countries across the Pacific, according to figures from the New Zealand Red Cross. Save the children said that up to 75,000 children in Vanuatu could be in desperate need of food, water and shelter.
The effects of cyclone Pam have been felt beyond Vanuatu, as the storm whipped its way across the South Pacific. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister of Tuvalu, said 45% of the population has been displaced and a state of emergency has been declared.
Damage has been reported in other islands, including Kiribati - where New Zealand Red Cross reports that it is carrying out assessments of the damage caused by huge sea swells - Fiji and the Solomon Islands, though details are still scarce.
Cyclone Pam is forecast to pass north of New Zealand overnight on Sunday and on Monday, with heavy rain and gales expected.
Australia has pledged a $5m relief package, with foreign minister Julie Bishop saying up to 5,000 people would be assisted with food, water, sanitation and shelter. New Zealand announced an additional $NZ1.5m ($A1.44m; £750,000) of funding, on top of the $NZ1m signalled on Saturday. France is to deploy a navy frigate of relief supplies from New Caledonia.
Military aircraft from Australia and New Zealand have landed in Port Vila, Vanuatu, at the devastated airport to begin immediate relief efforts and to assess the damage. Aid agencies are preparing further flights to deliver food, along with medical personnel and search-and-rescue workers.
Air Vanuatu has said it will resume some flights between Port Vila and Australia on Monday, which will boost the aid effort.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 11.56pm AEST
block-time published-time 9.21pm AEST
Up to 75,000 children in Vanuatu could be in desperate need of food, water and shelter, Save the Children has said.
Tom Skirrow from Save the Children in Vanuatu said:
This disaster has left tens of thousands of children vulnerable and we are particularly concerned for their welfare and safety in the aftermath of cyclone Pam.
Children are going to be very afraid, they are going to be hungry and some of them may even have become separated from their families.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 11.56pm AEST
block-time published-time 8.34pm AEST
Approximately 103,000 people affected in Vanuatu
An estimated 103,000 people in Vanuatu have been affected by cyclone Pam, with thousands more blighted in nine countries across the Pacific, according to figures from the New Zealand Red Cross.
The aid agency says it has not yet been possible to make contact with the outer islands because power and phone lines are down.
It describes the disaster as the strongest storm to make landfall since Typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines in November 2013, killing at least 6,300 people in that country alone.
Aurelia Balpe, head of delegation for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in the Pacific, says:
Tens of thousands of people are still in the middle of a terrifying ordeal and we need to urgently assess the humanitarian needs and start meeting them as soon as possible.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 11.56pm AEST
block-time published-time 8.25pm AEST
David Cameron has pledged UK aid support to his Australian counterpart, Tony Abbott :
PM: I've just spoken to @TonyAbbottMHR to discuss ongoing aid efforts in #Vanuatu and to offer UK support following the devastating cyclone.
- UK Prime Minister (@Number10gov) March 15, 2015
block-time published-time 8.05pm AEST
Summary
As night falls in Vanuatu, here is what we know so far about the effects of cyclone Pam and the humanitarian response:
Information from Vanuatu beyond the capital Port Vila, and from other islands in the path of cyclone Pam, remains sketchy to non-existent. Here is what we know so far:
Confirmed deaths in Vanuatu currently number eight, with a further 20 people injured. This does not include any casualty figures from outlying islands, and this number is expected to rise. Routes out of the capital Port Vila are blocked and bridges torn down.
Aid agencies reported that around 90% of houses in Port Vila have been destroyed, many people displaced, and schools ripped apart. Oxfam Australia's executive director Helen Szoke said:
It's becoming increasingly clear that we are now dealing with worse than the worst case scenario in Vanuatu. This is likely to be one of the worst disasters ever seen in the Pacific.
A photo provided by Unicef Pacific of a road which was damaged by cyclone Pam on Vanuatu. Photograph: Unicef Pacific / Handout/EPA
The effects of cyclone Pam have been felt beyond Vanuatu, as the storm whipped its way across the South Pacific. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister of Tuvalu, said 45% of the population has been displaced and a state of emergency has been declared.
Damage has been reported in other islands, including Kiribati - where New Zealand Red Cross reports that it is carrying out assessments of the damage caused by huge sea swells - Fiji and the Solomon Islands, though details are still scarce.
Cyclone Pam is forecast to pass north of New Zealand overnight on Sunday and on Monday, with heavy rain and gales expected.
Children stand in front of debris on a street near their homes after cyclone Pam hit Port Vila. Photograph: Stringer/Reuters
Australia has pledged a $5m relief package, with foreign minister Julie Bishop saying up to 5,000 people would be assisted with food, water, sanitation and shelter. New Zealand announced an additional $NZ1.5m ($A1.44m; £750,000) of funding, on top of the $NZ1m signalled on Saturday. France is to deploy a navy frigate of relief supplies from New Caledonia.
Military aircraft from Australia and New Zealand have landed in Port Vila, Vanuatu, at the devastated airport to begin immediate relief efforts and to assess the damage. Aid agencies are preparing further flights to deliver food, along with medical personnel and search-and-rescue workers.
Air Vanuatu has said it will resume some flights between Port Vila and Australia on Monday, which will boost the aid effort.
You can read the latest Guardian report on the situation here.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 11.56pm AEST
block-time published-time 7.38pm AEST
World Vision International, which has 80 staff in Vanuatu, has posted this detailed update on its work across the devastated island chain.
It says it has been able to contact only 13 of its 80 staff members so far since cyclone Pam hit:
Contact between Port Vila and other islands has not been possible yet. Penama Province was directly in the path of the storm, and the cyclone stayed over Tafea Province for approximately four hours on Friday so the organization is extremely concerned about staff and communities in those areas.
Houses in Vanuatu were particularly vulnerable to the storm, World Vision explains:
Most families on Vanuatu live in simple, thatched-roof homes that are very vulnerable to severe weather. Even for those who safely evacuated to storm shelters, they will likely return to homes that are damaged or destroyed, and crops that are washed away. Cyclone Pam was one of the worst storms the island has ever seen.
World Vision's team spent Saturday driving throughout the communities in Port Vila, assessing the situation in the capital city but communications and logistics remain difficult. Additional information is expected to continue to come in as the team is able to reach more remote parts of the country.
World Vision pre-positioned relief goods in Port Vila, Santo Island, and Tanna Island. Items include tarps, tools for repairs, water containers, mosquito nets, hygiene kits, baby kits, and kitchen sets. Early warnings throughout the week urged communities to evacuate to local storm shelters.
block-time published-time 7.20pm AEST
Latest round-up
My colleague Joshua Robertson has filed this latest report on developments today as night falls in Vanuatu:
More deaths and dire water shortages loom as part of the unfolding crisis in Vanuatu, with the first account emerging of the plight of the South Pacific archipelago's remote communities in the wake of cyclone Pam.
A pilot who flew to Tanna - an island of 30,000 people south of the capital Port Vila - on Sunday has told of more deaths, no drinking water and complete destruction of infrastructure and permanent shelters.
It was the first news from outside Port Vila, where eight people have been confirmed dead, thousands left homeless and most civil infrastructure damaged in the aftermath of the category five cyclone on Friday and Saturday.
Tanna and the less populated Erromango island had been the focus of concerns from the Vanuatu government and aid agencies, who have no means of communication with anywhere outside the capital after the worst natural disaster in the country's history.
Aurelia Balpe, head of the Red Cross's Pacific operations, said the agency had been briefed by the pilot, who said in Tanna he found "people were waiting to be heard, to talk to someone".
"What he saw when they landed and took off again was all of the corrugated iron structures were pretty much destroyed, the concrete structures had no roofs left, all the trees had been ripped out," Balpe said.
"People were saying no drinking water. He also reported two deaths but that's not confirmed by government."
A flight over Erromango revealed "a similar state of affairs" to that witnessed in Tanna, Balpe said.
This photo taken on 15 March by CARE Australia shows an aerial photo of damage caused by cyclone Pam on the outskirts of the Vanuatu capital of Port Vila. Photograph: Tom Perry/AFP/Getty Images
Authorities in Port Vila, still unable to assess the true scale of the destruction, were waiting on aerial surveys from an Australian military plane and the restoration of some remote telecommunications towers on other islands.
The Vanuatu lands minister, Ralph Regenvanu, said the government regarded the "entire population" of about 266,000 people as having been affected by the huge storm that ripped through on Friday night and into Saturday. "This is the worst disaster to affect Vanuatu ever as far as we know. We're going to need a lot of assistance," he said.
The Australian and New Zealand governments have announced emergency aid packages totalling $6.5m.
An Australian department of defence spokeswoman said a P3 Orion surveillance aircraft had left Amberley base near Brisbane on Sunday to conduct the aerial survey, "weather permitting".
It is understood the Vanuatu government as of 5.30pm local time on Sunday was still yet to receive any of the aerial surveillance. A spokesman for defence minister Kevin Andrews said was transmitted in near real time to defence authorities in Canberra.
The surveillance plane was one of four military planes that flew from Amberley to Port Vila, the other three bearing emergency supplies, medical and disaster teams and aid workers.
Balpe said while the fact the pilot found a usable airstrip on Tanna's sheltered western side was an encouraging sign in terms of getting aid through, his account revealed a true emergency.
"The priority is getting someone down to have a look and talk to the local authorities," she said.
Red Cross already had volunteers and emergency supplies in Tanna but "by the impact that he described, those things are just a very small proportion of what is required", Balpe said.
Local residents sit outside their damaged homes surrounded by debris on a street after cyclone Pam hit Port Vila. Photograph: Stringer/Reuters
While motorists in Port Vila queued more than an hour for petrol at the solitary fuel station that was open, a landslide and the destruction of several bridges in the city's east made travel outside the capital virtually impossible.
Australian expatriate Kenny Ang, who sheltered from the storm in the northern Efate town of Havannah, told the Guardian he had swum across a river and borrowed a friend's car to make it into Port Vila.
Ang said he saw "entire villages decimated" on his journey to the capital, where the extent of damage was equally shocking.
"We saw people on the side of the road and they're trying to rebuild in the aftermath but obviously it's going to take a long time before anything gets fixed," he said.
"We're currently in a queue that's taken one hour to get petrol from the one station that's open. I think it's going to take half an hour to 45 minutes to actually get petrol.
"People are waiting in line with containers and barrels to fill up to get to where they want to go."
Ang said from Havannah he could see the islands of Moso and Lelepa, "normally a luscious, rolling green, have been stripped bare" by the cyclone.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 11.57pm AEST
block-time published-time 7.08pm AEST
Reuters has more comments from Baldwin Lonsdale, the president of Vanuatu, who is currently in Japan.
He told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in Sendai, Japan, where he was attending a UN disaster recovery conference, that he fears the impact from a devastating tropical storm will be "the very, very, very worst" in isolated outer islands but damage was still being assessed.
Lonsdale said most houses in the capital Port Vila had been damaged or destroyed by cyclone Pam, a category 5 storm:
People are finding shelter where they can live for the night.
The state of damage is still being assessed, we do not know exactly the extent of the damage ... The number of casualties I do hope will be minor.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 11.57pm AEST
block-time published-time 7.01pm AEST
Piecemeal reports are arriving from further-flung parts of Vanuatu as relief workers make their way slowly beyond the capital, Port Vila. Roads are difficult to travel and communications slow or non-existent, so it is laborious work:
Some areas appear not to have been as badly damaged as had been feared:
Good news: #VanuatuRedCross spoke w/ Torba volunteer Benjamin Brown on #Hui island, houses ok, banana trees & casava crops damaged #TCPam
- Aurelia Balpe (@aureliabalpe) March 15, 2015
Tanna, which was close to the heart of the cyclone's path, seems to have suffered badly:
@aureliabalpe says a pilot who who landed on Tanna island in Vanuatu's south has reported widespread destruction and 2 deaths.
- Liam Fox (@liamfoxabc) March 15, 2015
And Humans of Vanuatu reports that:
Teouma bridge is gone, blocking access to the most affected areas of Efate.
block-time published-time 6.54pm AEST
A new video posted by ADRA Vanuatu, a local NGO, shows the havoc wreaked on people's homes on the islands: roofs torn off, possessions shattered and scattered:
ADRA Vanuatu : devastated homes.
block-time published-time 6.45pm AEST
'No serious looting' - Vanuatu police
Radio New Zealand International news reports that all police officers across Vanuatu have been called into action:
Vanuatu's Police Commissioner says all officers have been recalled from leave as they prepare to mount a massive operation.
- RNZ International (@RNZInews) March 15, 2015
Vanuatu's Police commissioner says while there haven't been serious cases of looting, Police will cordon some parts of Port Vila tonight
- RNZ International (@RNZInews) March 15, 2015
block-time published-time 6.29pm AEST
Community group Humans of Vanuatu reports the almost total destruction of the power infrastructure.
In a Facebook post, they report:
Power crews are working around the clock to remove downed lines. I have not seen a single undamaged line in two days.
We're talking about rebuilding the entire capital's power grid.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 6.29pm AEST
block-time published-time 6.22pm AEST
'Lack of urgency' on climate change, says World Bank V-P
As reported earlier, Vanuatu's president, Baldwin Lonsdale, is, by coincidence, at the UN world conference on disaster risk reduction in Japan, from where AFP sends this report:
Despite ominous predictions of mass devastation in cyclone-wrecked Vanuatu, policymakers at a UN disaster meeting in Japan do not seem to understand the pressing need to tackle climate change, the World Bank warned Sunday.
A state of emergency has been declared in the impoverished Pacific nation, where dozens are feared dead after one of the most powerful storms ever recorded smashed through. Aid agencies have spoken of "grave fears" over the scale of the human tragedy.
But Rachel Kyte, World Bank vice president and special envoy for climate change, said there appeared to be a disconnect between policy and the increasingly-frequent weather-related disasters the world is suffering.
"I worry that a sense of urgency and a sense of shared ambition is not at the right level," she told AFP in an interview on the sidelines of the UN conference on disaster risk reduction in Sendai, Japan.
"It's hugely ironic that this storm should hit Vanuatu while we are all here. If we truly care for those people, we have to respond," she said, referring to the need for environmental commitments.
"I think we have to hold ourselves accountable and at least voluntarily we should have targets" on emission reductions from the Sendai conference, she said.
The conference comes ahead of COP 21 talks scheduled for December in Paris, at which countries will try to thrash out agreements on cutting greenhouse gases.
French foreign minister Laurent Fabius, who will chair the meeting, told AFP Sendai could act as a springboard to success later in the year.
Kyte told AFP:
I don't think I would say climate change caused [Cyclone] Pam, but I would say the fact is in the past three or four years we've seen category fives coming with a regularity we've never seen before.
And that has some relationship with climate change. It is indisputable that part of the Pacific Ocean is much warmer today than in previous years, so these storms are intensifying.
We may have helped communities become resilient to the kinds of storms we experienced in the past, but resilience to a storm with wind speed of up to 300km per hour - that's a whole new intensity.
The UN development bank chief, Helen Clark, former prime minister of New Zealand, said it was "impossible" to protect against natural disasters without addressing one of the root causes:
Unless we tackle climate change on the global level we are making the task of building resilience to disasters almost impossible.
block-time published-time 5.55pm AEST
Night is falling in Vanuatu now, with much of the on-the-ground aid effort likely to have to wait until light tomorrow. The C17 aircraft that flew out from Brisbane this morning has just returned, having dropped off its supplies of aid. More planes will be heading out tomorrow.
This image of Port Vila this evening comes from Colin Collet van Rooyen, Oxfam's country director there:
OxfamInVanuatu: Port Vila right now. Beautiful regardless of what #CyclonePam tried to do to it! Viva Vanuatu. pic.twitter.com/6squkCklua
- colin (@Colincvr) March 15, 2015
block-time published-time 5.36pm AEST
Following the arrival of military planes earlier today, some food and other aid is being distributed in Port Vila, as the pictures below illustrate.
So far, only the capital is accessible for humanitarian workers - there are reports that roads out of Port Vila are blocked, and bridges torn down.
Aircraft have been sent out to record aerial imagery from more remote islands in an attempt to assess the damage there:
Red Cross personnel handling donated food to use as relief from Cyclone Pam, in the Vanuatu capital of Port Vila. Photograph: Vanuatu Red Cross/AFP/Getty Images
block-time published-time 5.21pm AEST
New Zealand is upping its financial and logistics support for Vanuatu in the wake of cyclone Pam, AAP reports.
The foreign affairs minister, Murray McCully, on Sunday announced an additional $NZ1.5m ($A1.44m; £750,000) of funding, on top of the $NZ1m signalled on Saturday.
A New Zealand defence force C-130 Hercules transported eight tonnes of supplies and an initial New Zealand team to Vanuatu on Sunday and two more flights will be sent on Monday.
Air Commodore Kevin McEvoy said the Hercules carried first aids kits, tarpaulins, water containers, chainsaw packs and generators.
Specialists from government agencies and the New Zealand Red Cross were also on board the Hercules.
"Pacific nations such as Vanuatu are our friends and neighbours and we're happy we can help at times of need," he said.
With the main airport being closed to civilian transport, the Hercules load would make a real difference, he said.
There are 163 New Zealanders registered as being in Vanuatu.
Cyclone Pam is expected to cause severe weather problems for the northernmost past of New Zealand itself as it passes nearby overnight on Sunday/Monday.
Here is @NiwaWeather 's most recent forecast for #TCPam at 6am showing wind and pressure pic.twitter.com/hFqfhK9fbw
- Auckland CDEM (@AucklandCDEM) March 15, 2015
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 11.57pm AEST
block-time published-time 5.05pm AEST
Baldwin Lonsdale, the president of Vanuatu, has told the BBC that "most" of the population of his country are homeless in the wake of cyclone Pam.
Lonsdale said the cyclone had destroyed most of the buildings in Port Vila, including schools and clinics.
The president was - by coincidence - at the UN conference on disaster risk reduction in Japan, where he told delegates:
I am speaking to you today with a heart that is so heavy.
I stand to appeal on behalf of the government and the people to give a helping hand in this disaster.
Vanuatu president Baldwin Lonsdale during the third UN world conference on disaster risk reduction in Sendai, Japan. Photograph: Toshifumi Kitamura / Pool/EPA
block-time published-time 4.45pm AEST
This brief report from Aurelia Balpe, head of the Pacific office of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, suggests that the remote islands of Tanna and Erromango in the southern part of the Vanuatu island chain have suffered catastrophic damage:
1st report private fly-over Tanna&Erramngo, trees uprooted, no corrugated iron structures standing, no roofs on concrete blds, no hl #TCPam
- Aurelia Balpe (@aureliabalpe) March 15, 2015
block-time published-time 4.40pm AEST
Cruise ship operator Carnival Australia says it has donated $150,000 to Save the Children Australia towards the relief effort in Vanuatu, and says it will be sending fresh water and building supplies on Legend, its ship sailing to Luganville. The second largest city in Vanuatu is "largely unscathed", it says.
Can do cruise people. @CarnivalOz Jennifer Vandekreeke loaded car with freshwater & delivered to Vanuatu bound Legend pic.twitter.com/AX7QZmbLWT
- Carnival Australia (@CarnivalAusNews) March 15, 2015
@CarnivalOz continuing to work with @savechildrenaus with plan for building materials to be carried on Carnival Australia cruise ships.
- Carnival Australia (@CarnivalAusNews) March 15, 2015
block-time published-time 4.27pm AEST
New Zealand prepares for Cyclone Pam
Although New Zealand is not in the direct path of cyclone Pam, its northern areas are expected to bear the brunt of some severe weather as the storm passes close by.
The government has warned people in the northeast of the North Island from Cape Reinga to Hawkes Bay, as well as outer islands including the Chatham Islands, to take precautions.
NZ civil defence minister Nikki Kaye said:
I've been advised that New Zealand is not in the cyclone's direct path, but we're still likely to experience severe weather in affected areas as it passes by. Other areas may also experience effects such as increased sea swells.
Our thoughts are with those in countries such as Vanuatu, Tuvalu, Fiji and the Solomon Islands, which have been badly affected by the cyclone. New Zealand is providing appropriate assistance to our Pacific neighbours.
Although I'm advised that Pam is losing strength as it heads south, MetService has forecast severe rain and wind in affected areas.
Local councils and civil defence teams have spent the last few days informing communities and working with relevant agencies to prepare for potential severe weather.
My message to New Zealanders living in affected areas is to make sure you have good preparations in place. This means having enough food and water and an emergency kit on hand. Also, secure outside objects that could blow around in high winds.
We are treating this event seriously. Although we're not on the direct path of this weakening cyclone, we are still likely to experience severe weather in affected areas.
The New Zealand government has pledged $1.5m to relief efforts in the Pacific islands.
Here's the 8am satellite image showing TC Pam north of New Zealand. Latest warnings at http://t.co/EI1S89fXlX ^JL pic.twitter.com/rjyUg8ar0f
- MetService (@MetService) March 14, 2015
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 11.58pm AEST
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AAP is reporting that health is now a major concern in Vanuatu, where power outages have hit the main hospital.
"We have heard that the generator at Port Vila Central hospital is no longer operational," Oxfam's country director in Port Vila, Colin Collet van Rooyen, said on Sunday.
This not only affected patient care but also temperature-sensitive medications and vaccines, which need refrigeration.
Collet van Rooyen said it was one of the problems that came up at a meeting between the high commissioners of Australia and New Zealand and Vanuatu's top officials at the National Disaster Management Office (NDMO) on Sunday.
Water sanitation and hygiene at the shelters as well as the need for temporary mortuary facilities also emerged as major concerns at the meeting, Collet van Rooyen said.
block-time published-time 4.09pm AEST
Oxfam Australia reports from Port Vila in Vanuatu that the cyclone has caused massive, widespread damage.
Oxfam's country director in Port Vila, Colin Collet van Rooyen, said:
At least 90% of housing here in Port Vila has been badly damaged; the kids have nowhere to go to school; there is no power at the hospital, which has also flooded in parts; and damage to the state mortuary means we need a temporary mortuary set up quickly.
Clean water, sanitation and hygiene supplies are also a major issue for those left homeless and also those in evacuation centres, where there simply are not enough toilets or clean water for the amount of people in those facilities.
With extra help arriving on the Australian government plane today we now have a team of 10 people working on this emergency response, and there is a lot of work to be done.
Oxfam Australia's executive director Helen Szoke said:
It's becoming increasingly clear that we are now dealing with worse than the worst case scenario in Vanuatu.
This is likely to be one of the worst disasters ever seen in the Pacific.
The Oxfam Australia page for donations to help those affected by Cyclone Pam is here.
block-time published-time 4.03pm AEST
Here is the full statement from Australia's foreign minister, Julie Bishop, about the cyclone Pam relief response for Vanuatu:
Today I announce that the Australian government will provide an initial package of support to Vanuatu, as it responds to the devastation inflicted by Tropical cyclone Pam.
This support responds to a request from the government of Vanuatu. Australia stands with Vanuatu, our close friend and partner, at this difficult time. Our thoughts and sympathy go out to all those affected.
The initial package of assistance from Australia will include:
$5m to assist the efforts of Australian non-government organisations, the Red Cross and United Nations partners;
the deployment of humanitarian supplies from Australia to assist up to 5,000 people, including water and sanitation and shelter kits;
the deployment of an Australian medical team and an urban search and rescue assessment team;
the deployment of a DFAT Crisis Response Team, comprising eight officials to boost consular support to Australian citizens and coordinate Australia's humanitarian assistance;
the deployment of an Australian disaster expert to the United Nations Disaster Assessment and Coordination team.
A first contingent of Australian officials and supplies arrived in Port Vila at approximately 12pm (local time).
Australians with concerns for the welfare of family and friends in Vanuatu should first attempt to contact them directly. If unable to do so, Australians can call the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade's 24-hour Consular Emergency Centre on 1300 555 135 (option 6), or +61 2 6261 3305 if overseas.
Foreign minister Julie Bishop in Perth on Sunday. Photograph: Angie Raphael/AAPIMAGE
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 11.58pm AEST
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Help is coming from further afield, too, with France the latest nation to weigh in with offers of assistance:
France will deploy a Navy frigate from New Caledonia loaded with helicopters and relief supplies for neighbouring Vanuatu.
- RNZ International (@RNZInews) March 15, 2015
block-time published-time 3.47pm AEST
Air Vanuatu to resume flights on Monday
Air Vanuatu has said it will resume some flights between Port Vila and Australia on Monday.
In a statement on its website, the airline said:
Port Vila airport has reopened with limited facilities. Planned flights for Monday 16 March are:
NF11 Sydney - Vila DEP 0600 ARR 0925
NF10 Vila-Sydney DEP 1120 ARR 1515
NF ** Sydney - Vila DEP 1615 ARR 1915 [** Flight Number TBA]
NF21 Vila - Brisbane DEP 2115 ARR 2245
Tuesday flight schedules to be advised.
block-time published-time 3.43pm AEST
Charity World Vision, which is on the ground in Port Vila, Vanuatu, sends these images of damage from the capital:
Local residents look at damaged boats washed up in Port Vila. Photograph: Stringer/REUTERS Port Vila Vanuatu after cyclone Pam. Photograph: World Vision/Supplied
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 11.58pm AEST
block-time published-time 3.21pm AEST
While information from Vanuatu is coming mostly from the capital Port Vila, as communications remain difficult or impossible with outlying islands, there is also scant detail from the other countries affected by cyclone Pam.
New Zealand Red Cross has this update from its spokesperson in Tuvalu, Claire Shave :
Some of the outer islands have had a very bad couple of nights indeed. They've had water washing away houses, buildings, community halls, that sort of thing.
In addition, because the land is very flat they've had disturbance to some grave sites which is causing a great deal of distress.
A state of emergency has been declared in Tuvalu.
New Zealand Red Cross also reports that it is carrying out assessments in Kiribati, adding that sea swells caused by the cyclone have created further chaos.
The picture below shows flooding in Kiribati before Cyclone Pam hit.
Image provided by the Red Cross Australia on 13 March 2015 shows the situation in Kiribati ahead of cyclone Pam. Photograph: Mike Roman / Red Cross Australia/EPA
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 11.59pm AEST
block-time published-time 3.07pm AEST
My colleague Joshua Robertson is in touch with aid workers on the ground in Vanuatu. He sends these updates:
1st aid shipment to #Vanuatu by sea expected later on Sunday from Fiji: Oxfam's Colin Collett van Rooyen
- Joshua Robertson (@jrojourno) March 15, 2015
CARE's Tom Perry just landed in #Vanuatu on Aust military plane. From on high east of Port Vila looked "flattened".
- Joshua Robertson (@jrojourno) March 15, 2015
Two routes out of #Vanuatu capital Port Vila blocked by landslide on one side and bridge down on another: CARE's Tom Perry
- Joshua Robertson (@jrojourno) March 15, 2015
block-time published-time 2.53pm AEST
What we know so far
Information from Vanuatu beyond the capital Port Vila, and from other islands in the path of cyclone Pam, remains sketchy to non-existent. Here is what we know so far:
Confirmed deaths in Vanuatu currently number eight, with a further 20 people injured. This does not include any casualty figures from outlying islands, and this number is expected to rise.
The effects of cyclone Pam have been felt beyond Vanuatu, as the storm whipped its way across the South Pacific. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister of Tuvalu, said 45% of the population has been displaced.
Damage has been reported in other islands, including Kiribati, Fiji and the Solomon Islands, though details are scarce.
Cyclone Pam is forecast to pass north of New Zealand today and on Monday, with heavy rain and gales expected.
Australia has pledged a $5m relief package, with foreign minister Julie Bishop saying up to 5,000 people would be assisted with food, water, sanitation and shelter.
Military aircraft from Australia and New Zealand have landed in Port Vila, Vanuatu, at the devastated airport to begin immediate relief efforts and to assess the damage. Aid agencies are preparing further flights to deliver food, along with medical personnel and search-and-rescue workers.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 11.59pm AEST
block-time published-time 2.42pm AEST
A New Zealand military aircraft has just landed in Port Vila, Vanuatu:
Royal NZ Air Force C130 arrives in Port Vila #Vanuatu#CyclonePampic.twitter.com/SQL2C5Fuyg
- mjfield (@mjfield) March 15, 2015
And further assistance is on its way from Auckland:
. @NZRedCross staff at busy in our Auckland warehouse preparing more relief for the #cyclonePam response in #Vanuatu
- Hanna Butler (@hannarosebutler) March 15, 2015
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 2.42pm AEST
block-time published-time 2.39pm AEST
Australian prime minister Tony Abbott has just finished his press conference. He did not address cyclone Pam or the relief efforts, instead focusing on plans to tackle illegal firearms, and proposed higher education reforms.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 11.59pm AEST
block-time published-time 2.32pm AEST
Summary
Reuters has filed this round-up of developments so far on Sunday:
The first shipments of aid headed for Vanuatu on Sunday as authorities declared a state of emergency and global relief agencies geared up after a powerful cyclone tore through the vulnerable Pacific island nation.
With winds of more than 300 kph (185 mph), cyclone Pam razed homes, smashed boats and destroyed crops as it struck late on Friday and Saturday.
The official count of confirmed deaths was at eight with 20 people injured. But those numbers were almost certain to rise as rescuers reached the low-lying archipelago's outlying islands.
Vanuatu's National Disaster Management Office said the government still had no word from outside the capital.
"Our communication link is still down," said Paolo Malatu, a relief official at the office. "We haven't got any information from outside Port Vila."
Witnesses described sea surges of up to eight metres (26 feet) and flooding throughout Port Vila after the category 5 cyclone hit. Satellite images showed a menacing spiral of storm covering virtually the whole archipelago.
A Nasa photo of cyclone Pam on 13 March, showing Pam's wide eye just east of Vanuatu's islands and thunderstorms wrapped tightly around the centre. Photograph: Goddard MODIS Rapid Response Team / NASA / HANDOUT/EPA
Thousands of people were homeless, many left standing stunned in the wreckage of their homes. Flash floods brought more misery in Vanuatu and neighbouring countries.
President Baldwin Lonsdale, at a disaster risk conference in Japan on Saturday, appealed to the world to "give a lending hand". He was trying to reach home on Sunday.
Red Cross officials said the first aid flight, a New Zealand military Hercules aircraft carrying tarpaulins and other emergency supplies, was cleared to land on Sunday as Port Vila's airport partially reopened.
A UN team was also due in Port Vila on Sunday with members drawn from as far away as Europe. Britain, which jointly ruled Vanuatu with France until independence in 1980, has offered up to £2m in assistance.
Aid officials said the storm was comparable in strength to typhoon Haiyan, which hit the Philippines in 2013 and killed more than 6,000 people, and looked set to be one of the worst natural disasters the Pacific region has ever experienced.
Offers of help have poured in from around the world, but with communications down, information and access will be major obstacles.
Aurelia Balpe, regional head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, told Reuters communications were a huge problem and Vanuatu's medical system was poorly equipped for such a large-scale disaster.
"The country mostly relies on first aid posts and the supplies in the clinics are probably just antibiotics and pain relief."
On Sunday, Pam was moving away to the southeast, and New Zealand's northern regions were preparing to feel its effects. Authorities there were warning the public to prepare for damaging winds, heavy rain and massive seas.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 11.59pm AEST
block-time published-time 2.15pm AEST
This video posted by ADRA Vanuatu, an NGO working in the disaster-hit island chain, shows a family sifting through the wreckage of what was once their house. It had withstood two previous cyclones.
Video from Port Vila, Vanuatu, after cyclone Pam hit. Credit: ADRA Vanuatu.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 12.00am AEST
block-time published-time 2.09pm AEST
'This is the worst disaster to affect Vanuatu ever'
My colleague Joshua Robertson sends this latest report on today's developments:
The first glimpse of the true scale of the humanitarian disaster unfolding in Vanuatu after cyclone Pam could come from overhead surveillance from Australian military aircraft, according to a senior government minister.
Vanuatu lands minister Ralph Regenvanu said there were fears for the level of destruction and loss of life across the country, with communications outside the capital of Port Vila still non-existent on Sunday.
Regenvanu downplayed suggestions by an aid agency that the toll in Port Vila alone could hit 50, saying it was "probably less than 10".
However, he said the government regarded Vanuatu's "entire population" of about 266,000 as having been affected by the category five cyclone that struck the archipelago on Friday night.
"We don't know anything about the rest of the country but the cyclone affected all of the country, it started right up in the north and went all the way south," Regenvanu told the Guardian after an emergency council of ministers meeting.
"This is the worst disaster to affect Vanuatu ever as far as we know. We're going to need a lot of assistance."
The government hoped aerial surveys would be carried out with the help of two Australian defence force flights that flew out of Amberley base near Brisbane.
It was not clear when satellite imagery from other countries which the United Nations said would help the Vanuatu government map the scale of disaster will be available.
A private tourist operator, Vanuatu Helicopters, was also set to help with the aerial surveys and the urgent task of re-establishing telecommunications towers on other islands, Regenvanu said.
"Unfortunately we can't communicate with anyone outside Port Vila so there's no way to assess what the situation is," he said.
"We're hoping the first aerial surveys will be going today."
Preparing the airport in Port Vila to receive more flights is one of the government's priorities, with suggestions that commercial flights could be delayed by as much as a week, a major constraint on aid efforts.
You can read the full report here.
block-time published-time 2.05pm AEST
The ravaged airport at Port Vila, Vanuatu, is a priority for repairs to allow further flights to reach the stricken island chain.
Vanuatu lands minister Ralph Regenvanu has said that the runway - which was flooded at the height of the cyclone - has been cleared sufficiently to allow military aircraft to land. Radio New Zealand International News reports that "the control tower and navigation equipment are out of action and there has been significant damage to the international terminal".
Pacific Island Living magazine says a key priority is to restore lighting at the airport in order to allow commercial flights to resume.
block-time published-time 2.02pm AEST
Australian prime minister Tony Abbott is due to hold a press conference shortly to address the response to cyclone Pam. We will have live updates on this blog.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 12.00am AEST
block-time published-time 1.49pm AEST
A C17 aircraft has taken off from Amberley RAAF base in Brisbane, carrying a defence rapid response team to Vanuatu:
A C17 departs w cargo and rapid response crews on board 2 help repair Vanuatu's airport. #CyclonePam@7NewsBrisbanepic.twitter.com/DqgyrA6BdG
- Katrina Blowers (@katrinablowers) March 15, 2015
A C130 aircraft has also just left from Richmond.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 1.52pm AEST
block-time published-time 1.45pm AEST
An initial group of 10 personnel is now flying from the National Critical Care and Trauma Response Centre ( @NatTraumaCentre ) in Darwin, the first to be deployed from Australia. They will spend 72 hours on the ground in Vanuatu to treat the injured and assess the scale of further assistance needed:
NCCTRC deployed to Vanuatu. Rapid assessment team and an initial treatment team. #CyclonePam
- NCCTRC (@NatTraumaCentre) March 15, 2015
block-time published-time 1.32pm AEST
The World Bank is trying to rush financial assistance to the people of Vanuatu, AAP reports. The bank said it was looking at every possible avenue and working with partners to send support.
Given the intensity of the event and reports of severe damage, it is exploring a rapid insurance payout to the government of Vanuatu under the Pacific disaster risk financing insurance program.
World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said in a statement on Sunday:
Vanuatu is ranked as one of the world's most at-risk countries to natural disasters because of its vulnerability and exposure to cyclones.
Cyclone Pam is a devastating reminder of the risks of disasters, and we will be working closely with the government to provide any necessary support.
block-time published-time 1.29pm AEST
'Neighbourhoods severely damaged beyond repair': UN report
ReliefWeb, part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, reports :
Tropical cyclone Pam has impacted the Solomon Islands, Kiribati, and Tuvalu creating serious damage including lost homes, road damage, and power and communication outages.
It says a UN Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC) team is due to arrive in Port Vila on Sunday evening, adding:
People in Port Vila are wandering around sleeping wherever they can find shelter.
Standing in the Beverly Hills area of Vila you can see 360 degrees all over the city because everything is knocked down.
All neighbourhoods near the airport and the airport itself are severely damaged beyond repair.
People in Vila are boiling water as it is unsafe to drink from the tap. People are worried about water supplies and food shortages due to destruction of gardens.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 12.00am AEST
block-time published-time 1.08pm AEST
'45% of Tuvalu population displaced by Cyclone Pam'
Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister of Tuvalu says 45% of the population has been displaced by cyclone Pam, Radio New Zealand International reports.
It quotes the prime minister:
Forty-five percent of the population of Tuvalu, most of whom are on the outer islands, have been affected, badly, severely affected.
We are worried about the aftermath in terms of hygiene and supplies of essential materials like food, medicine and water.
This image provided by Plan International Australia, shows a family taking shelter as flood waters moved inland on 14 March on the island of Tuvalu. Photograph: Handout/Getty Images
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 12.00am AEST
block-time published-time 1.02pm AEST
As hoped and expected, more aid flights are due to begin landing in Port Vila:
Relief flights from New Zealand, Australia and New Caledonia are expected in Port Vila about now #CyclonePam
- RNZ International (@RNZInews) March 15, 2015
A team of 10 humanitarian workers are set to fly out from Darwin, Australia, imminently. The group includes five doctors and nurses who will work with medics on the ground to provide emergency health care. There will also be rapid response workers who will make fast assessments of the situation on the ground in Vanuatu in order to coordinate further assistance for the disaster-hit island chain.
Vanuatu's lands minister, Ralph Regenvanu, has told reporters that just one ward of Vila Central hospital is still functioning.
block-time published-time 12.53pm AEST
Two Australian defence force flights that flew out of Amberley base near Brisbane on Sunday morning are the first foreign assistance to arrive in Vanuatu:
RAAF aid on the ground in #Vanuatu#CyclonePampic.twitter.com/sk3SXTJ7eK
- mjfield (@mjfield) March 15, 2015
Aid efforts could be severely hampered by the ongoing closure of the airport at Port Vila. Commercial flights could be delayed by as much as a week, although it is anticipated that aid flights will be able to continue to land.
block-time published-time 12.41pm AEST
Care Australia sends us these images from Port Vila, Vanuatu, of the devastating effect of cyclone Pam.
The charity has a page here for donations to the relief effort.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 12.01am AEST
block-time published-time 12.22pm AEST
The Australian Red Cross has just issued this latest update on its relief efforts:
#CyclonePam update: 28 evacuation centres now open in Efate, Vanuatu
- Australian Red Cross (@RedCrossAU) March 15, 2015
200 #redcross volunteers going door-to-door to check on Vanuatu families after #CyclonePam
- Australian Red Cross (@RedCrossAU) March 15, 2015
Prolonged rains and heavy winds expected to continue for five days in #Vanuatu after #CyclonePam
- Australian Red Cross (@RedCrossAU) March 15, 2015
Immediate priorities after #CyclonePam : first aid, food, safe water, shelter. Our appeal: http://t.co/LCt8OwaKwg
- Australian Red Cross (@RedCrossAU) March 15, 2015
The Australian Red Cross has a page for donations to the cyclone Pam emergency response; you can find it here.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 12.01am AEST
block-time published-time 12.18pm AEST
No reports of Australian casualties: Bishop
It's not possible at this time to confirm casualty numbers, Bishop said, but there were no reports of any Australian casualties.
She said Tuvalu had announced a state of emergency in response to Cyclone Pam, and Australia will be sending emergency supplies there.
Assessments are still going on in Fiji and the Solomon Islands.
block-time published-time 12.17pm AEST
Australia announces $5m 'life-saving package' for Vanuatu
Julie Bishop, the Australian foreign minister, has been speaking about the response to the disaster in Vanuatu:
We are working to assess the extent of the damage both in the short term and long-term recovery efforts.
Bishop announced an emergency package of $5m from the Australian government. This will go to Australian NGOs, particularly the Red Cross and other United Nations humanitarian partners, she said.
There would be Australian support for up to 5,000 people in the form of food, water, sanitation and shelter. The government would also assist in providing medical experts, search-and-rescue personnel, and disaster relief experts, Bishop said. It would also assist in organising travel for UN disaster assessement teams.
Australian military aircraft have already left for Vanuatu this morning, she confirmed, with one plane carrying out reconnaissance and supplying imagery from across the islands.
block-time published-time 12.08pm AEST
Chloe Morrison, Vanuatu's emergency communicator for charity World Vision in Port Vila, has just been talking to ABC News. She reported that she has seen Australian planes arriving at the capital.
Port Vila was, Morrison said, "absolutely flattened":
The place that was once a tropical paradise now looks like hell on earth.
The immediate needs are for the people of Vanuatu - a lot of those in isolated communities and islands have been cut off ...
People are going to need access to clean water, to food and to shelter.
World Vision still has members of its own staff in Port Vila still to be accounted for, she said.
Even though we had a lot of warning a bout Cyclone Pam ... it was absolute pandemonium.
block-time published-time 11.57am AEST
This graphic shows the predicted path of cyclone Pam through the heart of the island chain. Communication with areas away from the Vanuatu capital Port Vila are currently poor or non-existent in the wake of the storm:
Predicted path of cyclone Pam across Vanuatu.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 12.01am AEST
block-time published-time 11.51am AEST
My colleague Joshua Robertson has been talking to key people in Vanuatu about the rescue response.
Vanuatu lands minister Ralph Regenvanu told the Guardian it was "a major disaster" just before he entered a council of ministers meeting to endorse a declared state of emergency and consider the government's next steps.
Regenvanu said there were great fears for the scale of destruction and loss of life in other provinces amid a dearth of information in the wake of the category five cyclone on Friday night.
We definitely know that Erromanga and Tanna got the eye of the cyclone, whereas we missed out - and if this is what missing out means, I don't know what happened to them.
But we don't know, there's no communications.
There are unconfirmed reports of entire villages being wiped out in the northern province of Penama.
Care International Vanuatu program manager Charlie Damon said there were credible sources indicating there could be 40 to 50 deaths in the capital, Port Vila, alone.
We have no idea how the other islands have fared and we can only assume it's horrific.
block-time published-time 11.43am AEST
Opening summary
Aid agencies are beginning their urgent response to cyclone Pam, one of the most powerful cyclones ever recorded, which is reported to have ravaged the remote Pacific island chain of Vanuatu.
Vanuatu was hit directly by the cyclone early on Saturday. Unicef spokeswoman Alice Clements described it as "15 to 30 minutes of absolute terror" for "everybody in this country".
Aid agencies are currently in a meeting with the National Disaster Management Office where death tolls - although probably only for Port Vila, the capital - will be confirmed. Dozens are feared to have died, with thousands left homeless, though the numbers are expected to rise.
We will have updates throughout the day as more information emerges. I will also be tweeting key developments @Claire_Phipps and my colleague Joshua Robertson will be reporting through this live blog and at @jrojourno. Joshua's latest report is here.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 12.01am AEST
LOAD-DATE: March 15, 2015
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS
Copyright 2015 The Guardian, a division of Transcontinental Media Group Inc.
All Rights Reserved
101 of 500 DOCUMENTS
The Guardian
March 15, 2015 Sunday 10:28 AM GMT
Cyclone Pam: Vanuatu death toll rises as Australia pledges $5m in aid - as it happened;
Latest updates as emergency response teams head to the Pacific island chain to assess the damage wrought by devastating storm
BYLINE: Claire Phipps
SECTION: WORLD NEWS
LENGTH: 8443 words
block-time published-time 9.27pm AEST
Summary
It is now night time in Vanuatu and information from the capital Port Vila and beyond is scarce. We are closing the liveblog down but here is the Guardian's latest report on the devastating effects of Cyclone Pam.
Here is what we know so far:
Confirmed deaths in Vanuatu currently number eight, with a further 20 people injured. This does not include any casualty figures from outlying islands, and this number is expected to rise. Routes out of the capital Port Vila are blocked and bridges torn down.
Aid agencies reported that around 90% of houses in Port Vila have been destroyed, many people displaced, and schools ripped apart.
An estimated 103,000 people in Vanuatu have been affected by Cyclone Pam, with thousands more blighted in nine countries across the Pacific, according to figures from the New Zealand Red Cross. Save the children said that up to 75,000 children in Vanuatu could be in desperate need of food, water and shelter.
The effects of Cyclone Pam have been felt beyond Vanuatu, as the storm whipped its way across the South Pacific. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister of Tuvalu, said 45% of the population has been displaced and a state of emergency has been declared.
Damage has been reported in other islands, including Kiribati - where New Zealand Red Cross reports that it is carrying out assessments of the damage caused by huge sea swells - Fiji and the Solomon Islands, though details are still scarce.
Cyclone Pam is forecast to pass north of New Zealand overnight on Sunday and on Monday, with heavy rain and gales expected.
Australia has pledged a $5m relief package, with foreign minister Julie Bishop saying up to 5,000 people would be assisted with food, water, sanitation and shelter. New Zealand announced an additional $NZ1.5m ($A1.44m; £750,000) of funding, on top of the $NZ1m signalled on Saturday. France is to deploy a navy frigate of relief supplies from New Caledonia.
Military aircraft from Australia and New Zealand have landed in Port Vila, Vanuatu, at the devastated airport to begin immediate relief efforts and to assess the damage. Aid agencies are preparing further flights to deliver food, along with medical personnel and search-and-rescue workers.
Air Vanuatu has said it will resume some flights between Port Vila and Australia on Monday, which will boost the aid effort.
block-time published-time 9.21pm AEST
Up to 75,000 children in Vanuatu could be in desperate need of food, water and shelter, Save the Children has said.
Tom Skirrow from Save the Children in Vanuatu said:
This disaster has left tens of thousands of children vulnerable and we are particularly concerned for their welfare and safety in the aftermath of Cyclone Pam.
Children are going to be very afraid, they are going to be hungry and some of them may even have become separated from their families.
block-time published-time 8.34pm AEST
Approximately 103,000 people affected in Vanuatu
An estimated 103,000 people in Vanuatu have been affected by Cyclone Pam, with thousands more blighted in nine countries across the Pacific, according to figures from the New Zealand Red Cross.
The aid agency says it has not yet been possible to make contact with the outer islands because power and phone lines are down.
It describes the disaster as the strongest storm to make landfall since Typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines in November 2013, killing at least 6,300 people in that country alone.
Aurelia Balpe, head of delegation for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in the Pacific, says:
Tens of thousands of people are still in the middle of a terrifying ordeal and we need to urgently assess the humanitarian needs and start meeting them as soon as possible.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 8.34pm AEST
block-time published-time 8.25pm AEST
David Cameron has pledged UK aid support to his Australian counterpart, Tony Abbott :
PM: I've just spoken to @TonyAbbottMHR to discuss ongoing aid efforts in #Vanuatu and to offer UK support following the devastating cyclone.
- UK Prime Minister (@Number10gov) March 15, 2015
block-time published-time 8.05pm AEST
Summary
As night falls in Vanuatu, here is what we know so far about the effects of Cyclone Pam and the humanitarian response:
Information from Vanuatu beyond the capital Port Vila, and from other islands in the path of Cyclone Pam, remains sketchy to non-existent. Here is what we know so far:
Confirmed deaths in Vanuatu currently number eight, with a further 20 people injured. This does not include any casualty figures from outlying islands, and this number is expected to rise. Routes out of the capital Port Vila are blocked and bridges torn down.
Aid agencies reported that around 90% of houses in Port Vila have been destroyed, many people displaced, and schools ripped apart. Oxfam Australia's executive director Helen Szoke said:
It's becoming increasingly clear that we are now dealing with worse than the worst case scenario in Vanuatu. This is likely to be one of the worst disasters ever seen in the Pacific.
A photo provided by Unicef Pacific of a road which was damaged by Cyclone Pam on Vanuatu. Photograph: Unicef Pacific / Handout/EPA
The effects of Cyclone Pam have been felt beyond Vanuatu, as the storm whipped its way across the South Pacific. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister of Tuvalu, said 45% of the population has been displaced and a state of emergency has been declared.
Damage has been reported in other islands, including Kiribati - where New Zealand Red Cross reports that it is carrying out assessments of the damage caused by huge sea swells - Fiji and the Solomon Islands, though details are still scarce.
Cyclone Pam is forecast to pass north of New Zealand overnight on Sunday and on Monday, with heavy rain and gales expected.
Children stand in front of debris on a street near their homes after Cyclone Pam hit Port Vila. Photograph: Stringer/Reuters
Australia has pledged a $5m relief package, with foreign minister Julie Bishop saying up to 5,000 people would be assisted with food, water, sanitation and shelter. New Zealand announced an additional $NZ1.5m ($A1.44m; £750,000) of funding, on top of the $NZ1m signalled on Saturday. France is to deploy a navy frigate of relief supplies from New Caledonia.
Military aircraft from Australia and New Zealand have landed in Port Vila, Vanuatu, at the devastated airport to begin immediate relief efforts and to assess the damage. Aid agencies are preparing further flights to deliver food, along with medical personnel and search-and-rescue workers.
Air Vanuatu has said it will resume some flights between Port Vila and Australia on Monday, which will boost the aid effort.
You can read the latest Guardian report on the situation here.
block-time published-time 7.38pm AEST
World Vision International, which has 80 staff in Vanuatu, has posted this detailed update on its work across the devastated island chain.
It says it has been able to contact only 13 of its 80 staff members so far since cyclone Pam hit:
Contact between Port Vila and other islands has not been possible yet. Penama Province was directly in the path of the storm, and the cyclone stayed over Tafea Province for approximately four hours on Friday so the organization is extremely concerned about staff and communities in those areas.
Houses in Vanuatu were particularly vulnerable to the storm, World Vision explains:
Most families on Vanuatu live in simple, thatched-roof homes that are very vulnerable to severe weather. Even for those who safely evacuated to storm shelters, they will likely return to homes that are damaged or destroyed, and crops that are washed away. Cyclone Pam was one of the worst storms the island has ever seen.
World Vision's team spent Saturday driving throughout the communities in Port Vila, assessing the situation in the capital city but communications and logistics remain difficult. Additional information is expected to continue to come in as the team is able to reach more remote parts of the country.
World Vision pre-positioned relief goods in Port Vila, Santo Island, and Tanna Island. Items include tarps, tools for repairs, water containers, mosquito nets, hygiene kits, baby kits, and kitchen sets. Early warnings throughout the week urged communities to evacuate to local storm shelters.
block-time published-time 7.20pm AEST
Latest round-up
My colleague Joshua Robertson has filed this latest report on developments today as night falls in Vanuatu:
More deaths and dire water shortages loom as part of the unfolding crisis in Vanuatu, with the first account emerging of the plight of the South Pacific archipelago's remote communities in the wake of cyclone Pam.
A pilot who flew to Tanna - an island of 30,000 people south of the capital Port Vila - on Sunday has told of more deaths, no drinking water and complete destruction of infrastructure and permanent shelters.
It was the first news from outside Port Vila, where eight people have been confirmed dead, thousands left homeless and most civil infrastructure damaged in the aftermath of the category five cyclone on Friday and Saturday.
Tanna and the less populated Erromango island had been the focus of concerns from the Vanuatu government and aid agencies, who have no means of communication with anywhere outside the capital after the worst natural disaster in the country's history.
Aurelia Balpe, head of the Red Cross's Pacific operations, said the agency had been briefed by the pilot, who said in Tanna he found "people were waiting to be heard, to talk to someone".
"What he saw when they landed and took off again was all of the corrugated iron structures were pretty much destroyed, the concrete structures had no roofs left, all the trees had been ripped out," Balpe said.
"People were saying no drinking water. He also reported two deaths but that's not confirmed by government."
A flight over Erromango revealed "a similar state of affairs" to that witnessed in Tanna, Balpe said.
This photo taken on 15 March by CARE Australia shows an aerial photo of damage caused by Cyclone Pam on the outskirts of the Vanuatu capital of Port Vila. Photograph: Tom Perry/AFP/Getty Images
Authorities in Port Vila, still unable to assess the true scale of the destruction, were waiting on aerial surveys from an Australian military plane and the restoration of some remote telecommunications towers on other islands.
The Vanuatu lands minister, Ralph Regenvanu, said the government regarded the "entire population" of about 266,000 people as having been affected by the huge storm that ripped through on Friday night and into Saturday. "This is the worst disaster to affect Vanuatu ever as far as we know. We're going to need a lot of assistance," he said.
The Australian and New Zealand governments have announced emergency aid packages totalling $6.5m.
An Australian department of defence spokeswoman said a P3 Orion surveillance aircraft had left Amberley base near Brisbane on Sunday to conduct the aerial survey, "weather permitting".
It is understood the Vanuatu government as of 5.30pm local time on Sunday was still yet to receive any of the aerial surveillance. A spokesman for defence minister Kevin Andrews said was transmitted in near real time to defence authorities in Canberra.
The surveillance plane was one of four military planes that flew from Amberley to Port Vila, the other three bearing emergency supplies, medical and disaster teams and aid workers.
Balpe said while the fact the pilot found a usable airstrip on Tanna's sheltered western side was an encouraging sign in terms of getting aid through, his account revealed a true emergency.
"The priority is getting someone down to have a look and talk to the local authorities," she said.
Red Cross already had volunteers and emergency supplies in Tanna but "by the impact that he described, those things are just a very small proportion of what is required", Balpe said.
Local residents sit outside their damaged homes surrounded by debris on a street after Cyclone Pam hit Port Vila. Photograph: Stringer/Reuters
While motorists in Port Vila queued more than an hour for petrol at the solitary fuel station that was open, a landslide and the destruction of several bridges in the city's east made travel outside the capital virtually impossible.
Australian expatriate Kenny Ang, who sheltered from the storm in the northern Efate town of Havannah, told the Guardian he had swum across a river and borrowed a friend's car to make it into Port Vila.
Ang said he saw "entire villages decimated" on his journey to the capital, where the extent of damage was equally shocking.
"We saw people on the side of the road and they're trying to rebuild in the aftermath but obviously it's going to take a long time before anything gets fixed," he said.
"We're currently in a queue that's taken one hour to get petrol from the one station that's open. I think it's going to take half an hour to 45 minutes to actually get petrol.
"People are waiting in line with containers and barrels to fill up to get to where they want to go."
Ang said from Havannah he could see the islands of Moso and Lelepa, "normally a luscious, rolling green, have been stripped bare" by the cyclone.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 7.25pm AEST
block-time published-time 7.08pm AEST
Reuters has more comments from Baldwin Lonsdale, the president of Vanuatu, who is currently in Japan.
He told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in Sendai, Japan, where he was attending a UN disaster recovery conference, that he fears the impact from a devastating tropical storm will be "the very, very, very worst" in isolated outer islands but damage was still being assessed.
Lonsdale said most houses in the capital Port Vila had been damaged or destroyed by Cyclone Pam, a category 5 storm:
People are finding shelter where they can live for the night.
The state of damage is still being assessed, we do not know exactly the extent of the damage ... The number of casualties I do hope will be minor.
block-time published-time 7.01pm AEST
Piecemeal reports are arriving from further-flung parts of Vanuatu as relief workers make their way slowly beyond the capital, Port Vila. Roads are difficult to travel and communications slow or non-existent, so it is laborious work:
Some areas appear not to have been as badly damaged as had been feared:
Good news: #VanuatuRedCross spoke w/ Torba volunteer Benjamin Brown on #Hui island, houses ok, banana trees & casava crops damaged #TCPam
- Aurelia Balpe (@aureliabalpe) March 15, 2015
Tanna, which was close to the heart of the cyclone's path, seems to have suffered badly:
@aureliabalpe says a pilot who who landed on Tanna island in Vanuatu's south has reported widespread destruction and 2 deaths.
- Liam Fox (@liamfoxabc) March 15, 2015
And Humans of Vanuatu reports that:
Teouma bridge is gone, blocking access to the most affected areas of Efate.
block-time published-time 6.54pm AEST
A new video posted by ADRA Vanuatu, a local NGO, shows the havoc wreaked on people's homes on the islands: roofs torn off, possessions shattered and scattered:
ADRA Vanuatu : devastated homes.
block-time published-time 6.45pm AEST
'No serious looting' - Vanuatu police
Radio New Zealand International news reports that all police officers across Vanuatu have been called into action:
Vanuatu's Police Commissioner says all officers have been recalled from leave as they prepare to mount a massive operation.
- RNZ International (@RNZInews) March 15, 2015
Vanuatu's Police commissioner says while there haven't been serious cases of looting, Police will cordon some parts of Port Vila tonight
- RNZ International (@RNZInews) March 15, 2015
block-time published-time 6.29pm AEST
Community group Humans of Vanuatu reports the almost total destruction of the power infrastructure.
In a Facebook post, they report:
Power crews are working around the clock to remove downed lines. I have not seen a single undamaged line in two days.
We're talking about rebuilding the entire capital's power grid.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 6.29pm AEST
block-time published-time 6.22pm AEST
'Lack of urgency' on climate change, says World Bank V-P
As reported earlier, Vanuatu's president, Baldwin Lonsdale, is, by coincidence, at the UN world conference on disaster risk reduction in Japan, from where AFP sends this report:
Despite ominous predictions of mass devastation in cyclone-wrecked Vanuatu, policymakers at a UN disaster meeting in Japan do not seem to understand the pressing need to tackle climate change, the World Bank warned Sunday.
A state of emergency has been declared in the impoverished Pacific nation, where dozens are feared dead after one of the most powerful storms ever recorded smashed through. Aid agencies have spoken of "grave fears" over the scale of the human tragedy.
But Rachel Kyte, World Bank vice president and special envoy for climate change, said there appeared to be a disconnect between policy and the increasingly-frequent weather-related disasters the world is suffering.
"I worry that a sense of urgency and a sense of shared ambition is not at the right level," she told AFP in an interview on the sidelines of the UN conference on disaster risk reduction in Sendai, Japan.
"It's hugely ironic that this storm should hit Vanuatu while we are all here. If we truly care for those people, we have to respond," she said, referring to the need for environmental commitments.
"I think we have to hold ourselves accountable and at least voluntarily we should have targets" on emission reductions from the Sendai conference, she said.
The conference comes ahead of COP 21 talks scheduled for December in Paris, at which countries will try to thrash out agreements on cutting greenhouse gases.
French foreign minister Laurent Fabius, who will chair the meeting, told AFP Sendai could act as a springboard to success later in the year.
Kyte told AFP:
I don't think I would say climate change caused [Cyclone] Pam, but I would say the fact is in the past three or four years we've seen category fives coming with a regularity we've never seen before.
And that has some relationship with climate change. It is indisputable that part of the Pacific Ocean is much warmer today than in previous years, so these storms are intensifying.
We may have helped communities become resilient to the kinds of storms we experienced in the past, but resilience to a storm with wind speed of up to 300km per hour - that's a whole new intensity.
The UN development bank chief, Helen Clark, former prime minister of New Zealand, said it was "impossible" to protect against natural disasters without addressing one of the root causes:
Unless we tackle climate change on the global level we are making the task of building resilience to disasters almost impossible.
block-time published-time 5.55pm AEST
Night is falling in Vanuatu now, with much of the on-the-ground aid effort likely to have to wait until light tomorrow. The C17 aircraft that flew out from Brisbane this morning has just returned, having dropped off its supplies of aid. More planes will be heading out tomorrow.
This image of Port Vila this evening comes from Colin Collet van Rooyen, Oxfam's country director there:
OxfamInVanuatu: Port Vila right now. Beautiful regardless of what #CyclonePam tried to do to it! Viva Vanuatu. pic.twitter.com/6squkCklua
- colin (@Colincvr) March 15, 2015
block-time published-time 5.36pm AEST
Following the arrival of military planes earlier today, some food and other aid is being distributed in Port Vila, as the pictures below illustrate.
So far, only the capital is accessible for humanitarian workers - there are reports that roads out of Port Vila are blocked, and bridges torn down.
Aircraft have been sent out to record aerial imagery from more remote islands in an attempt to assess the damage there:
Red Cross personnel handling donated food to use as relief from Cyclone Pam, in the Vanuatu capital of Port Vila. Photograph: Vanuatu Red Cross/AFP/Getty Images
block-time published-time 5.21pm AEST
New Zealand is upping its financial and logistics support for Vanuatu in the wake of Cyclone Pam, AAP reports.
The foreign affairs minister, Murray McCully, on Sunday announced an additional $NZ1.5m ($A1.44m; £750,000) of funding, on top of the $NZ1m signalled on Saturday.
A New Zealand defence force C-130 Hercules transported eight tonnes of supplies and an initial New Zealand team to Vanuatu on Sunday and two more flights will be sent on Monday.
Air Commodore Kevin McEvoy said the Hercules carried first aids kits, tarpaulins, water containers, chainsaw packs and generators.
Specialists from government agencies and the New Zealand Red Cross were also on board the Hercules.
"Pacific nations such as Vanuatu are our friends and neighbours and we're happy we can help at times of need," he said.
With the main airport being closed to civilian transport, the Hercules load would make a real difference, he said.
There are 163 New Zealanders registered as being in Vanuatu.
Cyclone Pam is expected to cause severe weather problems for the northernmost past of New Zealand itself as it passes nearby overnight on Sunday/Monday.
Here is @NiwaWeather 's most recent forecast for #TCPam at 6am showing wind and pressure pic.twitter.com/hFqfhK9fbw
- Auckland CDEM (@AucklandCDEM) March 15, 2015
block-time published-time 5.05pm AEST
Baldwin Lonsdale, the president of Vanuatu, has told the BBC that "most" of the population of his country are homeless in the wake of cyclone Pam.
Lonsdale said the cyclone had destroyed most of the buildings in Port Vila, including schools and clinics.
The president was - by coincidence - at the UN conference on disaster risk reduction in Japan, where he told delegates:
I am speaking to you today with a heart that is so heavy.
I stand to appeal on behalf of the government and the people to give a helping hand in this disaster.
Vanuatu president Baldwin Lonsdale during the third UN world conference on disaster risk reduction in Sendai, Japan. Photograph: Toshifumi Kitamura / Pool/EPA
block-time published-time 4.45pm AEST
This brief report from Aurelia Balpe, head of the Pacific office of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, suggests that the remote islands of Tanna and Erromango in the southern part of the Vanuatu island chain have suffered catastrophic damage:
1st report private fly-over Tanna&Erramngo, trees uprooted, no corrugated iron structures standing, no roofs on concrete blds, no hl #TCPam
- Aurelia Balpe (@aureliabalpe) March 15, 2015
block-time published-time 4.40pm AEST
Cruise ship operator Carnival Australia says it has donated $150,000 to Save the Children Australia towards the relief effort in Vanuatu, and says it will be sending fresh water and building supplies on Legend, its ship sailing to Luganville. The second largest city in Vanuatu is "largely unscathed", it says.
Can do cruise people. @CarnivalOz Jennifer Vandekreeke loaded car with freshwater & delivered to Vanuatu bound Legend pic.twitter.com/AX7QZmbLWT
- Carnival Australia (@CarnivalAusNews) March 15, 2015
@CarnivalOz continuing to work with @savechildrenaus with plan for building materials to be carried on Carnival Australia cruise ships.
- Carnival Australia (@CarnivalAusNews) March 15, 2015
block-time published-time 4.27pm AEST
New Zealand prepares for Cyclone Pam
Although New Zealand is not in the direct path of Cyclone Pam, its northern areas are expected to bear the brunt of some severe weather as the storm passes close by.
The government has warned people in the northeast of the North Island from Cape Reinga to Hawkes Bay, as well as outer islands including the Chatham Islands, to take precautions.
NZ civil defence minister Nikki Kaye said:
I've been advised that New Zealand is not in the cyclone's direct path, but we're still likely to experience severe weather in affected areas as it passes by. Other areas may also experience effects such as increased sea swells.
Our thoughts are with those in countries such as Vanuatu, Tuvalu, Fiji and the Solomon Islands, which have been badly affected by the cyclone. New Zealand is providing appropriate assistance to our Pacific neighbours.
Although I'm advised that Pam is losing strength as it heads south, MetService has forecast severe rain and wind in affected areas.
Local councils and civil defence teams have spent the last few days informing communities and working with relevant agencies to prepare for potential severe weather.
My message to New Zealanders living in affected areas is to make sure you have good preparations in place. This means having enough food and water and an emergency kit on hand. Also, secure outside objects that could blow around in high winds.
We are treating this event seriously. Although we're not on the direct path of this weakening cyclone, we are still likely to experience severe weather in affected areas.
The New Zealand government has pledged $1.5m to relief efforts in the Pacific islands.
Here's the 8am satellite image showing TC Pam north of New Zealand. Latest warnings at http://t.co/EI1S89fXlX ^JL pic.twitter.com/rjyUg8ar0f
- MetService (@MetService) March 14, 2015
block-time published-time 4.11pm AEST
AAP is reporting that health is now a major concern in Vanuatu, where power outages have hit the main hospital.
"We have heard that the generator at Port Vila Central hospital is no longer operational," Oxfam's country director in Port Vila, Colin Collet van Rooyen, said on Sunday.
This not only affected patient care but also temperature-sensitive medications and vaccines, which need refrigeration.
Collet van Rooyen said it was one of the problems that came up at a meeting between the high commissioners of Australia and New Zealand and Vanuatu's top officials at the National Disaster Management Office (NDMO) on Sunday.
Water sanitation and hygiene at the shelters as well as the need for temporary mortuary facilities also emerged as major concerns at the meeting, Collet van Rooyen said.
block-time published-time 4.09pm AEST
Oxfam Australia reports from Port Vila in Vanuatu that the cyclone has caused massive, widespread damage.
Oxfam's country director in Port Vila, Colin Collet van Rooyen, said:
At least 90% of housing here in Port Vila has been badly damaged; the kids have nowhere to go to school; there is no power at the hospital, which has also flooded in parts; and damage to the state mortuary means we need a temporary mortuary set up quickly.
Clean water, sanitation and hygiene supplies are also a major issue for those left homeless and also those in evacuation centres, where there simply are not enough toilets or clean water for the amount of people in those facilities.
With extra help arriving on the Australian government plane today we now have a team of 10 people working on this emergency response, and there is a lot of work to be done.
Oxfam Australia's executive director Helen Szoke said:
It's becoming increasingly clear that we are now dealing with worse than the worst case scenario in Vanuatu.
This is likely to be one of the worst disasters ever seen in the Pacific.
The Oxfam Australia page for donations to help those affected by Cyclone Pam is here.
block-time published-time 4.03pm AEST
Here is the full statement from Australia's foreign minister, Julie Bishop, about the Cyclone Pam relief response for Vanuatu:
Today I announce that the Australian government will provide an initial package of support to Vanuatu, as it responds to the devastation inflicted by Tropical Cyclone Pam.
This support responds to a request from the government of Vanuatu. Australia stands with Vanuatu, our close friend and partner, at this difficult time. Our thoughts and sympathy go out to all those affected.
The initial package of assistance from Australia will include:
$5m to assist the efforts of Australian non-government organisations, the Red Cross and United Nations partners;
the deployment of humanitarian supplies from Australia to assist up to 5,000 people, including water and sanitation and shelter kits;
the deployment of an Australian medical team and an urban search and rescue assessment team;
the deployment of a DFAT Crisis Response Team, comprising eight officials to boost consular support to Australian citizens and coordinate Australia's humanitarian assistance;
the deployment of an Australian disaster expert to the United Nations Disaster Assessment and Coordination team.
A first contingent of Australian officials and supplies arrived in Port Vila at approximately 12pm (local time).
Australians with concerns for the welfare of family and friends in Vanuatu should first attempt to contact them directly. If unable to do so, Australians can call the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade's 24-hour Consular Emergency Centre on 1300 555 135 (option 6), or +61 2 6261 3305 if overseas.
Foreign minister Julie Bishop in Perth on Sunday. Photograph: Angie Raphael/AAPIMAGE
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 4.04pm AEST
block-time published-time 3.56pm AEST
Help is coming from further afield, too, with France the latest nation to weigh in with offers of assistance:
France will deploy a Navy frigate from New Caledonia loaded with helicopters and relief supplies for neighbouring Vanuatu.
- RNZ International (@RNZInews) March 15, 2015
block-time published-time 3.47pm AEST
Air Vanuatu to resume flights on Monday
Air Vanuatu has said it will resume some flights between Port Vila and Australia on Monday.
In a statement on its website, the airline said:
Port Vila airport has reopened with limited facilities. Planned flights for Monday 16 March are:
NF11 Sydney - Vila DEP 0600 ARR 0925
NF10 Vila-Sydney DEP 1120 ARR 1515
NF ** Sydney - Vila DEP 1615 ARR 1915 [** Flight Number TBA]
NF21 Vila - Brisbane DEP 2115 ARR 2245
Tuesday flight schedules to be advised.
block-time published-time 3.43pm AEST
Charity World Vision, which is on the ground in Port Vila, Vanuatu, sends these images of damage from the capital:
Local residents look at damaged boats washed up in Port Vila. Photograph: Stringer/REUTERS Port Vila Vanuatu after Cyclone Pam. Photograph: World Vision/Supplied
block-time published-time 3.21pm AEST
While information from Vanuatu is coming mostly from the capital Port Vila, as communications remain difficult or impossible with outlying islands, there is also scant detail from the other countries affected by Cyclone Pam.
New Zealand Red Cross has this update from its spokesperson in Tuvalu, Claire Shave :
Some of the outer islands have had a very bad couple of nights indeed. They've had water washing away houses, buildings, community halls, that sort of thing.
In addition, because the land is very flat they've had disturbance to some grave sites which is causing a great deal of distress.
A state of emergency has been declared in Tuvalu.
New Zealand Red Cross also reports that it is carrying out assessments in Kiribati, adding that sea swells caused by the cyclone have created further chaos.
The picture below shows flooding in Kiribati before Cyclone Pam hit.
Image provided by the Red Cross Australia on 13 March 2015 shows the situation in Kiribati ahead of Cyclone Pam. Photograph: Mike Roman / Red Cross Australia/EPA
block-time published-time 3.07pm AEST
My colleague Joshua Robertson is in touch with aid workers on the ground in Vanuatu. He sends these updates:
1st aid shipment to #Vanuatu by sea expected later on Sunday from Fiji: Oxfam's Colin Collett van Rooyen
- Joshua Robertson (@jrojourno) March 15, 2015
CARE's Tom Perry just landed in #Vanuatu on Aust military plane. From on high east of Port Vila looked "flattened".
- Joshua Robertson (@jrojourno) March 15, 2015
Two routes out of #Vanuatu capital Port Vila blocked by landslide on one side and bridge down on another: CARE's Tom Perry
- Joshua Robertson (@jrojourno) March 15, 2015
block-time published-time 2.53pm AEST
What we know so far
Information from Vanuatu beyond the capital Port Vila, and from other islands in the path of Cyclone Pam, remains sketchy to non-existent. Here is what we know so far:
Confirmed deaths in Vanuatu currently number eight, with a further 20 people injured. This does not include any casualty figures from outlying islands, and this number is expected to rise.
The effects of Cyclone Pam have been felt beyond Vanuatu, as the storm whipped its way across the South Pacific. Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister of Tuvalu, said 45% of the population has been displaced.
Damage has been reported in other islands, including Kiribati, Fiji and the Solomon Islands, though details are scarce.
Cyclone Pam is forecast to pass north of New Zealand today and on Monday, with heavy rain and gales expected.
Australia has pledged a $5m relief package, with foreign minister Julie Bishop saying up to 5,000 people would be assisted with food, water, sanitation and shelter.
Military aircraft from Australia and New Zealand have landed in Port Vila, Vanuatu, at the devastated airport to begin immediate relief efforts and to assess the damage. Aid agencies are preparing further flights to deliver food, along with medical personnel and search-and-rescue workers.
block-time published-time 2.42pm AEST
A New Zealand military aircraft has just landed in Port Vila, Vanuatu:
Royal NZ Air Force C130 arrives in Port Vila #Vanuatu#CyclonePampic.twitter.com/SQL2C5Fuyg
- mjfield (@mjfield) March 15, 2015
And further assistance is on its way from Auckland:
. @NZRedCross staff at busy in our Auckland warehouse preparing more relief for the #cyclonePam response in #Vanuatu
- Hanna Butler (@hannarosebutler) March 15, 2015
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 2.42pm AEST
block-time published-time 2.39pm AEST
Australian prime minister Tony Abbott has just finished his press conference. He did not address Cyclone Pam or the relief efforts, instead focusing on plans to tackle illegal firearms, and proposed higher education reforms.
block-time published-time 2.32pm AEST
Summary
Reuters has filed this round-up of developments so far on Sunday:
The first shipments of aid headed for Vanuatu on Sunday as authorities declared a state of emergency and global relief agencies geared up after a powerful cyclone tore through the vulnerable Pacific island nation.
With winds of more than 300 kph (185 mph), Cyclone Pam razed homes, smashed boats and destroyed crops as it struck late on Friday and Saturday.
The official count of confirmed deaths was at eight with 20 people injured. But those numbers were almost certain to rise as rescuers reached the low-lying archipelago's outlying islands.
Vanuatu's National Disaster Management Office said the government still had no word from outside the capital.
"Our communication link is still down," said Paolo Malatu, a relief official at the office. "We haven't got any information from outside Port Vila."
Witnesses described sea surges of up to eight metres (26 feet) and flooding throughout Port Vila after the category 5 cyclone hit. Satellite images showed a menacing spiral of storm covering virtually the whole archipelago.
A Nasa photo of cyclone Pam on 13 March, showing Pam's wide eye just east of Vanuatu's islands and thunderstorms wrapped tightly around the centre. Photograph: Goddard MODIS Rapid Response Team / NASA / HANDOUT/EPA
Thousands of people were homeless, many left standing stunned in the wreckage of their homes. Flash floods brought more misery in Vanuatu and neighbouring countries.
President Baldwin Lonsdale, at a disaster risk conference in Japan on Saturday, appealed to the world to "give a lending hand". He was trying to reach home on Sunday.
Red Cross officials said the first aid flight, a New Zealand military Hercules aircraft carrying tarpaulins and other emergency supplies, was cleared to land on Sunday as Port Vila's airport partially reopened.
A UN team was also due in Port Vila on Sunday with members drawn from as far away as Europe. Britain, which jointly ruled Vanuatu with France until independence in 1980, has offered up to £2m in assistance.
Aid officials said the storm was comparable in strength to Typhoon Haiyan, which hit the Philippines in 2013 and killed more than 6,000 people, and looked set to be one of the worst natural disasters the Pacific region has ever experienced.
Offers of help have poured in from around the world, but with communications down, information and access will be major obstacles.
Aurelia Balpe, regional head of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, told Reuters communications were a huge problem and Vanuatu's medical system was poorly equipped for such a large-scale disaster.
"The country mostly relies on first aid posts and the supplies in the clinics are probably just antibiotics and pain relief."
On Sunday, Pam was moving away to the southeast, and New Zealand's northern regions were preparing to feel its effects. Authorities there were warning the public to prepare for damaging winds, heavy rain and massive seas.
block-time published-time 2.15pm AEST
This video posted by ADRA Vanuatu, an NGO working in the disaster-hit island chain, shows a family sifting through the wreckage of what was once their house. It had withstood two previous cyclones.
Video from Port Vila, Vanuatu, after Cyclone Pam hit. Credit: ADRA Vanuatu.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 2.15pm AEST
block-time published-time 2.09pm AEST
'This is the worst disaster to affect Vanuatu ever'
My colleague Joshua Robertson sends this latest report on today's developments:
The first glimpse of the true scale of the humanitarian disaster unfolding in Vanuatu after cyclone Pam could come from overhead surveillance from Australian military aircraft, according to a senior government minister.
Vanuatu lands minister Ralph Regenvanu said there were fears for the level of destruction and loss of life across the country, with communications outside the capital of Port Vila still non-existent on Sunday.
Regenvanu downplayed suggestions by an aid agency that the toll in Port Vila alone could hit 50, saying it was "probably less than 10".
However, he said the government regarded Vanuatu's "entire population" of about 266,000 as having been affected by the category five cyclone that struck the archipelago on Friday night.
"We don't know anything about the rest of the country but the cyclone affected all of the country, it started right up in the north and went all the way south," Regenvanu told the Guardian after an emergency council of ministers meeting.
"This is the worst disaster to affect Vanuatu ever as far as we know. We're going to need a lot of assistance."
The government hoped aerial surveys would be carried out with the help of two Australian defence force flights that flew out of Amberley base near Brisbane.
It was not clear when satellite imagery from other countries which the United Nations said would help the Vanuatu government map the scale of disaster will be available.
A private tourist operator, Vanuatu Helicopters, was also set to help with the aerial surveys and the urgent task of re-establishing telecommunications towers on other islands, Regenvanu said.
"Unfortunately we can't communicate with anyone outside Port Vila so there's no way to assess what the situation is," he said.
"We're hoping the first aerial surveys will be going today."
Preparing the airport in Port Vila to receive more flights is one of the government's priorities, with suggestions that commercial flights could be delayed by as much as a week, a major constraint on aid efforts.
You can read the full report here.
block-time published-time 2.05pm AEST
The ravaged airport at Port Vila, Vanuatu, is a priority for repairs to allow further flights to reach the stricken island chain.
Vanuatu lands minister Ralph Regenvanu has said that the runway - which was flooded at the height of the cyclone - has been cleared sufficiently to allow military aircraft to land. Radio New Zealand International News reports that "the control tower and navigation equipment are out of action and there has been significant damage to the international terminal".
Pacific Island Living magazine says a key priority is to restore lighting at the airport in order to allow commercial flights to resume.
block-time published-time 2.02pm AEST
Australian prime minister Tony Abbott is due to hold a press conference shortly to address the response to Cyclone Pam. We will have live updates on this blog.
block-time published-time 1.49pm AEST
A C17 aircraft has taken off from Amberley RAAF base in Brisbane, carrying a defence rapid response team to Vanuatu:
A C17 departs w cargo and rapid response crews on board 2 help repair Vanuatu's airport. #CyclonePam@7NewsBrisbanepic.twitter.com/DqgyrA6BdG
- Katrina Blowers (@katrinablowers) March 15, 2015
A C130 aircraft has also just left from Richmond.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 1.52pm AEST
block-time published-time 1.45pm AEST
An initial group of 10 personnel is now flying from the National Critical Care and Trauma Response Centre ( @NatTraumaCentre ) in Darwin, the first to be deployed from Australia. They will spend 72 hours on the ground in Vanuatu to treat the injured and assess the scale of further assistance needed:
NCCTRC deployed to Vanuatu. Rapid assessment team and an initial treatment team. #CyclonePam
- NCCTRC (@NatTraumaCentre) March 15, 2015
block-time published-time 1.32pm AEST
The World Bank is trying to rush financial assistance to the people of Vanuatu, AAP reports. The bank said it was looking at every possible avenue and working with partners to send support.
Given the intensity of the event and reports of severe damage, it is exploring a rapid insurance payout to the government of Vanuatu under the Pacific disaster risk financing insurance program.
World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim said in a statement on Sunday:
Vanuatu is ranked as one of the world's most at-risk countries to natural disasters because of its vulnerability and exposure to cyclones.
Cyclone Pam is a devastating reminder of the risks of disasters, and we will be working closely with the government to provide any necessary support.
block-time published-time 1.29pm AEST
'Neighbourhoods severely damaged beyond repair': UN report
ReliefWeb, part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, reports :
Tropical Cyclone Pam has impacted the Solomon Islands, Kiribati, and Tuvalu creating serious damage including lost homes, road damage, and power and communication outages.
It says a UN Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC) team is due to arrive in Port Vila on Sunday evening, adding:
People in Port Vila are wandering around sleeping wherever they can find shelter.
Standing in the Beverly Hills area of Vila you can see 360 degrees all over the city because everything is knocked down.
All neighbourhoods near the airport and the airport itself are severely damaged beyond repair.
People in Vila are boiling water as it is unsafe to drink from the tap. People are worried about water supplies and food shortages due to destruction of gardens.
block-time published-time 1.08pm AEST
'45% of Tuvalu population displaced by Cyclone Pam'
Enele Sopoaga, the prime minister of Tuvalu says 45% of the population has been displaced by Cyclone Pam, Radio New Zealand International reports.
It quotes the prime minister:
Forty-five percent of the population of Tuvalu, most of whom are on the outer islands, have been affected, badly, severely affected.
We are worried about the aftermath in terms of hygiene and supplies of essential materials like food, medicine and water.
This image provided by Plan International Australia, shows a family taking shelter as flood waters moved inland on 14 March on the island of Tuvalu. Photograph: Handout/Getty Images
block-time published-time 1.02pm AEST
As hoped and expected, more aid flights are due to begin landing in Port Vila:
Relief flights from New Zealand, Australia and New Caledonia are expected in Port Vila about now #CyclonePam
- RNZ International (@RNZInews) March 15, 2015
A team of 10 humanitarian workers are set to fly out from Darwin, Australia, imminently. The group includes five doctors and nurses who will work with medics on the ground to provide emergency health care. There will also be rapid response workers who will make fast assessments of the situation on the ground in Vanuatu in order to coordinate further assistance for the disaster-hit island chain.
Vanuatu's lands minister, Ralph Regenvanu, has told reporters that just one ward of Vila Central hospital is still functioning.
block-time published-time 12.53pm AEST
Two Australian defence force flights that flew out of Amberley base near Brisbane on Sunday morning are the first foreign assistance to arrive in Vanuatu:
RAAF aid on the ground in #Vanuatu#CyclonePampic.twitter.com/sk3SXTJ7eK
- mjfield (@mjfield) March 15, 2015
Aid efforts could be severely hampered by the ongoing closure of the airport at Port Vila. Commercial flights could be delayed by as much as a week, although it is anticipated that aid flights will be able to continue to land.
block-time published-time 12.41pm AEST
Care Australia sends us these images from Port Vila, Vanuatu, of the devastating effect of Cyclone Pam.
The charity has a page here for donations to the relief effort.
block-time published-time 12.22pm AEST
The Australian Red Cross has just issued this latest update on its relief efforts:
#CyclonePam update: 28 evacuation centres now open in Efate, Vanuatu
- Australian Red Cross (@RedCrossAU) March 15, 2015
200 #redcross volunteers going door-to-door to check on Vanuatu families after #CyclonePam
- Australian Red Cross (@RedCrossAU) March 15, 2015
Prolonged rains and heavy winds expected to continue for five days in #Vanuatu after #CyclonePam
- Australian Red Cross (@RedCrossAU) March 15, 2015
Immediate priorities after #CyclonePam : first aid, food, safe water, shelter. Our appeal: http://t.co/LCt8OwaKwg
- Australian Red Cross (@RedCrossAU) March 15, 2015
The Australian Red Cross has a page for donations to the Cyclone Pam emergency response; you can find it here.
block-time published-time 12.18pm AEST
No reports of Australian casualties: Bishop
It's not possible at this time to confirm casualty numbers, Bishop said, but there were no reports of any Australian casualties.
She said Tuvalu had announced a state of emergency in response to Cyclone Pam, and Australia will be sending emergency supplies there.
Assessments are still going on in Fiji and the Solomon Islands.
block-time published-time 12.17pm AEST
Australia announces $5m 'life-saving package' for Vanuatu
Julie Bishop, the Australian foreign minister, has been speaking about the response to the disaster in Vanuatu:
We are working to assess the extent of the damage both in the short term and long-term recovery efforts.
Bishop announced an emergency package of $5m from the Australian government. This will go to Australian NGOs, particularly the Red Cross and other United Nations humanitarian partners, she said.
There would be Australian support for up to 5,000 people in the form of food, water, sanitation and shelter. The government would also assist in providing medical experts, search-and-rescue personnel, and disaster relief experts, Bishop said. It would also assist in organising travel for UN disaster assessement teams.
Australian military aircraft have already left for Vanuatu this morning, she confirmed, with one plane carrying out reconnaissance and supplying imagery from across the islands.
block-time published-time 12.08pm AEST
Chloe Morrison, Vanuatu's emergency communicator for charity World Vision in Port Vila, has just been talking to ABC News. She reported that she has seen Australian planes arriving at the capital.
Port Vila was, Morrison said, "absolutely flattened":
The place that was once a tropical paradise now looks like hell on earth.
The immediate needs are for the people of Vanuatu - a lot of those in isolated communities and islands have been cut off ...
People are going to need access to clean water, to food and to shelter.
World Vision still has members of its own staff in Port Vila still to be accounted for, she said.
Even though we had a lot of warning a bout Cyclone Pam ... it was absolute pandemonium.
block-time published-time 11.57am AEST
This graphic shows the predicted path of Cyclone Pam through the heart of the island chain. Communication with areas away from the Vanuatu capital Port Vila are currently poor or non-existent in the wake of the storm:
Predicted path of Cyclone Pam across Vanuatu.
block-time published-time 11.51am AEST
My colleague Joshua Robertson has been talking to key people in Vanuatu about the rescue response.
Vanuatu lands minister Ralph Regenvanu told the Guardian it was "a major disaster" just before he entered a council of ministers meeting to endorse a declared state of emergency and consider the government's next steps.
Regenvanu said there were great fears for the scale of destruction and loss of life in other provinces amid a dearth of information in the wake of the category five cyclone on Friday night.
We definitely know that Erromanga and Tanna got the eye of the cyclone, whereas we missed out - and if this is what missing out means, I don't know what happened to them.
But we don't know, there's no communications.
There are unconfirmed reports of entire villages being wiped out in the northern province of Penama.
Care International Vanuatu program manager Charlie Damon said there were credible sources indicating there could be 40 to 50 deaths in the capital, Port Vila, alone.
We have no idea how the other islands have fared and we can only assume it's horrific.
block-time published-time 11.43am AEST
Opening summary
Aid agencies are beginning their urgent response to Cyclone Pam, one of the most powerful cyclones ever recorded, which is reported to have ravaged the remote Pacific island chain of Vanuatu.
Vanuatu was hit directly by the cyclone early on Saturday. Unicef spokeswoman Alice Clements described it as "15 to 30 minutes of absolute terror" for "everybody in this country".
Aid agencies are currently in a meeting with the National Disaster Management Office where death tolls - although probably only for Port Vila, the capital - will be confirmed. Dozens are feared to have died, with thousands left homeless, though the numbers are expected to rise.
We will have updates throughout the day as more information emerges. I will also be tweeting key developments @Claire_Phipps and my colleague Joshua Robertson will be reporting through this live blog and at @jrojourno. Joshua's latest report is here.
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The New York Times
March 14, 2015 Saturday
Late Edition - Final
Emissions by Makers of Energy Level Off
BYLINE: By JOHN SCHWARTZ
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Foreign Desk; Pg. 4
LENGTH: 638 words
Somebody tapped the brakes.
Carbon dioxide emissions from the world's energy producers stalled in 2014, the first time in 40 years of measurement that the level did not increase during a period of economic expansion, according to preliminary estimates from the International Energy Agency.
The research suggests that efforts to counteract climate change by reducing carbon emissions and promoting energy efficiency could be working, said Fatih Birol, the agency's chief economist and incoming executive director. ''This is definitely good news,'' he said.
Dr. Birol noted that many nations have promoted energy efficiency and low-carbon energy sources like hydroelectric, solar, wind and nuclear power. China, he noted, has worked to reduce carbon emissions as part of an intensive effort to limit environmental damage from economic development. That China appears to be successfully moving down that path, he said, portends well for the deal struck with the United States in November. China committed in that agreement to turning around its growth in carbon emissions by 2030, or earlier if possible, while increasing the share of non-fossil fuels in energy production to 20 percent of its menu.
The agency has been collecting data on carbon dioxide emissions for 40 years, and in that time emissions have stalled or dropped only three times; each of those coincided with weakness in the global economy. The last instance was in 2009, during a global economic slump. In 2014, however, the economy expanded by about 3 percent.
The agency reported that global emissions of carbon dioxide in 2013 and in 2014 were 32.3 billion metric tons. The figures were first published by The Financial Times in an interview with Dr. Birol. The organization said that these preliminary figures will be contained in a report scheduled to appear in June. That report, Dr. Birol said, could provide guidance for negotiators seeking a global climate deal in Paris in December.
''The numbers I announced are definitely encouraging, but it doesn't bring us to a happy ending yet,'' he said. ''If you want to see a happy ending, you want to see an agreement in Paris that will send a powerful signal to investors to go in the direction of low-carbon technologies.''
Some energy experts sounded a note of caution about the research, while applauding it. Steven Smith, a senior scientist at the Joint Global Change Research Institute of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, warned that even a two- or three-year shift in emissions ''doesn't tell you anything,'' and that ''what's important is the long-term trend.''
Hal Harvey, who runs a policy research group called Energy Innovation in San Francisco, agreed, saying, ''One year does not a trend make.'' Still, he said, ''This is a big deal: China is starting to reverse its carbon trend, as are others. But much more is necessary,'' including strong government policies to keep the trend going in the right direction.
The renewable energy sector has grown tremendously as costs of the technology have come down and new vehicles have become more fuel-efficient, said Michael B. Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University Law School. The possibility that these shifts could already be affecting overall carbon emissions, he said, ''is a welcome splash of light amid all the gloom surrounding climate projections.''
For all of the progress, however, billions of people will be entering the middle class in coming years, noted Steven Cohen, the executive director of the Earth Institute at Columbia. ''Some of these early gains are going to be wiped out pretty quickly unless we develop some of the renewable energy sources that can replace fossil fuels,'' he said. The technologies to address those problems have not yet been developed, he added.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/14/science/emissions-by-makers-of-energy-level-off.html
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The New York Times
March 14, 2015 Saturday
Late Edition - Final
Globe? Warm? Who, Me?
BYLINE: By GAIL COLLINS
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Editorial Desk; OP-ED COLUMNIST; Pg. 19
LENGTH: 793 words
This is the time of year when we start to think about global warming. Because the weather is about to get warmer. Please God.
A new angle comes up almost every day. A Harvard professor recently reported that 7,000-year-old mummies in Chile are turning into ''black ooze'' because the air around them is getting more humid. In California, baby sea lions are in trouble because the ocean is heating up.
Meanwhile, in Florida, there's a report that state employees have been barred from using the term ''climate change.''
Since Florida is drowning in rising tides, you'd think this would be a tough rule to follow. It would be like telling prosecutors in New York not to mention the term ''indicted state legislator.'' Or banning Texas road crews from ever saying ''dead armadillo.''
But, according to the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting, some employees at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection say they have indeed been directed to avoid the terms ''global warming'' and ''climate change,'' even when they're talking about conserving the coastline or the coral reefs. Gov. Rick Scott denies there is any prohibition, and it's certainly possible his underlings just decided to clamp down on their own, once they became aware of his position.
The governor's position is to point out that he is ''not a scientist'' whenever the topic comes up. It'd be a bit tough to follow suit if you are, say, a D.E.P. scientist.
But other people find his approach extremely attractive. Former governor and future presidential candidate Jeb Bush has revealed that he, too, is not a scientist. A spokeswoman told The Wall Street Journal that Bush does believe the climate is changing but he's not sure about ''the extent to which humans contribute.'' Also, whatever he concludes is not going to involve ''alarmist, far left environmental policies.''
Most of the other potential Republican contenders follow a similar route when they can't avoid the matter entirely. The one who's been pressed hardest on global warming recently may be the governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, who was at a conservative conference outside of Washington when he was approached by a second grader who wanted to know where he stood.
Walker said he is a former boy scout who ''always thought maybe campsites should be cleaner.'' I swear.
''Do you care about climate change?'' the child pressed. He is the son of an environmental activist, so don't be expecting this kind of persistence every time a politician takes a grade-school tour.
''Ultimately, to me, I want to make sure that we have all the natural resources as possible moving forward just like I've done for everybody in Wisconsin. O.K.?'' responded the governor.
Now climate change is perhaps the most important long-term issue the next American president will have to deal with. Our international enemies will come and go; our deficits will rise and fall. But if the atmosphere keeps getting clogged with greenhouse gases, future generations will be too busy with the floods and droughts to care.
If you were seriously thinking about running for president of the United States, wouldn't this be something you'd want to have studied up on? Have you ever heard anybody say he couldn't comment on tax policy because he wasn't an accountant?
These guys don't act like people who think the scientists are wrong when they say global warming is real, and that human activity creates all or part of the problem. They act like people who don't want to have to face up to the facts and come up with solutions. Which would involve making the coal and oil companies super unhappy.
They're sort of like the mayor in ''Jaws'' who won't admit there's a killer shark out there because it's the start of the town's tourism season. (''Now I am not a marine biologist ...'')
It's one thing to be a climate-change denier like Senator James Inhofe, the (gasp) chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, who brought a snowball into the Senate to demonstrate his conviction that the Earth is not getting warmer. It's another to pretend as if it's O.K. to dodge the whole question.
If you're a presidential candidate, the only three intellectually honest answers to global warming queries are:
''My thoughts about this are similar to those of my intellectual role model, James Inhofe.''
''Yes, climate change is real, and I will give you my plan for reducing carbon emissions just as soon as my six biggest campaign donors finish slamming the door on their way out.''
''Sure, it's real. But by the time Miami goes under water, I'll be dead. So who cares?''
Or you can tell people that the shark might or might not be in the water, and might or might not be hungry, but that this is no time to stop swimming.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/14/opinion/gail-collins-globe-warm-who-me.html
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The Guardian
March 13, 2015 Friday 9:07 PM GMT
Koch Industries refuses to comply with US senators' climate investigation;
Investigation by Senate Democrats involves whether company has funded groups that deny climate change
BYLINE: Alan Yuhas in Washington
SECTION: US NEWS
LENGTH: 732 words
The Koch brothers' conglomerate Koch Industries has refused to comply with an investigation by three Senate Democrats into whether the company has funded groups or researchers who deny or cast doubt on climate change.
In response to a request from senators Barbara Boxer, Edward Markey and Sheldon Whitehouse for information about Koch Industries' support for scientific research, Koch general counsel Mark Holden invoked the company's first amendment rights.
"The activity efforts about which you inquire, and Koch's involvement, if any, in them, are at the core of the fundamental liberties protected by the first amendment to the United States constitution," Holden wrote the senators in a letter dated 5 March and posted online by Koch Industries this week.
"I did not see any explanation or justification for an official Senate committee inquiry into activities protected by the first amendment," he wrote, concluding, "we decline to participate in this endeavor and object to your apparent efforts to infringe upon and potentially stifle fundamental first amendment activities."
Asked by the Guardian to elaborate on how the first amendment protects such funding and whether Koch Industries would pursue legal action to prevent disclosing information, Holden said: "Our letter speaks for itself."
In his letter to the senators, Holden suggested that such funding represents part of "Koch's right to participate in the debate of important public policy issues and its right of free association."
On 25 February, the three Democratic senators - each a ranking member of committees that oversee environmental affairs - sent letters to 100 fossil fuel companies and thinktanks "to determine whether they are funding scientific studies designed to confuse the public and avoid taking action to cut carbon pollution, and whether the funded scientists fail to disclose the sources of their funding in scientific publications or in testimony to legislators."
"Corporate special interests shouldn't be able to secretly peddle the best junk science money can buy," Markey said at the time. The senators asked for 10 years' worth of information, including lists of affiliated foundations, funding recipients and copies of grants and contracts.
Exxon Mobil, BP and Shell are among the other companies sent letters by the senators. The libertarian Koch-founded Cato Institute and conservative Heritage Foundation were also sent letters.
The senators' investigation was prompted by documents obtained through a freedom of information request by Greenpeace, the environmental group. The documents revealed a prominent Harvard-Smithsonian Center scientist had accepted more than $1.2m from the fossil-fuel industry. The scientist, Wei-Hock Soon, has espoused on television and before Congress alternate theories of climate change, including a discredited theory that the sun's energy explain global warming.
Soon received at least $230,000 from the Charles G Koch Charitable Foundation, according to the documents obtained by Greenpeace. The Koch brothers, whose wide-ranging corporation extends into oil refineries, fertilizer production and polymers, paper and minerals, avidly inject cash into both political causes and cultural ones and do not always shy from the spotlight.
In January officials in the brothers' political organization announced a budget of almost $1bn would be available for the 2016 presidential field. David Koch has also leant his name to both the plaza at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and an exhibit about human evolution at the Natural History Museum in Washington DC. The company recently began an advertising effort to rehabilitate its reputation and recast itself as an all-American operation.
Although Markey's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, a spokesperson said in a statement that "companies that are supporting legitimate, scientific inquiry should have no concerns about responding" to the senator's request.
Holden is also senior vice-president of Koch Industries, and a board member of Freedom Partners, a non-profit organization founded in 2011 as "the Association for American Innovation". According to its 2012 tax returns, the organization has funneled more than $237m to other Koch-affiliated non-profits and to fund various research projects. Per the group's website, it was "renamed to better reflect the organization's mission".
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The Guardian
March 13, 2015 Friday 5:52 PM GMT
Norway's giant fund increases stake in oil and gas companies to £20bn;
Divestment campaigners disappointed as world's richest sovereign fund had earlier dumped coal companies
BYLINE: Damian Carrington
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 575 words
The world's richest sovereign wealth fund increased its stake in major oil and gas companies to £20bn in 2014, disappointing campaigners who argue it should continue to sell off its investments in the fossil fuels that drive climate change.
Norway's Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), which rose to £531bn in total, revealed in February that it had shed 32 coal mining companies due to concerns that action on global warming would cut their value.
Analysis by the green NGO Future In Our Hands of official data released on Friday shows the fund holds financial stakes in 90 of the top 100 oil and gas companies, as ranked by the amount of carbon in their reserves.
The fund, founded on the nation's oil and gas wealth and which receives new capital each year, increased its ownership of 59 of the 90 companies. Despite the oil price crash leading to losses of over 10% on the fund's oil and gas sector investments, the new stocks bought meant its overall holding in the 90 companies rose by £1.3bn.
The fund did sell off its shares in two Canadian tar sands companies - MEG Energy and Canada Oil Sands - together worth over £50m.
A series of analyses have shown that there are already several times more fossil fuels in proven reserves than can be burned if catastrophic global warming is to be avoided, as world leaders have pledged. Scientists say virtually all of Canada's tar sands oil must stay in the ground, if climate change is to be tackled.
"Our pensions are increasingly being invested in oil and gas and this is a trend Norwegian politicians have a responsibility to stop," said Arild Hermstad , head of Future In Our Hands. "The way the GPFG is behaving contradicts all established research on climate change."
"There's also a financial risk related to these investments, when we know that Europe, the US and China are heavily investing in renewable technology," said Hermstad. "We expect renewable companies to gain better operating conditions in the time to come, and it's a pity that the fund isn't picking up on this trend."
Martin Norman, from Greenpeace Norway, said GPFG remained heavily invested in Canadian tar sands, with large stakes in Suncor and TransCanada, the company wishing to build the controversial Keystone XL pipeline across the US.
Given the poor recent performance of fossil fuel investments, Norman said: "GPFG's investments in fossil fuels is not only an environmental problem, but it is starting to become an economic problem as well. We believe the politicians must give a clear mandate to GPFG to pull out of coal, tar sands and other fossil fuels." The fund's investments are regulated by acts of parliament which have previously banned investing in weapons manufacturers and tobacco producers.
However, WWF welcomed an updated statement from GPFG on what it expects of companies in relation to climate change. One requirement is that companies should work out future business scenarios, including ones in which international action to limit global warming to 2C leads to sharp cuts in carbon emissions.
"If other funds follow suit, this could be the start of the tipping point the world needs to stop financing polluting energy, and start financing a better world," said Samantha Smith, Leader, WWF Global Climate and Energy Initiative. ExxonMobil and Shell have said they do not believe the world's governments will deliver deep cuts in carbon emissions.
Analysis of the fund's coal investments is expected on Monday.
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The Guardian
March 13, 2015 Friday 4:13 PM GMT
Global emissions stall in 2014 following slowdown in China's economy;
Carbon dioxide emissions stayed the same last year compared to 2013, data shows, but falling oil prices may cause them to rise again
BYLINE: Fiona Harvey
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 679 words
A slowdown in China's economic growth helped the world to a pause in the upward rise in greenhouse gas emissions last year, according to data released on Friday.
China burnt less coal last year than expected, as the projected rise in its energy demand faltered along with the rise in its economic growth, and as the expansion of its renewable energy generation continued.
Emissions of carbon dioxide related to energy use were flat in 2014, compared with the previous year, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Friday. Previous pauses or falls in the upward march of global emissions, such as that experienced in 2009, were closely related to economic shocks.
Global carbon dioxide output was 32.3bn tonnes in 2014, which the IEA said was unchanged from the previous year, while global GDP rose by 3%. However, the data is still preliminary and will not be confirmed until mid-June. It is not possible at present to say how much of the pause in the growth of emissions was down to policy and how much to economic forces, nor whether this pause is likely to continue.
The dramatic fall in the price of oil over the last few months will also be an important factor in whether emissions rise again next year, as cheaper oil is associated with increasing greenhouse gas levels.
Maria van der Hoeven, executive director of the IEA, warned that the apparent one-year pause in the growth of emissions was too soon to regard policies as successful. She said: "The latest data on emissions are indeed encouraging, but this is no time for complacency, and certainly not the time to use this positive news as an excuse to stall further action."
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned in 2007 that global greenhouse gas emissions must peak by around 2020 for the world to stay on track to hold global temperature rises to no more than 2C on average, the level regarded as the limit of safety beyond which the effects of climate change are likely to become irreversible and catastrophic.
Global governments will meet in Paris this December to discuss a possible new agreement on climate change to include commitments on curbing emissions after 2020, when current commitments end.
Ed Davey, the UK energy and climate secretary, said: "These figures show that green growth is achievable not just for Britain but for the world. However we cannot be complacent - we need to dramatically cut emissions, not just stop their growth. Getting a new global climate deal is absolutely vital, and the year ahead is going to be of critical importance."
Ahead of the Paris conference, governments of major economies, both developed and developing, are expected to come up with proposals to cut or curb their emissions in the 2020s. The United Nations (UN) has set a deadline of the end of March for submitting such proposals, but this may not be met in all cases.
Last November, the world's two biggest emitters - the US and China - jointly announced their commitments under the UN process. The US has pledged a cut of 25% to 28% by 2025, compared with 2005 levels. China has pledged that its emissions will peak by 2030, a goal that the European Union's former climate chief told the Guardian was "very late" compared with what China is capable of.
Future data from the IEA, scheduled to be published in June, is likely to give an indication of whether China's emissions could be expected to peak sooner than the 2030 deadline, on business-as-usual expectations.
Developed countries in the past decade have experienced a "decoupling" of carbon emissions from economic growth, with rising GDP alongside lower emissions. However, some observers have said this was only possible because the manufacturing and contingent energy use needed to fuel economic growth were taken on by developing countries such as China.
The pledges made by countries under the UN climate change negotiating process, including a commitment by the EU to cut emissions relative to 1990 levels by 40% by 2030, will be examined by the UN in the months leading up to the Paris talks.
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The Guardian
March 13, 2015 Friday 2:48 PM GMT
Find out who will be judging the Guardian Sustainable Business Awards 2015
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 4637 words
John Alker, director of policy and communications, UK-GBC
Alker has been working at UK-GBC since shortly after its launch in 2007. He leads on programme strategy, policy, government relations, campaigns and communications, and led the development of UK-GBC's current three year strategic plan. Alker regularly works in conjunction with the World GBC and authored the high profile 2014 global report on health, wellbeing and productivity of office occupiers.
Prior to joining the UK-GBC he led political communications on the EU Emissions Trading Scheme and sustainable homes campaign for the environmental charity WWF-UK, where he managed the famous trip to the Arctic with David Cameron. He has also previously worked as an MP's researcher and speech-writer in the House of Commons and in commercial public affairs.
Mike Burton, AECOM
Burton leads AECOM's Building Engineering team in London. With over 20 years' experience, he has helped deliver some of the UK's most sustainable new buildings and refurbishments. These include the award-winning HQ for KPMG in Canary Wharf, one of the country's most resource efficient offices, and the high-profile renovation of the BBC's iconic Broadcasting House - the first media complex to achieve a sustainability rating of Excellent (BREEAM). Burton also worked on the low energy redesign of the London School of Economics and the Hopkins-designed Forum in Norwich. His team is concerned with a radical re-imagining of the workplace, to make it better connected.
Burton is currently leading the AECOM team for Fitzroy Place, the most significant and sustainable development in London's historic Fitzrovia for over 50 years. He is also a tutor at De Montfort University School of Architecture.
John Elkington
Elkington is a writer and thinker, a serial-entrepreneur and an 'advisor from the future'. He is a world authority on corporate responsibility and sustainable development, credited with coining the 'triple bottom line'. In 2004, Business Week described John as "a dean of the corporate responsibility movement for three decades".
Elkington serves on some 30 boards and advisory boards, where a key part of his role is to channel the future into the present across a wide range of disciplines. He has just released his 19th book alongside Jochen Zeitz, former CEO of PUMA and now co-chair, with Sir Richard Branson, of The B Team. The book is titled The Breakthrough Challenge.
Ed Gillespie, co-founder, Futerra
Gillespie is co-founder of Futerra, one of the world's only communications consultancies to specialise solely in sustainable development and corporate social responsibility, where he has shaped and driven the creative direction of Futerra's work since its foundation.
Aside from writing regularly for Guardian Sustainable Business, Gillepsie is a highly sought after public speaker and lecturer, renowned for his memorable and entertaining presentations.
Since 2001, he has presented all over the world - from Hong Kong to Bratislava, from Korea to Auckland. And he's been heard by every kind of audience, from the UN and national governments, to multinational corporations and campaigning organisations. With a love for social media, Gillepsie has also become a 'tweeter in residence' at many events, providing live social media coverage with a personal touch.
He is also a London sustainable development commissioner, a director of carbon emissions campaigning organisation Sandbag, chairman of European Rail Business Loco2 and an investor in FoodTrade.
Dr Liz Goodwin, chief executive officer, WRAP
Goodwin is a chemist by background with a PhD in chemical physics. She started her career in the chemical industry with ICI and Zeneca. Goodwin became CEO at WRAP in 2007, having joined in 2001 as the first director of Materials Programme.
The organisation is focused on helping deliver the economic benefits of a more circular economy, helping address resource security, increase competitiveness of UK businesses and deliver financial gains. Under Goodwin's leadership, a number of voluntary agreements have been driven forward eg the Courtauld Commitment, involving the major retailers, brands and their supply chains focused on tackling food waste and optimising packaging.
In the future, she sees WRAP building on core strengths - skills and expertise combined with the role of convenor and catalyst, bringing people together to work on issues and find solutions. WRAP has increasing global recognition - a great opportunity for sharing the learning from the UK with other countries. To facilitate different ways of working, development of new partnerships and diversify funding, WRAP has applied to the Charities Commission to register as a charity.
Oliver Greenfield, convenor, Green Economy Coalition
The Green Economy Coalition is the world's largest multi-stakeholder network for action on green, fair and inclusive economies. It works to create convergence of different agendas: jobs, industry, environment, poverty reduction and economics to find shared policy and action.
Prior to this role, Greenfield led WWF's Sustainable Business and Economics work, where he pioneered systemic stakeholder change programmes: One Planet Business, One Planet Finance and One Planet Economy.
Before WWF, he managed change in the public sector and in industry, as the senior strategist for the BBC World Service and as a business strategy consultant for Booz Company. He has degrees in engineering and business and has worked with many organisations and cultures for social, environmental and economic value.
Tony Juniper, independent sustainability and environment adviser
Juniper is an independent sustainability and environment adviser, including special advisor with the Prince's Charities International Sustainability Unit, fellow with the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership and as president of Society for the Environment. He is a founder member of the Robertsbridge Group that advises international companies.
Juniper speaks and writes on many aspects of sustainability and is the author of several books, including the award winning Parrots of the World, Spix's Macaw and How Many Light Bulbs Does It Take To Change A Planet? He was a co-author of Harmony, with HRH The Prince of Wales and Ian Skelly. His multi-award winning best-seller What has Nature ever done for us? was published in January 2013.
He began his career as an ornithologist, working with Birdlife International and from 1990 he worked at Friends of the Earth and was the organisation's executive director from 2003-2008 and vice chair of Friends of the Earth International from 2000-2008. Juniper was the first recipient of the Charles and Miriam Rothschild medal (2009) and was awarded honorary Doctor of Science degrees from the Universities of Bristol and Plymouth (2013). His latest book, What Nature does for Britain, will be published in February 2015.
Patrick Mallon, field director, Business in the Community
Mallon has over 20 years' experience working on corporate responsibility issues for Business in the Community. During this time he has worked with many of the leading listed companies in the UK.
At Business in the Community he spent the 90s working on the environmental campaign, was one of the original architects of the Environment and CR Indices, and established BITC's reporting and advisory services team. As the field director he has oversight responsibility for BITC's operations throughout the UK and oversight of its rural and international work.
Mallon has been a member of FTSE4Good Policy Committee that oversees the investible index, a judge on the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) Environmental and Social Reporting Awards and is currently a member of ACCA's Social and Environmental Committee and a member of HRH The Prince of Wales Accounting for Sustainability initiative.
In 2011 Mallon was identified as one of the Top 100 Thought Leaders in Trustworthy Business Behaviour.
Camilla Toulmin, director, IIED
Toulmin is director of the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), based in London. An economist by training, she has worked mainly in Africa on agriculture, land, climate and livelihoods. This has combined field research, policy analysis and advocacy. Her work has aimed at understanding how environmental, economic and political change impact on people's lives, and how policy reform can bring real change on the ground.
As director of IIED since 2004, Toulmin has focused on developing the institute's strategy and communications. IIED's new strategy 2014-19 builds on strengths in adaptation to climate change, building cities that work for poor people, addressing the natural resource squeeze, and designing sustainable market mechanisms. And it focuses particular attention on four change initiatives where IIED collectively can make a difference - food security, green and inclusive economies, rights plus action, and getting LDC voices into global processes around climate, and the post-2015 agenda.
Toulmin studied economics at Cambridge and London, before gaining her doctorate in economics at Oxford. She is fluent in English and French, chair of ICARDA's Board, a trustee of the Franco-British Council and a number of other boards. She is currently a member of the Royal Society's Working Group on Resilience.
Stuart Singleton-White, director, external communications, Rainforest Alliance
Singleton-White is the director of external communications at the Rainforest Alliance. He works across a range of communications disciplines including media management, social media, marketing and advocacy. He is behind the creation of the Rainforest Alliance's Follow the Frog campaign and was involved in the commissioning and production of the award-winning How Not to Save the Rainforest viral video.
He has worked in various communications and campaigning roles in the sustainability and environment movement for over 20 years. Having held leading roles in WWF-UK, Plan International and having run his own micro-communications agency. In addition Stuart has been a non-executive director and chairman of Reading Transport Limited, providing public transport services in his home town of Reading and is a school governor.
In his work with the Rainforest Alliance, Stuart works with some of the world's leading FMCG brands, forestry businesses and tourism companies, advising and supporting their sustainability communications outreach.
Singleton-White has sat on a number of judging panels in his career including Wildscreen and the British Environment and Media Awards.
David Connor, director of CSRwire
Connor is is a globally connected, creative business leader and evangelist for values based business models.
For over 17 years he has successfully explored CSR, sustainability, social enterprise and non-profit issues as both a strategist and through implementation. His career began leading the charge for Everton FC's multi-award winning community programme. After the business of sport came nine years of Coethica his own consultancy, providing Connor with insight, reputation, networks and particular expertise in communications including social media.
His current role at CSRwire is to design and lead a new era of international thought leadership and communications engagement as part of the 3BL Media group.
Mark Kenber, CEO, The Climate Group
Mark Kenber is an expert on international climate policy and has directed ground-breaking projects with the finance, energy, technology and aviation sectors worldwide. Since becoming CEO of The Climate Group, an international non-profit working with corporate and government partners to promote a prosperous, low carbon future, he has been instrumental in developing the organisation's programmes in India and China.
He has also expanded Climate Week NYC, a key international platform for governments, businesses and civil society to collaborate on bold climate action and low carbon leadership. In September 2014, Climate Week NYC was host to 150 events as the collaborative space in support of the UN Climate Summit.
Sally Uren, chief executive at Forum for the Future
Sally Uren is chief executive at Forum for the Future with overall responsibility for delivering Forum's mission to create a sustainable future. This involves working with leading global organisations and businesses, including Unilever and Kingfisher, both in one to one partnerships, and also as part of multi-stakeholder collaborations designed to address system-wide challenges, particularly in food and energy.
As well as lead the organisation, Uren is involved in a number of projects, including the Net Positive Group, a collaboration with WWF and The Climate Group, Scaling Up Impact, addressing practical ways of achieving collective impact at scale and Retail Horizons, setting out different possible futures for US retail. She is currently Project Director of a global multi-stakeholder consortium focused on delivering a sustainable tea value chain, Tea 2030.
Andy Atkins, executive director, Friends of the Earth
Andy was appointed executive director of the environmental charity, Friends of the Earth, in 2008. Andy has campaigned for social justice and sustainability all his working life. This includes working to end human rights abuses in Chile under the Pinochet dictatorship and exposing the human and environmental impact of the "war on drugs" in the Andes.
Prior to leading Friends of the Earth, Andy established the policy and campaigns department at Tearfund, the international development charity. As advocacy director there he was part of the small group of campaigners from several charities who conceived and led the 2005 Make Poverty History campaign. His leisure interests of landscape painting, cycling and bird-watching keep him close to nature.
Nadine Exter, head of business development, The Doughty Centre for Corporate Responsibility, Cranfield University
Nadine is a sustainability business practitioner with extensive consultancy and in-house experience helping organisations to embrace, strategise and embed sustainability. For the last few years at the Doughty Centre she has led on consulting and partnerships. Nadine also helps her own organisation on the journey to be sustainable. She has been lucky enough to engage with some great partners, such as M&S, Coca-Cola Enterprises, The Crown Estate, Aviva, and EDF Energy.
Nadine's areas of experience include creating and directing a sustainability strategy aligned to business futures, driving culture change, engaging employees, and embedding sustainability into the systems of organisations - including operational excellence. Nadine had a book published by Routledge in 2013 (Engaging employees with sustainable business) and was co-editor on the 2012 'Cranfield on Corporate Sustainability'. She is author of several business reports and how-to guides on aspects of being a sustainable business, and lead author on a paper in Journal of Management Development that describes the change journey her organisation underwent to embed sustainability. Nadine is on several stakeholder committees, lectures at Cranfield, is a guest speaker at specialist events, and in 2014 was a guest lecturer on the prestigious University of Cambridge Sustainability Leadership programme. Current work focuses on creating responsible organisational cultures, including in the UK finance sector.
Dexter Galvin, head of supply chain, CDP
Dexter's supply chain experience is extensive, having worked in time-critical logistics prior to CDP. In his capacity as operations manager, he was responsible for dedicated air-charter solutions for major automotive and aerospace manufacturers such as Toyota, Audi, Bosch and Honeywell.
CDP acts by using investor authority to request disclosure, the outputs of which are used to form commercial, investment and policy decisions. Following this model, the supply chain programme has over 60 member companies from a variety of industry sectors including Walmart, L'Oreal and Acer. In 2013, over 2,800 companies submitted their carbon and climate change data, highlighting climate change risks and opportunities across the supply chain. Dexter's team also works closely with the leadership teams of member companies to help define their supply chain carbon management strategies.
Dedicated to harmonising sustainability reporting, Dexter has worked on partnerships with other sustainability reporting organisations such as the DJSI to reduce duplication.
Dexter also works closely with the GHG Protocol Scope 3 group to encourage the wide adoption of the new Scope 3 company standard.
David Grayson, director, The Doughty Centre for Corporate Responsibility, Cranfield University
David became professor of corporate responsibility and director of the Doughty Centre for Corporate Responsibility at Cranfield School of Management, in April 2007, after a 30 year career as a social entrepreneur and campaigner for responsible business, diversity, and small business development. This included the chairmanship of the UK's National Disability Council and several other government bodies, as well as serving as a joint managing-director of Business in the Community.
He was a visiting senior fellow at the CSR Initiative of the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard from 2005-10. He has Masters degrees from the universities of Cambridge and Brussels, and an honorary doctorate from London South Bank University.
His books include Corporate Social Opportunity: Seven Steps to make Corporate Social Responsibility Work for your Business and Everybody's Business - both co-authored with Adrian Hodges; Corporate Responsibility Coalitions: The Past, Present and Future of Alliances for Sustainable Capitalism (with Jane Nelson); and most recently: Social Intrapreneurism and all that Jazz (co-authored with Meldoy McLaren and Heiko Spitzeck). He now also chairs the national charity Carers UK which champions and supports the contribution of the 6.5 million Britons, who at any one time, are caring for a loved one.
Greg Barker, chair, London Sustainable Development Commission
Rt Hon Greg Barker, MP was appointed chair of the London Sustainable Development Commission in November 2014. Elected to Parliament in 2001, he has campaigned on environmental issues ever since. Working with David Cameron, whom he accompanied on his famous trip to the arctic in 2006, he helped transform the Conservative approach to the environment and green issues to propel climate action to the top of the political agenda. In 2010, Greg was appointed Minister of State at the Department of Energy and Climate Change. During his period in office, his achievements included the creation of the Green Investment Bank, a radical new approach to energy efficiency and a massive expansion of decentralised energy including the deployment of 4GW of solar PV and the launch of the Renewable Heat Incentive. Greg has represented the UK at all major international climate negotiations since 2010 and has taken a lead international role mobilising climate finance for developing countries. Greg stood down from government in July 2014, however he continues to advise the Prime Minister on green issues as his envoy on climate change.
David Nussbaum, chief executive, WWF-UK
David became chief executive of WWF-UK in May 2007. As well as leading the UK organisation, he also chairs the WWF network's Global Climate and Energy Initiative. Previously he was the chief executive of Transparency International, based in Berlin, the leading global NGO focused on curbing corruption, with national chapters in around 100 countries. David qualified as an accountant with Price Waterhouse before moving into venture capital with 3i. He then worked in the manufacturing industry, latterly as finance director of European packaging business Field Group plc, throughout its management buyout and subsequent successful flotation. He joined Oxfam in 1997 as finance director and a deputy chief executive, and in 2000 was seconded for six months to head up Oxfam's operations in India. Between 1991 and 2006, David was a non-executive director, and later chair of Traidcraft plc.
David is also a non-executive director of the quoted private equity fund Low Carbon Accelerator, and fair trade finance company Shared Interest. Having two degrees in theology, one in finance, and an honorary doctorate, David is also a member of the International Integrated Reporting Committee, sits on the Marks & Spencer executive advisory board on sustainability, and is currently chair of the ACCA's Global Forum for Sustainability.
Solitaire Townsend, CEO, Futerra
Solitaire co-founded Futerra, Europe's leading sustainable development communications agency, working with big brands, NGOs and government departments to make sustainable development so desirable it becomes normal.
She advises global brands including Unilever, Greenpeace, ASDA, Danone and the United Nations on making green messages great. Solitaire is passionate (and occasionally argumentative) about the need to make sustainability desirable rather than doom-laden. As she says "selling sustainability isn't like selling a new brand of soap, it's like persuading people to use soap in the first place."
Solitaire was named Ethical Entrepreneur of the Year 2008, is a member of the United Nations Sustainable Lifestyles Taskforce, Chair of the UK Green Energy Scheme, and is a London Leader for Sustainability.
Martin Powell, head of urban development, Siemens Global Cities Centre of Competence
Martin's role involves working with city leadership across the globe and providing expert advice and support to help ensure cities can meet economic, social and environmental targets.
Martin was previously the mayoral advisor on the environment to the current mayor of London, Boris Johnson, responsible for policy development for energy and climate change, adaptation, water, air quality and waste. He was also director of environment at the London Development Agency, the Mayor's agency for economic development in London where he had responsibility for delivery of the agency's environment programmes.
Martin was managing director of Cambridge Management & Research, an organisation working with a number of cities and a special advisor to the c40 cities climate action group, chaired by mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg.
Martin speaks extensively on the topic of future cities and the economic models of delivering solutions at scale and the city governance required to deliver these solutions.
He is a contributing author to the Wiley Guide to Project Management and Project, Programme & Portfolio Management also published by Wiley. He has also presented for NBS Learning Channels.
Mike Peirce, University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability
Mike is focused on developing the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership's (CISL) portfolio of services for executive teams to refine their strategy and business models, and build organisational capacity and resilience. Over a decade in Cambridge, Mike has led a number of CISL's most significant initiatives including the Unilever Sustainable Living Young Entrepreneurs Awards, the St James's Palace Nobel Laureate Symposium, and the World Bank Sustainable Development Leadership Programme. Before joining CISL, Mike was COO at AccountAbility where he developed the AA1000 accountability framework, and a strategy consultant at the COBA Group, since acquired by PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Paul Ekins, professor of resources and environment policy, UCL
Paul has a PhD in economics from the University of London and is professor of resources and environment policy and director of the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources, University College London. A co-director of the UK Energy Research Centre, he is also chairman of the National Industrial Symbiosis Programme (NISP), the UK's most effective initiative at promoting resource efficiency in industry. He was a member of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution from 2002-2008. He also has extensive experience consulting for business, government and international organisations, and has been a contributor to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales' course for senior executives on business and the environment, and the Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership, at the University of Cambridge. In 1994 Paul received a Global 500 Award for "outstanding environmental achievement" from the United Nations Environment Programme. Paul's academic work focuses on the conditions and policies for achieving an environmentally sustainable economy, concerning which he has written numerous books, papers and articles.
John Sauven, executive director, Greenpeace UK
John has been executive director of Greenpeace UK since September 2007. Before that he was the director responsible for Greenpeace communications and working on solutions with business. With a background in forests he was instrumental in getting protection for the Great Bear temperate rainforest on the west coast of Canada. It was an epic battle, mostly fought in the marketplace between logging companies, timber traders and their retail customers in Europe and North America. It was from the lessons learnt in the Great Bear campaign that similar tactics were used elsewhere including in Indonesia, the Congo in central Africa and the Amazon.
John co-ordinated the international campaign to secure a moratoria on further destruction of the Amazon by soya producers. It involved eventually bringing together a huge alliance of US and European mulitinationals along with Brazilian counterparts involved in the soya producing, commodity trading and food retailing sectors. It was one of Greenpeace's most successful campaigns to protect large areas of the world's last intact rainforests providing both climate and biodiversity protection.
Hayley Baines-Buffery , head of sustainable business, BioRegional
As head of sustainable business at BioRegional, Hayley leads the development and delivery of a portfolio of projects including corporate sustainability plans, eco product innovation and sustainable construction. Since 2007, she has led the development and implementation of B&Q's award winning One Planet Home programme which has resulted in a 29% carbon footprint reduction and a range of over 4,000 eco-products. She has also produced eco-product standards for Kingfisher Group and John Lewis, and sustainability plans for over 20 international companies. Hayley is also leading BioRegional's sustainable sport programme, following the organisation's long term role in helping to make the London 2012 Olympics the most sustainable games ever.
Hayley is an associate member of the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment.
Jon May, head of environmental operations, Europe, Lend Lease
May heads up Lend Lease's environmental team in Europe looking at sustainability issues across investment, development, construction and asset management operations. In doing so, he is working on some of the most exciting and challenging sustainability projects in Europe, such as the C40 Climate Positive regeneration of Elephant & Castle and the International Quarter, a key part of the Olympic Games legacy.
Additionally, May acts as a board and trustee advisor for Lend Lease, and sits on the Leadership Group of the Supply Chain Sustainability School, a pioneering and collaborative training movement within the built environment. He is a pilotlighter to SMEs within the charity sector and a frequent speaker within academia, featured at Cass Business School, University College London and Cambridge, among others. May brings his unique views about the future of sustainable development to his presentations on the conference circuit.
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The Guardian
March 13, 2015 Friday 10:59 AM GMT
Why is Antarctic sea ice at record levels despite global warming?;
While Arctic sea ice continues to decline, Antarctic levels are confounding the world's most trusted climate models with record highs for the third year running. Karl Mathiesen investigates.Let us know your thoughts. Post in the comments below, follow Karl Mathiesen's Facebook page, email karl.mathiesen.freelance@guardian.co.uk or tweet @karlmathiesen
BYLINE: Karl Mathiesen
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 962 words
Antarctic ice floes extended further than ever recorded this southern winter, confounding the world's most-trusted climate models.
"It's not expected," says Professor John Turner, a climate expert at the British Antarctic Survey. "The world's best 50 models were run and 95% of them have Antarctic sea ice decreasing over the past 30 years."
The winter ice around the southern continent has been growing relatively constantly since records began in 1979. The US National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC), which monitors sea ice using satellite data, said this week that the year's maximum was 1.54m sq km (595,000 sq miles) above the 1981-2010 average. The past three winters have all produced record levels of ice.
This contrasts sharply with the continuing decline of sea ice in the Arctic, which again recorded below average levels of ice during the summer. The 10 lowest recorded sea ice minimums - i.e. the lowest extent of sea ice in the summer - have all occurred in the past 10 years. This decline is consistent with climate models, every one of which predicts that continued man-made greenhouse gas emissions will eventually cause Arctic summer ice to disappear completely.
But Dr Claire Parkinson, a senior scientist at Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Centre, says increasing Antarctic ice does not contradict the general warming trend. Overall the Earth is losing sea ice at a rate of 35,000 sq km per year (13,514 sq miles).
"Not every location on the Earth is having the same responses to climate changes. The fact that ice in one part of the world is doing one thing and in another part ice is doing another is not surprising. The Earth is large and as the climate changes it is normal to see different things going on," says Parkinson.
In a video made by Eco Audit reader and journalist Fraser Johnston, Dr Guy Williams, a sea ice scientist at the Tasmanian Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (Imas), says that even though it had fooled climate models the increasing sea ice was well understood by scientists.
"In some ways it's a bit counterintuitive for people trying to understand how global warming is affecting our polar regions, but in fact it's actually completely in line with how climate scientists expect Antarctica and the Southern Ocean to respond. Particularly in respect to increased winds and increased melt water," said Williams.
To explain why Antarctic sea ice fails to fit comfortably with a simple 'warmer world, less ice' narrative, it is necessary to understand that the climate system has many layers of competing effects. Often only the largest of these will be obvious or detectable.
Currently, the effect of greenhouse gases is being overshadowed by other local climate phenomena, says Turner. "By far the biggest impact has been the ozone hole. The signal of increasing greenhouse gases is buried beneath all the other signals."
The depletion of the ozone layer above Antarctica during last century by emissions of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) has caused an overall cooling trend on the continent.
Ozone itself is a greenhouse gas and its reduction has seen more heat reflecting back into space. Although the ozone hole has begun to show the first signs of recovery, levels are still significantly reduced. Parkinson says the loss of ozone is probably the second largest human impact on global climate after carbon dioxide.
One of the effects of ozone loss on the Antarctic has been the increasing frequency and ferocity of winds and storms around the continent. According to Turner, ozone depletion has caused winds in the Southern Ocean to increase by 15-20%. In particular, the cooling trend may have caused a low pressure system in the Amundsen sea to increase in intensity or frequency.
This vortex sucks air from the frozen inside of the continent and it rushes out over the Ross Sea to the west. This is where 80% of Antarctica's ice expansion has occurred.
The effect of the intensifying winds is coupled with a massive dump of cold, fresh water into the Ross Sea from the Pine Island glacier. This water, which floats on the surface, is less dense, colder and freezes more easily than the sea water below, and when it is struck by storm winds from the continent it forms ice floes.
It is estimated that the Pine Island glacier alone loses so much water that it is responsible for 10% of global annual sea level rise (which is about 3mm per year). Warm currents come from deep water and heat the underside of the ice sheet, causing it to melt. Turner says this process probably has little to do with global warming. "Pine Island seems to be an ongoing retreat that could have been going on for 10,000 years," he says.
Further complicating the picture is the El Niño Southern Oscillation (Enso), which Turner believes is a factor in both the increase of storms and the warm currents that melt the ice.
Sea ice in Antarctica is very different to its northern counterpart. In the south, ice melts away almost completely every year. The new ice produced each year is thinner and more volatile than the older more stable ice in the Arctic. These large fluctuations, said Turner, meant the "input" of greenhouse gases was not yet the dominant force in the region's climate.
Parkinson says that it is likely that global warming will eventually overtake these other factors.
"A few decades from now it might turn out that Antarctic ice decreases. I don't think that would be a surprise at all. If warming reaches the level people think it might in the next few decades then its going to eventually reach the Antarctic and the sea ice will start to decrease."
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The Guardian
March 13, 2015 Friday 10:26 AM GMT
US and Chinese companies dominate list of most-polluting coal plants;
Warren Buffet-owned Berkshire Hathaway on list of top 25 companies with least efficient and oldest 'sub-critical' coal power plants
BYLINE: Damian Carrington
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 721 words
The 100 global power companies most at risk from growing pressure to shut highly polluting coal plants have been revealed in a new report from Oxford University.
Chinese companies dominate the top of the ranking but US companies, including Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, occupy 10 of the top 25 places.
The analysis, produced to help investors assess the risk of major financial losses, also found French energy giant GDF Suez was third in the list of most polluting coal station fleets in the world.
Coal currently provides 40% of the world's electricity and three-quarters of this is produced by the most-polluting, least-efficient and oldest "sub-critical" coal-fired power stations. The International Energy Agency calculates that one in four of these sub-critical plants must close within five years, if the world's governments are to keep their pledge to limit global warming to 2C.
The new analysis ranked the companies by how much electricity they produced from sub-critical plants. The major German utilities RWE and E.ON both appeared in the top 25, along with South Africa's Eskom and Australia's AGL Energy.
"Sub-critical coal-fired power stations are the first thing we need to kill off if we want to tackle climate change," said Ben Caldecott, the report's lead author and director of the Stranded Assets Programme at Oxford University. As well as carbon emissions, the air pollution and pressure on water resources caused by these coal plants were also analysed.
Caldecott said some Chinese coal plants were already being closed due to public anger over air pollution, while others in India have been unable to operate for months at a time due to a lack of water. However, subcritical coal-fired power stations continue to be built, despite producing 75% more carbon pollution and using 67% more water as the most efficient - but more costly - plants.
In the US, new regulations on carbon emissions could see coal companies lose $28bn (£19bn) in value, according to one recent analysis. The US companies in the top 25 of the Oxford ranking have 109 sub-critical stations between them. "These are assets that could become stranded because of environmental restrictions," said Caldecott.
Major financial institutions, including the Bank of England, World Bank, Citi, Goldman Sachs and HSBC, have warned that action to tackle climate change may harm investments in fossil fuels. A series of analyses have shown that most existing reserves of fossil fuels cannot be burned without blowing the safe budget for carbon emissions and a study in January indicated that 80% of known coal reserves would have to stay in the ground.
Zoe Knight, head of HSBC's Climate Change Centre of Excellence, said: "The [ Oxford] research will help investors to understand the material environmental risks associated with sub-critical coal, as well as levels of company exposure to them."
"It is obvious that many sub-critical coal plants will have to shut down if we are to get close to staying within our carbon budget," said James Leaton, director of research at the Carbon Tracker Initiative. "This will have a major effect on demand for coal going forward, as evidenced by Chinese demand for thermal coal peaking in 2014."
However, Benjamin Sporton, acting chief executive of the World Coal Association (WCA), said: "Coal use is set to grow by around 17% in the next 20 years [because] it is affordable, reliable and abundantly available."
Sporton said the WCA was promoting the adoption of high efficiency, low emissions coal technologies: "The objective is to raise the global average efficiency of coal-fired power plants and so minimise CO2 emissions, whilst maintaining legitimate economic development and poverty alleviation efforts."
He said increasing the efficiency of the global coal fleet from 33% today to 40% could be done with current technology and would save about 2bn tonnes per year, roughly equivalent to India's total annual emissions.
A spokesman for GDF Suez did not address why its 10 sub-critical coal plants had higher pollution levels than any other company, except for two small companies in India. He said the company was "conscious of its responsibility and of its major role in the energy transition [and] has set ambitious environmental objectives", including reducing its own CO2 emissions by 10% by 2020.
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The Guardian
March 13, 2015 Friday 8:52 AM GMT
Promises, promises... now it's time for Tony Abbott to focus on the nitty-gritty;
The prime minister can no longer skirt around the things that matter: hospitals, education, welfare, climate change and the rest
BYLINE: Lenore Taylor, political editor
SECTION: AUSTRALIA NEWS
LENGTH: 1379 words
Tony Abbott, drained of authority but determined to hold his job, is racing around the country saying things he thinks will please his backbench and his party's base and perhaps elicit a bounce in the opinion polls, although, as we have seen, that doesn't always follow.
It's quite a spectacle for politics watchers. But the more important spectacle is a government, in whatever-it-takes-to-survive mode, increasingly unable to explain how it will take care of the things Australians elected them to do - such as our healthcare, our kids' education, the elderly, the unemployed, our contribution to slowing climate change, our attitudes towards Indigenous Australians, our unity of purpose as a nation.
Here are 10 of those questions for the prime minister.
Who is going to pay for our hospitals?
Your last budget announced that, from 2017, the federal government's share of hospital spending will grow each year in line with inflation and not by the previously promised 6% or more (which was calculated to help meet the actual cost of running hospitals). The budget claimed this would "save" $50bn over the next 10 years, but of course it didn't "save" anything. It just hand-balled the cost on to the states.
At the time it was assumed this was a tricky negotiating ploy to force the states to the negotiating table when the government starts negotiations about tax and federalism. But then the intergenerational report assumed this vastly reduced future commonwealth funding would continue indefinitely, which helped you make a political point about the long-term forecasts for your "existing policy", but didn't actually answer the real question about who would pay for the hospitals. The states are deeply worried.
As the NSW premier, Mike Baird, said in a recent interview with Michelle Grattan, "What happened last federal budget is not sustainable. That was, the commonwealth and the federal government said, 'We are going to allocate a large part of the future growth in health costs from ourselves to the state governments.'
"Now I said at the time, and I say it again... both publicly and privately to the prime minister, that is not sustainable. The states do not have the capacity to meet those health costs on their own. The commonwealth has a critical role to play."
Voters might well be worried, too, with the future of a functioning hospital system apparently now reliant on your government finding the authority to reach an agreement with the states, half of them now Labor, on tax reform and a shake-up of the federation, and to somehow find the political courage to take radical changes to the next election.
Who's going to pay for our schools?
The last budget also announced that $30bn would be sliced from projected spending on schools. This may have come as a surprise to voters who had heard you insist during the election campaign that parents could "vote Labor or Liberal and get exactly the same amount of funding for your school". But if they had read the fine print, they would have seen your pledge to match the funding promised after the Gonski review applied only "over the forward estimates", which meant for four years. The budget does that, and then reverts to increases in line with inflation, and, once again, the intergenerational report assumes inflation-linked increases will continue indefinitely.
The Gonski report said additional money was necessary to stop poorer schools and disadvantaged students from falling further behind. But your government rejected a Senate report calling for Gonski to be implemented, arguing that the report had "created fissures rather than consent and agreement" and insisting "teacher quality" and "school autonomy" were much more important than money (as if these were either/or propositions).
Once again, the states (who have to run the schools, but need your money to do it) are deeply alarmed. The NSW education minister, Adrian Piccoli, has said, "The commonwealth government's budget decision is more than a breach of a commitment with the NSW government, it is a breach of faith with all school students in the state."
Are you going to cut the real value of the pension or not?
The budget suggested the annual increase to the pension would be linked to inflation rather than average wages, which one economist has calculated would mean its value would drop from 28% of average weekly earnings today to just under 16% by 2055. The new social services minister, Scott Morrison, has said that is not a "viable outcome" but your government still wanted to find savings. The intergenerational report suggested you might revert to the higher annual increases in 15 years (like it would be up to you by then anyway). So what is your policy, and why are you looking for savings by reducing the real value of all pensions, rather than restricting eligibility for part pensions or concessions?
What is your policy on Medicare?
After four unsuccessful stabs at it, you say a Medicare co-payment is now "dead, buried and cremated" but your health minister, Sussan Ley, says she still wants a "values signal" for visits to the doctor for people who can afford it (which would be a co-payment, right?) and you've frozen the Medicare rebate which means doctors are going to have to charge a co-payment over time or go out of business. So is the co-payment dead, or is it just resting until the political fuss dies down?
What is your policy on industry 'welfare'?
This seemed clear for your first year in office. You were the guys who were "ending the age of entitlement". You were so determined you didn't even flinch when the car industry announced it was going in 2017. But then this week you returned "entitlements" to the car industry worth $100m, $500m or $900m, depending on who one talked to - but seem to be closer to $100m, apparently to make sure the car industry didn't close down one year earlier, ie in an election year.
What is your policy on welfare?
Morrison says he's open to alternative savings to the plan for under 30-year-olds to get the dole for only six months of the year ( which the Sunday Telegraph informed us was imposed by your office over the protestations of the relevant ministers). But what are they?
How are you actually going to do something about climate change?
Even your own ministers know the $2.5bn "direct action" plan cannot possibly meet the deeper emissions reductions you will have to agree to in Paris in December. They point to the detail in your policy that would allow you to set tough "baselines" for industries, allowing them to buy and sell emissions permits from each other. Will you agree to that kind of emissions trading scheme? Can you, after what you said about the last one? If not, what is Australia's climate policy?
How do you plan to be the prime minister for Indigenous Australians when you keep saying things that offend Indigenous Australians?
That "lifestyle choices" comment was obviously the final straw, even for Indigenous leaders who have been supportive of your agenda. They reacted with distress and incredulity. If you genuinely want to make a positive and practical difference to Indigenous affairs during your time as prime minister, how do you rebuild those bridges?
What are you doing with this budget?
Do you still think we are dealing with a debt and deficit disaster that requires big spending cuts? Or do we just need to restrain spending for the time being? Do you abandon last year's stalled budget policies before you unveil this year's offering? How does all of that relate to the treasurer's message that "doing nothing is not an option?" And the big question: will you restore spending for hospitals and schools if you fail to do a tax deal that allows the states to find different ways to pay for them?
It was frustrating enough when you didn't reveal many policies in opposition, but leaving so many major policy areas so unclear after 18 months in government seems very neglectful. With so much depending on a tax and federation deal with the states which may or may not occur, with so many of your achievements running to stuff you've undone or abolished (the carbon tax, the mining tax) and so much confusion about your intentions on so many big issues, how do you claim to be a fully functioning government?
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The Guardian
March 13, 2015 Friday 7:00 AM GMT
International collaboration vital in reducing impact of natural disasters;
A landmark UN conference in Sendai, Japan, will discuss the creation of a forum to share scientific advances in disaster prediction
BYLINE: Julian Hunt and Joy Pereira
SECTION: GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT
LENGTH: 913 words
The third world conference on disaster risk reduction, which begins on Saturday in Sendai, north Japan, is a landmark event. Held every decade since 1994, the meeting brings together key government decision makers and experts in an effort to mitigate the impact of future natural disasters.
One subject up for discussion will be regular intergovernmental assessments of scientific advances that can support the work of UN agencies dealing with natural disasters. The introduction of such a forum would be an important step forward: the enormous human and economic loss associated with natural disasters dwarfs the total loss associated with all other disasters, but it could be reduced through better science.
As part of this process, the meeting will hopefully initiate international collaboration into better understanding and prediction of earthquakes. Research reported by Russian institutes and privately funded, individual US scientists shows how atmospheric and ionospheric electrical signals above the ocean and the land occur up to a few days before significant earthquakes.
Several countries are now constructing satellites to detect these signals, although there is no scientific consensus yet about exactly how the atmospheric signals are produced by the earthquake. An international programme is needed to investigate and, if possible, establish systems of warnings of earthquakes and their aftershocks, and also other relevant geophysical information.
Malaysia offers a potential model for what could be achieved; here, a science platform has brought together multiple agencies and scientists from multidisciplinary backgrounds to support the National Security Council in seeking a comprehensive solution to prevent reoccurrence of the recent devastating floods. The focus is seeking a holistic solution for the hazards that will affect the country in a changing climate.
The location of this year's meeting in the Tohoku region is where the highly damaging earthquake and tsunami struck four years ago. Since then, we have better warnings from greatly improved scientific understanding of how elevated and depressed tsunami waves are formed in the ocean above sub-marine earthquakes. We also have a much better idea of how they then progress upwards on sloping beaches or move backwards followed by even more dangerous upslope surge.
This is important because, as a result of climate change, sea level is rising and high wind events are changing. Tsunami waves impacting on coast lines will only become more dangerous and some Pacific islands are already planning evacuation.
Related: Climate change in the Marshall Islands and Kiribati, before and after - interactive
In northern high latitude countries, wind storms are also likely to become more frequent and last longer, as indicated by recent research on sensitivity of the polar jet to climatic warming in the Arctic. Recommendations from Sendai about the likely future of natural hazards and their impact should emphasise the connection with rising global temperature and acidification of oceans which destroys protective action on coasts and islands of coral reefs.
There is pressing need for emphasis at the UN meeting on enhanced information and training for communities to reduce social effects of future hazards. A good case study is the Philippines government agency NOAH, which has pioneered methods for enabling communities to respond to complex, chaotic impacts when different natural hazards strike simultaneously, such as typhoons, landslides or volcanic eruptions.
The prospects of moving these agendas forward at the conference in Sendai is unclear. However, these conferences have a track record of some success.
For instance, at Yokohama in 1994, critical scientific and technical problems were identified as well as issues with international arrangements for communicating warnings about disasters and for assistance in their aftermath. As a result, errors in cyclone tracking have been reduced by 30%, through significant advances in research using satellite data and computer modelling, coordinated by the International Committee of Scientific Unions. Tornado warnings are also now more reliable, enabling more communities to take precautionary measures.
Another, less welcome, conclusion in 1994 was that warnings about natural disasters could not be freely transmitted between countries because of national sensitivities. This meant that in several disasters, although the warnings by international centres were accurate they still did not reach thousands of people in exposed areas such as along coastlines, as was the case in the Burma cyclone in 2010.
However, thanks to subsequent work by the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction and other agencies, which was incorporated into the Hyogo framework in 2004, warnings are now transmitted internationally. This is sometimes within minutes in the case of earthquakes and tsunamis.
The UN meeting has potential not just to vet implementation of the Hyogo agenda, but also to set ambitious post-2015 frameworks for disaster risk reduction. One important development may be the creation of an inter-governmental platform.
Lord Julian Hunt is visiting professor at Delft University, and represented the UK Meteorological Office and World Meteorological Organisation at the 1994 UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction. Joy Pereira is professor at the Southeast Asia Disaster Prevention Research Initiative of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
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The New York Times
March 13, 2015 Friday
The New York Times on the Web
Shocks of Climate Change
SECTION: Section ; Column 0; Editorial Desk; LETTER; Pg.
LENGTH: 250 words
To the Editor:
Re ''Researchers Link Syrian Conflict to a Drought Made Worse by Climate Change'' (news article, March 3):
Individual food and economic stability, and environmental stability, are prerequisites for a stable society. There are several areas where we see countries, sometimes even entire regions, on the brink -- or as in the case of Syria, pushed past their breaking point -- because of threats to agriculture supply and income stability brought on by a changing climate.
We cannot afford to ignore the worsening effects of climate change and its threats to the security of hundreds of millions around the world.
In Central America, two consecutive years of poor harvests due to rainfall irregularity, drought and the coffee disease leaf rust have resulted in significant crop loss that has been linked to myriad issues, including unrest and immigration.
In the Sahel region of West Africa, the cumulative effect of repeated food and humanitarian crises, coupled with more frequent and intense climate shocks, has eroded vulnerable households' coping mechanisms, and families are struggling with mounting food insecurity. These are just two of many examples.
While this kind of instability does not always lead to violence, it does plant the seeds of unrest. We must heed the warning signs in other regions and work proactively to strengthen local systems and reduce the effect and severity of future shocks.
TIM McCULLY
V.P., International Programs
Lutheran World Relief
Baltimore
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The New York Times
March 13, 2015 Friday
Late Edition - Final
The Southwestern Water Wars
BYLINE: By RICHARD PARKER.
Richard Parker is the author of ''Lone Star Nation: How Texas Will Transform America.''
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Editorial Desk; OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR; Pg. 29
LENGTH: 946 words
WIMBERLEY, Tex. -- ''WE don't want you here,'' warned the county commissioner, pointing an accusatory finger at the drilling company executives as 600 local residents rose to their feet. ''We want you to leave Hays County.''
Normally, my small town is a placid place nestled in the Texas Hill Country, far from controversy, a peaceful hour's drive west of Austin. Pop. 2,582, Wimberley was founded as a mill town on a creek. Today it's part artist colony, part cowboy town known for its natural beauty and its cool, clear springs and rivers that wind through soaring cypress trees.
But these are not normal times. The suburbs of Austin close in every year. Recently, the suburb of Buda and developers enlisted a company from faraway Houston to drain part of the Trinity Aquifer, the source of the Hill Country's water. An old-fashioned, Western-style water war has erupted.
Across Texas and the Southwest, the scene is repeated in the face of a triple threat: booming population, looming drought and the worsening effects of climate change.
And it is a story that has played out before. It was in the Southwest that complex human cultures in the United States first arose. Around A.D. 800, the people called the ''Ancient Ones'' -- the Mimbres, Mogollon, Chaco and other Native American cultures -- flourished in what was then a green, if not lush, region. They channeled water into fields and built cities on the mesas and into the cliffs, fashioning societies, rituals and art.
Then around 1200 they all disappeared. Or so the legend goes. In reality, these cultures were slowly and painfully extinguished. The rivers dried. The fields died. The cities were unsustainable as drought stretched from years to decades, becoming what scientists today call a megadrought. Parts of these cultures were absorbed by the Pueblo and Navajo people; parts were simply stamped out.
By the time the Spanish arrived in the 16th century, so had, finally, the rain. The American, German and Polish settlers who came to Texas in the 19th century found a rich landscape, flush with water. ''I must say as to what I have seen of Texas,'' wrote Davy Crockett, ''it is the garden spot of the world.'' And so it remained, punctuated by only two long droughts.
One, at the dawn of the 20th century, wreaked ecological havoc on the overgrazed Hill Country. The second stretched from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and is still known as the drought of record. When it released its grip, a new era of feverish dam and canal building ensued in Texas, just as it already had in much of the Southwest. A dearth of rainfall, after all, is a fact in the cycle of life here. Rains come when the equatorial current of El Niño appears, and they stay stubbornly away when its twin, La Niña, reverses the course. Those grand dams and canals seemed likely to suffice.
But again, these are not normal times. Arizonans are in their 10th year of drought, despite an uptick in rainfall during last year's monsoon season because of a single storm on a single day. And while it has been a cool, damp winter here, the clear waters of the Blanco River still look low. Officially, more than half of Texas' 269,000 square miles are plagued by drought. Conservatively, this would make for the fifth consecutive year of drought in Texas. Meanwhile, today, the average American uses 100 gallons of water a day.
So the race to engineer a new solution is underway, and Wimberley finds itself squarely in the path. The drilling here would rely on a few landowners, whose land is beyond any water conservation district. Exploiting this gap in the patchwork of Texas water laws, the Houston company would pump five million gallons a day out of the Trinity Aquifer to the Austin suburbs of Buda and Kyle.
Other cities are following suit. San Antonio has begun a controversial and costly initiative to pump water from beneath exurban Burleson County, 142 miles away. Over the objections of rural Texans and the concern of city dwellers facing a nearly 20 percent water-bill hike, this solution will cost $3.4 billion. It is being managed by San Antonio Water Systems, which everyone calls by its acronym, SAWS.
As a result of such plans, ranchers, farmers and rural people face the prospect of running dry. Politically and financially weaker, small towns are no match for big cities and corporations. Yet aquifers have many who rely on them; the Trinity stretches from San Antonio to Dallas. Rare species of darters and salamanders live above it, and blind catfish inside its caverns.
Then there is the Southwest's never-ending population boom. Texas is home to four of the 10 fastest-growing cities in the United States. Expanding cities like Phoenix, Tucson and Las Vegas are exhausting Lake Mead -- and eyeballing aquifers and pipelines from other states. Californians are preparing that most expensive solution of all: desalinating water from the Pacific Ocean.
Maybe engineering will, indeed, save us. But can we overcome a megadrought? Scientists believe the megadroughts of the Medieval Era are likely to return to the South Plains and the Southwest soon -- in this century, according to a recent NASA study. This time, though, the natural drought will be compounded by climate change -- a hotter, drier atmosphere that evaporates rain before a drop strikes the ground.
This phenomenon is known as virga, and like drought itself it is cruel. Majestic thunderheads still arise on the distant horizon, but when they arrive they bring only dry lightning and thunder. No rain. Perhaps the great cultures of the American Southwest will survive when the virga comes this time, but most assuredly, the last ones did not.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/13/opinion/the-southwestern-water-wars.html
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The Guardian
March 12, 2015 Thursday 11:29 PM GMT
Adelaide's Mad March: when 'bogans' and 'weirdos' collide;
Three major sporting events and two arts festivals in a single month may seem mad, but Adelaide is showing the rest of Australia the value of cultural capital
BYLINE: Van Badham
SECTION: COMMENT IS FREE
LENGTH: 890 words
The Adelaide locals call it "Mad March", and why wouldn't they? For them, this single month annually contains a supercars road race, a world music festival, international cricket competition, a horse-racing cup and an international arts festival. This extravaganza of civic entertainment may have the appearance of a tourism scheduling nightmare, but it's inarguable the city has ambition.
It needs it. The South Australian capital faces an uncertain future. If it wasn't enough that climate change is predicted to cost the city half of its present water supply by 2070, the closure of its local car industry and threats to its shipyards are destabilising the economy as well. It's little wonder that Christopher Pyne petitioned his own government to reverse cuts to local broadcasting jobs at the ABC. Creative social and economic initiatives are precious values in an uncertain place. Commentators suggest that "a failure to project a positive vision for the future" is why conservatives have governed South Australia for only 14 years out of the last 50.
The capitalisation of Adelaide's cultural infrastructure started back in the 1970s with South Australia's visionary Labor premier, Don Dunstan. It was Dunstan's belief in the centrality of arts investment to social policy outcomes that, among many achievements, built the Adelaide Film Commission and injected enough money for the International Arts Festival to develop scope, influence and prestige.
This reconceptualisation of Adelaide as a vibrant cultural tourist destination rather than a sleepy "city of churches" is the positive economic outcome of Dunstan's progessive social policy. While it's tempting to write off Mad March's races and shows as bread and circus events in an incipient-factory-closure town, the compensation that creative cultural investment provides has been borne out in international examples like Sheffield in the UK. That city's depressing industrial decline as depicted in the movie The Full Monty was partially arrested by 1990s' programs of cultural investment in sport, arts infrastructure and education that rebranded the city as a cheap and fun place to study and innovate. These days, 43.2% of Sheffield's workforce are employed in higher-end occupations - with a high percentage of students choosing to remain living in the old blue-collar town after they graduate from its two local universities.
The Australian tribes that converge at Adelaide's Mad March events also bring the cultural value of diversity to the city. Communities of artists and performers assembling for the Adelaide fringe spend four days sharing Adelaide's eastern half with the crowds of the car races in the Clipsal 500. This year, fringe highlights included Marieke Hardy staging funerals for her audience members and Bryony Kimmings' cute show made with her boyfriend about his depression. It was a helluva contrast with the nearby roars of petrol engines from V8 Supercars and a daily ear-bursting sky-rip by a fighter-jet flyover. As both the fringe and the Clipsal are now annual events, so now, too, are the complaints from fringe artists that the Clipsal "bogans" are noisy and clogging up the roads while Clipsal attendees grumble they can't get cheap accommodation in a city suddenly full of pasty "weirdos".
The city's last laugh is that the appeal, interest and value of the twinned events is much the same. In 2014, the month-long fringe sold more than 450,000 tickets to events, brought 1.9 million people into the city and injected $66.3m to the South Australian economy. This year, Clipsal attendance over its four days hit 285,000 and its own $60m economic contribution.
The crowds are essentially coming for the same thing. As fringe performers in circuses like Scotch and Soda display death-defying feats on rollerskates, so, too, are the Supercar teams defying the notorious "turn eight" on the Adelaide track, with its risks of spectacular smashed bodywork. Grumpy Adelaide theatremakers can't count on the climate change imperative to phase out the fuel engine and therefore the Clipsal crowds, either. The sport is adaptive - hybrid fuel technology is already in Formula One, supercars are embracing biofuels and Formula E electric racing is in bud. Motoring journalist Peter Anderson could easily be talking about theatre when he explains the demise of the local car production will not affect the Clipsal, either:
It's always a drama-packed race and people come for the drama. You could have a bunch of Australians driving Mazda hatchbacks around and if it's a spectacle, Australians would probably turn up and watch.
It would be unwise to underestimate the positive policy effects of what merely appears to be popular entertainment. Engaging diverse local communities and industries in intersecting cultural events is inspirational to people, and inspiration is a necessary resource for economic development and growth.
South Australia faces present and future challenges of serious economic and climate change transformation. Creativity, innovation, adaptability, community harmony and popular involvement are required to confront them. It just may be that the conceptual framework presented by its singular cultural season will encourage the industries, ideas, intellectual capital, property and products required to survive the seasons ahead.
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The Guardian
March 12, 2015 Thursday 4:35 PM GMT
Coalition Britain: has the 'greenest ever' government lived up to its promise?;
Ukip's rise and recession pressures helped sink the environmental agenda at home - but the UK role on the international stage means all has not been lost
BYLINE: Anne Perkins
SECTION: POLITICS
LENGTH: 1588 words
It was on a broiling summer's day last August that Hoovergate broke. Brussels bureaucrats were about to ban high-powered vacuum cleaners, and every Tory criticism of the green agenda collided in one nightmarish Daily Mail headline.
After protests over onshore windfarms and outrage over higher energy bills because of the levy for renewable investments, the EU was even going to make housework tougher for hard-pressed voters.
A few days later, Douglas Carswell became the first Tory backbencher to resign from the party to defect to Ukip. Carswell's concerns went much wider than the wattage of vacuum cleaners, but his decision propelled a party that questions the very existence of climate change into the mainstream debate. The Conservatives, who pledged in 2010 that the coalition would be the "greenest government ever", now faced a triple threat to that promise: the recession, Ukip and a politically toxic EU.
Related: Would a Labour or Tory government be better for the environment?
"Don't expect climate change to feature in the election campaign," said one of the greener Tory MPs.
It had all been so different for David Cameron back in 2005. He'd recognised that the message of social justice implicit in the green agenda could be an important way of making people see Conservativism differently. Most people remember the Arctic trip with the huskies. The pledge to rule out a third runway at Heathrow was more significant.
After the inconclusive election in 2010, the coalition's programme for government had more about climate change than about cutting the deficit. On 14 May, three days after becoming prime minister, Cameron went to the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) to declare his would be "the greenest government ever". He even appointed himself the department's "fourth minister".
Decc officials talk of the "energy trilemma" that faces every secretary of state: keeping the lights on, holding down electricity bills and decarbonising supply. The department must control the source of the problem and devise solutions for it.
The "greenest ever" pledge was repeated in the coalition's first Queen's speech. In the first budget, before a year of eye-watering cuts, Decc got one of the best settlements. Yet within a year, the rhetoric had changed completely.
There was a reason why there was so much detail on climate change in the coalition agreement. The Liberal Democrats, always an environmentalist party, were there as a counterweight for the sceptical Tory right. Chris Huhne, the first secretary of state, who had made his pitch for the 2006 and 2007 party leadership contests on a green agenda, was up for the fight.
"His approach to the Treasury was that you can't negotiate with terrorists," one ally said later. It was an approach that produced impressive policy gains, most notably in 2011, with the Fourth Carbon budget, which set emissions reduction targets for 2023-27, the next stepping stone to the 2050 target of an 80% reduction in carbon emissions (using 1990 as a baseline).
In the end, the Treasury, long the enemy of all things green, particularly where it means subcontracting revenue raising powers, conceded a deal on the condition that it would be reviewed in 2014. Huhne's successor, Ed Davey, managed to protect the targets, but only by trading concessions on fracking.
We're not going to save the planet by putting our country out of business.
George Osborne in 2011
"Chris Huhne was knowledgeable and effective," said Tim Yeo, the Conservative chair of the cross-party energy and climate change committee of MPs, "but politically it is not smart to upset the Treasury. Decc is a small, junior department. It's always a first cabinet job for its secretary of state. Any Whitehall negotiation is always an away match."
Huhne fought to a score draw on the Green Investment Bank, bidding the Treasury up to a capital allocation of £3bn for hard-to-finance green projects, but conceding the battle over borrowing powers. But it was also on his watch that the disastrous Green Deal was devised.
The deal was at the centre of Huhne's energy bill in 2011. It was supposed to be a way of encouraging home owners to invest in energy-saving improvements with loans advanced through their energy bills. Overly complex and badly structured, it was a policy that sank, taking with it a great chunk of the coalition's reputation for being able to make a difference in an area that is increasingly contested.
As the oil price crossed the $100 (£65) a barrel mark, energy bills became the battleground for a wider fight about the value of green policies. In rightwing newspapers, Huhne was accused of masterminding untested initiatives that were hitting families already struggling through a recession.
A planned duty rise on petrol was abandoned in the face of ever increasing prices at the pumps. George Osborne told the Tory party conference in 2011: "We're not going to save the planet by putting our country out of business."
The green lobbyist Alastair Harper said: "David Cameron took a deliberate decision to tone the rhetoric down. He decided he didn't want to talk about [environmental issues] because he didn't want to make it a cultural issue within the party. The tone changed, but the policy didn't."
Rather than blame the real problems of rising fuel prices, an uncompetitive market and a weak regulator, it was the energy companies' obligation (ECO) - levied on customers to pay for investment in renewables, the Green Deal and to help fuel-poor households - that was accused of over burdening the consumer.
The collateral damage was investor confidence. The more the government's commitment to long-term decarbonisation of the energy supply was challenged within its own ranks, the less willing the investors were to take the plunge.
When Huhne was forced to resign in 2012 to fight (unsuccessfully) a charge of perverting the course of justice over a speeding penalty, Davey inherited a legacy that was a substantial structure still only half-built. Key projects such as the Green Deal were only just being implemented. To complicate matters, Decc suffers like many other Whitehall departments from a high staff turnover, partly as a result of a deliberate strategy. One of Yeo's biggest criticisms of the department is the lack of continuity.
Related: Real progress on climate change needs trust between all political parties | Ed Davey
"Just when they were most needed, the team of officials that worked on the Energy Act in 2011 was broken up," he said. The appointment of a new permanent secretary was delayed for months after the prime minister intervened to stop a candidate considered "too green".
But that wasn't the only reason why the Green Deal flopped. Environmental campaigners such as Harper bemoan the failure of successive ministers to make energy efficiency a priority in a cool country with a large proportion of old, inefficient housing stock. "We need an efficiency sector in the same way that policy has been directed into building a renewable sector."
The Green Deal and its new successor, the Green Deal home improvement fund, are both in effect middle-class subsidies, aimed at home owners with enough savings to put cash up front. Poorer families get help with their bills and with efficiency measures through the Affordable Warmth Scheme. Many young families fall between the two extremes and get no incentive at all.
Davey, parachuted into a department that was simultaneously developing complex domestic policies and playing a leading role in multi-player global and EU negotiations, then lost the reliable and experienced minister Charles Hendry. His replacement, a sop to the restive right, was the anti-wind turbine campaigner John Hayes. One ex-cabinet minister, Peter Lilley, was secretly recorded claiming Hayes's job was to "duff up" Davey.
Davey only managed to see off Hayes by warning Cameron that the outspoken minister was destroying investor confidence. It was a sign Davey was in control. He won an important battle with the Treasury on the Levy Control Framework, getting approval for a peak of £7.6bn of funding to be available for investment in the renewable sector by 2020. But alongside the efforts to raise investment in renewables, there are the more contentious failures. Davey spent a year playing catch-up on electricity market reform. He lost the fight to get a decarbonisation target into the 2013 Energy Act.
Ed Davey's real regret is that he won't be in Paris in December.
Early on, the Lib Dems were forced to drop their opposition to new nuclear power stations and negotiate what critics regard as the extortionately expensive deal for the new nuclear plant at Hinkley Point C. Carbon capture and storage technology has made no progress, and the new capacity contracts - the guarantee that the lights will stay on - have disappointed campaigners because of the reliance on fossil fuel.
The good news comes from the international successes. Davey loyalists trumpet his role in getting an EU deal on a 40% cut in greenhouse gases by 2030, and praise the part he played in the last-minute deal at Lima that was a step towards success in the forthcoming UN climate change summit in Paris.
And if the transformed global environment, with both China and the US now playing a serious part, is what really makes a difference, then at least the EU is not being left behind. "Ed Davey's real regret," said one of his closest allies, "is that he won't be in Paris in December."
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The Guardian
March 12, 2015 Thursday 8:49 AM GMT
Shale gas should be at centre of next government's energy policy - Tim Yeo;
Green-leaning Tory MP and chairman of parliament's energy and climate committee says fracking is safe and will benefit UK's economy and enivronment
BYLINE: Fiona Harvey
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 684 words
Shale gas exploration can be environmentally sound, and should be the centrepiece of the next government's energy policy, the Conservative's most senior green-leaning MP has urged.
Tim Yeo, the Tory former minister, and chairman of parliament's energy and climate committee, said the time had come to make the "green" case in favour of fracking, and that the incoming government after the general election must seize on the technology for the good of the UK's environment and economy.
"There is an opportunity now, and it might not exist in a few years [when other European countries have developed fracking]," he told the Guardian. "People who think fracking is an environmental problem are mistaken."
He said that the regulations governing fracking in this country were sound, and that related problems such as tremors were very small, and there would be no danger to the water supply here, as there has been in some places in the US. "Once people see that horizontal drilling is not causing earthquakes or poisoning the water they will be satisfied," he said.
While warning that shale gas would not be the "transformational" industry it has been in the US, where the widespread exploitation of fracking technology has sent gas and oil prices tumbling, Yeo said it would be cheaper for the UK and have less impact on the climate than importing gas.
Fracking involves blasting water, sand and chemicals at dense rock to release tiny bubbles of gas trapped within, but the technology has been slow to be adopted in the UK after a series of hitches in the first targeted sites.
At the general election, Yeo will leave parliament after 32 years , having been de-selected by his constituency party, apparently for spending more time on national than local issues. A former environment minister and shadow environment secretary, he is one of the longest-standing and most influential champions of green issues among the ranks of Tory MPs, and chairs the influential parliamentary cross-party select committee on energy and climate change.
He makes his last major speech on energy and the environment on Thursday, at a conference that will highlight some of the committee's progress on making policy recommendations in the current parliament.
He has chosen to make the green case for shale gas as his parting shot, because he believes the coalition has been too timid in persuading the public of the value of shale. Yeo has no current financial interest in shale and does not intend to take up any such interests on leaving parliament.
He will also use Thursday's speech to argue strongly in favour of onshore wind turbines, which he will say are a cheap and reliable form of low-carbon energy. David Cameron has vowed to end subsidies for onshore wind, despite polls showing most people are in favour of the turbines.
Yeo said that reducing the UK's greenhouse gas emissions would still leave the country reliant on gas for years to come, and that fulfilling heating and power needs using domestic sources of gas would be both lower in emissions and cheaper than importing liquefied natural gas from overseas.
"I yield to no one in my desire to [tackle climate change] but the fact is we will not get by without consuming a lot of gas between now and the 2030s, so better to have a domestic source than to import it," he said. "I do not think that a single extra cubic metre of gas will be consumed in the UK because of a domestic fracking industry."
He said many green groups were opposing fracking because of a "visceral reaction to anything involving fossil fuels", but he said the UK could meet its commitments on carbon reduction while producing gas from shale.
He will tell the conference: "The next government must stand up to the fuzzy-headed ideological fringes that oppose fracking. The greens opposed to fracking do not have evidence on their side."
He will add: "Too many of us take the ready availability of energy, and the prosperity it makes possible, for granted. We expect electricity and gas to be constantly available - but we won't accept the energy infrastructure on which that availability depends."
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The Guardian
March 12, 2015 Thursday 7:00 AM GMT
We must reclaim the climate change debate from the political extremes;
Alarmists and deniers need to climb out of their parallel trenches, engage with the developing world and work together to end the crisis
BYLINE: Mark Lynas
SECTION: COMMENT IS FREE
LENGTH: 1131 words
Climate change is real, caused almost entirely by humans, and presents a potentially existential threat to human civilisation. Solving climate change does not mean rolling back capitalism, suspending the free market or stopping economic growth.
With those two rather innocuous statements, I have just alienated most people on either side of the climate debate. Today, climate change is no longer just a scientific or an energy problem. Instead, one's position on global warming has become a badge of political identity in a debate riven by ideological and tribal conflicts. This bodes ill for humanity's chances of addressing the threat before it is too late.
The nature of the scientific consensus, which on the face of it should be pretty straightforward, has become one of the most bitterly contested issues. Each storm, heatwave and temperature rise - or fall - is fought over, not for what it is but for what it represents. An east coast blizzard apparently represents a victory for the naysayers, as exemplified by climate denier Jim Inhofe's absurd brandishing of a snowball on the floor of the US Senate. Arctic ice melting is a success for the "alarmists", while Antarctic ice growing is a boon for the "deniers".
This isn't science; it is politics. The science - as articulated by the IPPC - says the warming of the climate system is "unequivocal", that the last 30 years were probably the warmest for the last 1,500 years, and that it is "extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century".
Moreover, if current emissions trends continue, warming of 4C or even 6C becomes a possibility this century. No exaggeration is needed to illustrate the gravity of the threat - warming of this magnitude would destabilise major ice sheets, lead to catastrophic shifts in weather patterns, and cause havoc with ecosystems and human societies. The planet's temperature, along with CO2 levels, would be higher than for tens of millions of years.
We should all be able to agree on this. But we can't, because this scientific narrative seems to have been captured by one, rather extreme, end of the political spectrum.
The Guardian's climate campaign is, in principle, very welcome. But it risks reinforcing this polarisation by leading with two extensive extracts from Naomi Klein's latest book, This Changes Everything: Climate vs Capitalism. Lefties will lap it up; others will see it as evidence that science has been appropriated as cover for an ideological project.
For Klein, whose career has always focused on fighting capitalism, climate change merely means we must renew that fight. It doesn't seem to strike her as odd or fortuitous that this new "crisis", which she admits she's only lately discovered, should "change everything" for everyone else but merely reinforce her own decades-old ideological position. Her analysis of the problem is the same as for all the rest of today's challenges - that it is the fault of multinational corporations, "market fundamentalism" and the "elites", who in her view control the media and democratic politics.
Global warming issue has now become as much as part of America's culture wars as abortion or creationism
Depressingly, all this confirms what social psychologists have long insisted: that most people accept only scientific "facts" that are compatible with or which reinforce their political identities and worldviews. The environmental left leapt on climate science because it seemed to confirm deeply held notions of the planet being fragile, and modern civilisation being in essence destructive. Moreover, climate science at last seemed to herald the global doom that the eco-Malthusian left had always hoped for.
Reacting against this rather miserabilist and dystopian worldview, the political right has increasingly adopted an outright denialist position - attacking the science in a covert war against the political ideology it has been co-opted to serve. The reason half of Americans doubt the science on climate change isn't because they are stupid or misled by the fossil fuels lobby, but because the global warming issue has now become as much as part of America's culture wars as abortion or creationism.
And let's not presume that the environmental movement, or the left, has a monopoly on Enlightenment values. Most of those fighting the good climate fight on the basis of scientific consensus fall over themselves to deny an equivalently strong consensus on the safety of nuclear power and GM crops.
Witness the recent "no consensus" statement pushed by the greens on GM crops, which exactly parallel "no consensus" statements pushed by the right on the climate. Stuck in their political trenches, neither side sees the irony - or the damage they are doing to science overall.
Related: Don't look away now, the climate crisis needs you | Naomi Klein
All of this makes climate change much harder to deal with than it would otherwise be. In insisting that tackling carbon emissions must be subordinated into a wider agenda of social revolution and the dismantling of corporate capitalism, Klein isn't making climate mitigation easier: she is making it politically toxic. In rejecting "too easy" solutions such as nuclear power and advanced renewables technologies (the dreaded "technofix"), the left puts its cards on the table - and confirms what the right has always suspected: that climate mitigation is not a primary but at best a secondary goal.
This is also a debate conducted in a western bubble. No one in India doubts that the emergence from poverty of hundreds of millions of people in south Asia will require the production of prodigious amounts more energy - far more than could ever be compensated for by any remotely plausible "energy austerity" path taken by the west. Don't forget: rich OECD countries have already peaked their CO2 emissions, so pretty much all the future growth will come from Asia, Africa and South America.
Forget the political myths: here's the hard reality. The emergence from poverty of the developing world is non-negotiable. Humanity will therefore double or triple energy consumption overall by 2050. Our challenge is to develop and deploy the technology to deliver this energy in as low-carbon a way as possible, probably using some combination of efficiency, renewables, next-generation nuclear and carbon capture. We need to pour vastly more resources into R&D, and put a significant international price on carbon.
But to make any of this happen we will need to recapture the climate debate from the political extremes. We must then work to come up with inclusive proposals that can form the basis of a social consensus that must last decades if it is to have any meaningful effect on the climate change crisis that faces us.
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The New York Times
March 12, 2015 Thursday
Late Edition - Final
Pondering a Dam, Property Values and Muskrats
BYLINE: By JESSE McKINLEY
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Metropolitan Desk; Pg. 23
LENGTH: 1428 words
OFF GRINDSTONE ISLAND, N.Y. -- When Jeff Garnsey, a third-generation fishing guide along the St. Lawrence River, looks at the water off Grindstone Island, he notices that it does not move the way it used to.
''The current isn't running through,'' Mr. Garnsey said, standing on a river-borne skiff and pointing out at a silt-filled channel. ''It's been choked off.''
The culprit, he says, is clear: the decades-old controls at the Moses-Saunders hydroelectric dam that regulate the height of Lake Ontario and, by extension, the water level for more than 700 miles of property, from New York's Thousand Islands to beaches outside Toronto.
Lake Ontario's water level is a primary focus -- and principal flaw, some say -- of a long-simmering plan to address a range of environmental and economic issues related to the littlest Great Lake.
But with the many communities and competing interests involved, the plan has also set off a debate on subjects including climate change, property taxes and the importance of muskrats.
For supporters like Mr. Garnsey, the plan represents an opportunity to return to the rhythms of nature by letting the lake levels fluctuate more throughout the year. The plan's drafters say this would heal ecosystems damaged by decades of artificial control, including declines in some fish and bird populations, depleted wetlands and the runaway growth of cattails along the coast.
Such a change, they acknowledge, would cause a ''small reduction of benefits to riparians on Lake Ontario, in the form of increased costs of maintaining shoreline protection structures.'' Opponents say that translates into increased risk for flooding on their lakefront properties -- unless they install expensive and unsightly new sea walls or other flood-control methods. They also say that the plan would cripple dozens of tourist-dependent summer resorts.
''This village would be completely gone,'' said Chris Tertinek, the Republican mayor of Sodus Point, which sits some 35 miles east of Rochester and is just a few feet above the water line.
The proposal, known as Plan 2014, was unveiled in June by the International Joint Commission, an American and Canadian entity. Since then, however, there has been little action on the federal level; the State Department says it is reviewing the plan but has no deadline for responding.
As an international agreement, it would not need the approval of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York. But his support, or opposition, could be influential, though recent history suggests neither would come quickly.
The governor's decision in December to ban hydraulic fracturing, the natural-gas extraction method also known as fracking, came after years of debate. Another decision, about a liquid gas storage site in the Finger Lakes, is now in its sixth year of study. And state officials are noncommittal about when a decision on Plan 2014 might come.
''Because Plan 2014 would modify water-level regulations for Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River,'' said Peter Constantakes, a spokesman for the state's Department of Environmental Conservation, ''and could potentially impact the quality of life in some communities, New York is reviewing all available information to be able to fully assess whether the state will support this proposed plan.''
Fears of another lengthy wait recently prompted a group of environmental and conservation groups to stage events seemingly to nudge the governor, a Democrat, into declaring support for the plan.
Jim Howe, the director of the Nature Conservancy in central and western New York, which has spent $500,000 on a campaign in support of Plan 2014, said that currently ''the highs and the lows'' of the lake are gone, causing daily damage. ''We want the lake to be where the lake wants to be,'' he said.
The process has been a long one. Plan 2014 has been in the works for 15 years and included a previous attempt known as Plan 2007.
That plan was roundly unpopular -- opposed by shoreline property owners and environmental groups -- and was shelved.
The current management system for the dam, on the St. Lawrence River about 85 miles southwest of Montreal, traces its roots to the Eisenhower administration, and now carries an even more obscure moniker: Plan 1958DD.
It minimized fluctuation of lake height, for the purpose of maintaining property and regularity, the joint commission found, but resulted in ''substantial harm to coastal ecosystems,'' and endangered animals like the muskrat, whose population is considered an indicator of broader environmental health.
Plan 2014, its backers say, would restore 64,000 acres of wetlands for wildlife, but would also benefit people, increasing the hydropower output by allowing a faster flow of water inside the dam. The restored wetlands would improve hunting and fishing and create jobs in outdoor tourism.
The wetlands, supporters say, would also help absorb surges of water from big storms like Hurricane Sandy and other ''extreme weather'' events, a topic that the governor is interested in.
That gives supporters hope.
''Governor Cuomo recognizes that we are not going to try to ignore the very real dangers associated with climate change and the forces of nature,'' said Lana Pollack, the chairwoman of the American section of the joint commission, in Washington.
But the plan, during its long gestation, has also drawn critical comments, from both sides of the border, including from Canadian shipping interests and American transportation authorities concerned about commercial navigation.
And from Mr. Tertinek, the Sodus Point mayor, who said that the 1958 plan was essentially a promise to property owners that the lake would be kept under control.
''They said that we can hold it to this level,'' he said. ''So everyone planned according to the 58DD.''
Mr. Tertinek worries that under Plan 2014, his village, a slim finger of land jutting into Lake Ontario, would be much more vulnerable to flooding about four months of the year. Worse yet, those months span the summer, when the village's population at least doubles. And one possible solution to threatening waters, building sea walls, defeats the purpose, he said.
''Why would anyone want to come down here in the summertime and rent the cottages if you can't see the water?'' he said.
As for the muskrats, Mr. Tertinek said such worries were overstated. ''Muskrats are very prolific,'' he said. ''They live in just about any ditch.''
The plan has divided state politicians, with many leaders on the south shore of the lake denouncing the plan. Representative Chris Collins, a Republican from the Buffalo area, said it could devastate property values, and thus revenues from property taxes, all across the Lake Ontario region.
''Some of the most valuable real estate in those counties is on the shoreline,'' he said, adding, ''And the I.J.C. has made it very clear that they have no budget, and they have no way to provide compensation to homeowners.''
Much of the plan's strongest support comes from eastern communities near or along the St. Lawrence River, the picturesque seaway that connects the Great Lakes with the Atlantic.
Seven generations of Mr. Garnsey's family have lived on the river since the early 1800s, farming on Grindstone Island, a rolling islet. Later, they turned to guiding boats and anglers hunting bass, northern pike and the mighty muskie, a torpedo-size monster of a pike that serves as the unofficial mascot of Clayton, a handsome riverfront town just north of Watertown.
Mr. Garnsey, 51, who spent 26 years in the Navy, retired to Clayton in 2009 and was shocked at how the river had changed, with spawning grounds filled with seaweed, coastline blocked by cattails, and river channels filled by stagnant silt.
Plan 2014 is not perfect, he admitted, but he said he felt it would go a long way toward restoring a brisker flow on the river, oxygenating the water and helping clear away leaves and other detritus.
''When I was a youngster, in the early spring, this place was teeming with muskie,'' he said. Now, ''topography of the bottom contour has even changed,'' confusing fish and leaving some suffering.
''It's a heartbreaker to watch a big fish like that die because it's not able to spawn,'' he said.
While Mr. Garnsey and Mr. Tertinek do not agree on much, both say they would love to have a signal from the governor, though neither man is under any illusion that 2015 will necessarily mean an answer for Plan 2014.
''I'd love to have a hint,'' Mr. Tertinek said. ''But it could be who knows when.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/12/nyregion/around-lake-ontario-neighbors-debate-a-dam-property-values-and-muskrats.html
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GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: The water levels of the St. Lawrence River in New York are currently controlled artificially.
Seaweed growing over a bass spawning bed in the St. Lawrence.
Chris Tertinek, left, the mayor of Sodus Point, N.Y., is worried his village will become more vulnerable to flooding. Jeff Garnsey, a St. Lawrence fishing guide, is concerned about the river's health. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY HEATHER AINSWORTH FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) MAP: The Moses-Saunders dam sits on the St. Lawrence River. (A26)
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The New York Times Blogs
(Taking Note)
March 12, 2015 Thursday
The Political Art of Not Being a Scientist
BYLINE: FRANCIS X. CLINES
SECTION: OPINION
LENGTH: 281 words
HIGHLIGHT: A report alleges that after Florida Gov. Rick Scott took office, state officials were barred from using the term “climate change.”
Florida Gov. Rick Scott is one of many prominent Republican politicians who prefer to say "I'm not a scientist" as they avoid specific policy positions on climate change and global warming. Even so, the allegedly unwritten policy of his administration for the past four years has been a ban on the use of those very terms - "climate change" and "global warming" - by state environmental officials, according to an investigative report published Sunday in the Miami Herald.
"That message was communicated to me and my colleagues by our superiors in the office of general counsel," Christopher Byrd, a former attorney in the state environmental agency, told Tristram Korten of the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting. Mr. Korten's report in the Herald was based on record comparisons finding sparse use of those terms during Mr. Scott's tenure, and interviews with former state workers and consultants. Kristina Trotta, another former employee, declared, "We were told that we were not allowed to discuss anything that was not a true fact."
In his campaigning before voters, Mr. Scott stated, "I've not been convinced that there's any man-made climate change." But he insisted this week in response to the Herald report that he had no unwritten policy quietly putting his skepticism to work at Florida's environmental agency. "It's not true," he declared.
"I'm into solutions," he said, citing state investments against beach erosion, for flood mitigation and in defense of the Everglades. As for the science underlying it all, the Herald reported the governor would not say in response to repeated questions whether the environmental agency considers global warming a proven problem.
LOAD-DATE: March 12, 2015
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
DOCUMENT-TYPE: News
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The Guardian
March 11, 2015 Wednesday 9:19 PM GMT
Live blog: Women's Empowerment Principles annual conference 2015;
This year's event marks the twentieth anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action. Join us for live updates as the business community discusses the advancement of gender equality in the workplace, marketplace and community
BYLINE: Lottie O'Conor
SECTION: WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP
LENGTH: 6999 words
block-time published-time 5.19pm ET
And so to bed
Well, not quite. But we've reached the end of the 2015 WEPs annual event. It's been an incredible couple of days and I would like to thank all the speakers for their fantastic insights, and thanks to everyone who has been following the live blog.
I'm trying to come up with a way of summarising the messages that have been shared during the conference. While it's impossible to communicate everything, there are a few points that have really resonated with me, that I think it's worth repeating.
The theme for this year's International Women's Day was 'Make it Happen.' This is a direct call to action, and one that we can all take on board. There are now around 1000 companies that have signed up to the WEPs. If we all spread the word among our business contacts and personal networks, that number could increase tenfold - or even more. Making internal changes is a hugely positive move, but we need to look outside ourselves and talk about what we're doing and why.
By opening up this dialogue and putting equality, diversity and fairness at the heart of business, we can take a real step forward in creating a world that future generations can be proud to be a part of.
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Davis acknowledges that she is in a strong position to instigate change, as she can go directly to her peers in the industry and point out the unconscious bias that many of them are displaying.
We can't suddenly snap our fingers and solve inequality, but there is one place we can make an instant change: on our screens, she says.
We can change the future through what people see. If they see it they can be it.
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The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media has completed a global gender in media study. The landscape is bleak: one of the most troubling findings was that the percentage of fictional women in the workforce was lower than the percentage in society.
Looking at the proportion of female directors globally, just 7% are women. In the US it's even lower: 4%. However, with a female director behind the camera, the percentage of female characters on screen rises.
Despite all the progress in gender diversity in recent years, the ratio of male to female characters on screen hasn't changed since 1946. This stat really drives home the fact that modern media is not reflecting real life: something that is potentially harmful to young girls.
block-time published-time 5.01pm ET
Small tech issues, hang on in there. My laptop seems to have decided that today is over... back shortly with more updates from Geena Davis' speech.
block-time published-time 4.51pm ET
Closing remarks from Geena Davis, Academy Award-Winning Actor, Founder and Chair of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media
We know from extensive research that media images are an incredibly powerful force in shaping negative images of women and damaging self esteem, Davis says.
However, media and media images can be equally powerful as a force for good. Media can be the cure for the damage it has created.
Davis' TV role as a female president has apparently had a direct effect on the number of people who would vote for a female president.
block-time published-time 4.30pm ET
Apparently Geena Davis is on her way... watch this space.
block-time published-time 4.28pm ET
The 2015 WEPs event stakeholders statement
This ten point statement draws on themes identified by WEPs stakeholders and proposes a way forward for government, business and other stakeholder collaboration and partnership to advance gender equality.
We have all been invited to stand and pledge our commitment to these principles and demonstrate our support. You can read the full statement here. This is a hugely important movement and one which I would urge everyone to get involved with - pledge your support and spread the word through your network.
block-time published-time 4.15pm ET
And we're back. More updates on the way... we have one final session, followed by closing remarks from Geena Davis.
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Next up is Melsa Ararat, Director of the Corporate Governance Forum, and Professor of Management & Strategy at Sabanci University, School of Management.
She shares the shocking statistic that three women are killed in Turkey every day through domestic violence. Ararat conducted a survey to look at how partner violence affects women in leadership positions. They found that violence had affected a huge number of women, across all levels of education and seniority. One in every five educated women in management positions is exposed to domestic abuse.
Businesses have the power and the capacity to influence the community and society. Violence negatively affects work performance, and stops women developing their full potential. Businesses have a role in play in stamping out this issue, she explains, creating a culture of zero tolerance towards inequality at work and initiating policies that can help to protect employees from violence.
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Selin Oz, Marketing and Communications Officer, Entrepreneurial Banking, Garanti Bank is talking about the importance of supporting women entrepreneurs.
Women can be more risk averse, she says, which is why role models and group support is so important. Garanti Bank is tailoring products to meet the needs of female entrepreneurs and has created a support package to help women build their business.
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Neha Misra, Chief Collaboration Officer at Solar Sister, begins by explaining the concept of 'energy poverty.'
Energy poverty means 1.6 million people in the world, a quarter of humanity, are living in absolute darkness - with no access to electricity, or cooking technology.
Solar Sister creates vital access to clean energy technology by building and extending the supply chain through women's rural networks. Solar Sister provides the women with a 'business in a bag', a start-up kit of inventory, training and marketing support. The women become their own bosses, creating sustainable businesses.
Big change can come from really small stuff.
block-time published-time 2.50pm ET
We've just been shown a video, The Beauty of Red, made by Menstrupedia, highlighted by Mills as a great example of a disruptive business, challenging ingrained stereotypes and helping to educate young women.
block-time published-time 2.39pm ET
Panel: exploring key models for business, investing and networks
This is the final panel discussion of the conference, moderated by Katherine Miles, Consultant at Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH (GIZ) and Development Director, Global Business Initiative on Human Rights.
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Jo Confino has asked Broderick if she can offer any advice to people about being disruptive when they don't feel they have the power to do so.
Broderick says that you have power in certain spheres - use that power to disrupt. If you don't have the influence to make a difference on a national level then reach out to those who can.
block-time published-time 2.24pm ET
Broderick is sharing more examples of how the ' male champions of change ' are taking steps to fight for gender equality in the workplace.
The first is a move towards flexible working, so that work and care do not need to sit at opposite ends. 'We need to turn the expectation that people are available 24/7 around - everyone, from the CEO down should work on a flexible schedule,' she explains.
Another is the 'panel pledge': the group have pledged not to speak at any events that do not have a fair representation of women.
The final message is to always ask the question. 50:50, if not, why not? Unless we actively and intentionally include women, the system will unintentionally exclude them.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 2.24pm ET
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Lets not pretend that there aren't already established norms: men invented the system, men largely run the system, men need to change the system.
This is a quote from a man who is part of a group, compiled by Broderick, bringing together some of the most powerful men in the country to drive gender diversity.
block-time published-time 2.08pm ET
Elizabeth Broderick, Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Australian Human Rights Commission and Chair, WEPs Leadership Group
Elizabeth Broderick starts by asking why change is so slow. She believes we haven't embraced the diversity challenge on an emotional level. Our ingrained beliefs are clashing with the case for change.
If we want to deliver equality for women, we have to focus on men.
It's not about men speaking for us, it's about working in partnership and standing side by side, she says.
block-time published-time 1.51pm ET
We asked Sallie Krawcheck to share the one key message she would like to communicate to conference delegates today. Here is what she had to say.
block-time published-time 1.29pm ET
Jo Confino has brought the discussion round to climate change. If women were in positions of power, would we be able to solve some of the major issues facing the planet today?
Women tend to have a longer term perspective, they tend to think more in terms of relationships, responds Krawcheck.
So women will save the planet? he asks.
'Well, you said it...'
block-time published-time 1.26pm ET
Gender bias doesn't go away because we want it to. Krawcheck uses an example of a man and a woman, both described as 'aggressive' - it was seen as a positive in the male candidate, while it was a negative for the woman. She acknowledges that at the time, she didn't realise this was a biased reaction.
Krawcheck suggests three action points.
Firstly, we need to invest our time, share ideas, leads and thoughts. Who you know is what you know, so take time to network. She states firmly that this is a better approach than quotas.
Secondly, we must use our voice. Have the conversation with our company, asking them to align with our values.
Finally: investment. Our investments can be hugely powerful, if they are directed towards companies that make a difference.
block-time published-time 1.20pm ET
Krawcheck is speaking passionately about how women should embrace what makes them different, what they bring to the table.
Women drive a positive through economic engagement. Men's number one reason for accepting a job is money. For women, it is meaning and purpose.
There is much discussion is about 'fixing' women, making them act like men. What if we ask them to act like women? To bring this sense of meaning and purpose into the workplace.
This drive for meaning and purpose extends to where the money is invested. 'Emerging investors' - mainly women and millennials - want to make a profit and a positive impact. What if Wall St offered the opportunity to invest with purpose - the dollars are so big that this could make an impact very quickly.
block-time published-time 1.15pm ET
Keynote remarks: Sallie Krawcheck, Chair, Ellevate
Sallie Krawcheck will be delivering her keynote during lunch. She describes herself as a 'recovering research analyst.'
Good things happen when women and money come together.
When women are in senior positions, there are, among other things, higher returns on capital, lower risk, greater innovation, lower gender pay disparities... Diverse teams outperform smarter teams.
But we all know this already. I want to shift the frame and expand the discussion, she says.
She uses Wall St as an example. 'Diversity in corporate America has gone sideways in recent years. In banking it has gone backwards'.
block-time published-time 12.34pm ET
This has been a really interesting session - what has stood out for me is the importance of visible changes and policies. It isn't enough for a company do make internal changes quietly, it needs to shout about it, share best practice and encourage other companies to do the same.
There is also a strong business case for improving diversity and female empowerment: share these statistics, and others will follow.
block-time published-time 12.32pm ET
The active management of talent drives more progress than passive commitments.
Aniela Unguresan, Founder, EDGE Certified Foundation.
block-time published-time 12.28pm ET
The motherhood pay gap has been raised again. How can we get past the stereotypes about working mothers and flexible working?
Dan Briskin believes that there should be a flexible approach to work for all employees, not just women;not just mothers. This allows everyone to 'lean in' or 'lean back' at different times in their career. He describes a policy that Gap initiated which measures results not when or where you work.
The flexibility programmes have an impact when both men and women use them equally - helping to remove the stigma that sometimes accompanies flexible working, says Aniela Unguresan, Founder of EDGE Certified Foundation.
block-time published-time 12.07pm ET
If you had all of the resources in the world, what would you hope to achieve, asks Carmen Niethammer.
Anka Wittenberg: 'We don't need a diversity and inclusion officer anymore; that it is simply part of our DNA.'
block-time published-time 11.59am ET
33% is the threshold where an under-represented group starts to have a voice.
block-time published-time 11.57am ET
Anka Wittenberg, Chief, Diversity and Inclusion, SAP Germany, is pointing out that a lot of products do not cater for women (she uses the example of cars, and the fact that there is nowhere to put a purse or bag), even though women are the main consumer. This is because the entire design team is made up of men.
According to the company's research, the industry that retains the best female talent throughout the pipeline is utilities, followed by oil and gas. She believes this is because these are industries where female talent is scarce, so these companies are taking care of the female talent that they have.
block-time published-time 11.51am ET
The discussion has moved on to one of the most common issues for women in the workplace: balancing caregiving commitments with work.
Avra Siege, Director of Public Policy and Strategic Partnerships, Care.com explains that women represent 40% of primary breadwinners in America, and in two thirds of families both parents work. Yet women still remain the main caregivers - 50% of workers are caring for someone else. Because care is so limited, and so many companies don't account for care commitments; this is pushing a lot of women out of the workplace.
Companies need to share best practices, putting a spotlight on these issues and create healthy competition. Through the SheWorks programme, Care.com has increased their maternity leave - Siege quotes a stat about the benefits of maternity leave: children of women who took maternity leave had 5% higher wages by age 30.
block-time published-time 11.39am ET
Heloisa Covolan, Director of Sustainability, Itaipu Binacional describes the steps her company has taken to advance gender equality in the workforce in a very male dominated industry.
Itaipu Binacional held a number of workshops with all the women in the company in Brazil and Paraguay - two areas with different cultures but a lot of the same issues. These workshops resulted in a number of HR changes, such as special conditions for pregnant employees and more flexibility for parents.
In 10 years, there has been a 100% increase in women in management positions.
block-time published-time 11.32am ET
Dan Briskin, VP of HR and Employee Relations at Gap says that the company's motto is 'do more than sell clothes.'
We know 65% of the purchase decision in our sector are made by women, he says. Being in tune with those customers is crucial for the business.
What's good for women is good for business.
Pay equity, career mobility and flexibility are the cornerstones of Gap's approach to gender equality. The company undertook a transparent pay analysis - there is currently no pay gap between male and female employees. The company has also raised the minimum hourly wage. Applications for employment has increased as a result, as has employee retention.
The company also has a programme called PACE, geared towards the women in the company's supply chain. More info here.
block-time published-time 11.10am ET
Principles into practice - workplace
After a brief coffee break, we're back. For the next hour or so, there will be four different sessions running in different locations. The session I'll be covering will explore the cutting edge policies and practices that are creating and improving employment opportunities for women and how these strategies can be scaled up to overcome persistent challenges and barriers.
Carmen Niethammer, Employment Lead, Gender Secretariat, International Finance Corporation is leading the session. My British accent has already caused some amusement, which is always a good start...
block-time published-time 10.48am ET
Here are a few of the tweets from this morning's panel discussion.
To end this #inequality that we talk about, we've got to use technology. - #WEPs audience participant
- WEPs (@WEPrinciples) March 11, 2015
No woman should ever have to ask her partner's permission to save her own life. @BruceCampbell#WEPs#EqualityMeansBusiness
- L'Oréal Diversity (@lorealdiversity) March 11, 2015
" @WEPrinciples :Confidence and self-esteem are powers that can bring out untapped potential. - @Jiniminitini#WEPs "
- Nili Majumder (@NiliMajumder) March 11, 2015
block-time published-time 10.44am ET
A few final thoughts from the panel:
We should expect equality, not have to ask for it, says Gregorczyk.
Patel: 'We should all continue to be mentors for young women. You can use technology to learn technology - we should all be encouraging children to think about how technology works and show them what computer science really is.'
Button: 'We need to solve the inequality issue both from the bottom up - through education - and from the top down, by supporting women and helping them rise up through the industry.'
block-time published-time 10.28am ET
Disparity is widening, and it's an issue of access. So many people in the world don't have access to a mobile phone, says Bruce Campbell, therefore they can't benefit from the progress that technology offers. Private companies need to focus on this and concentrate on increasing access so that we can start to close this gap.
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In the 90s there were more female computer science grads than there are now, what happened? asks an audience member.
Telle Whitney responds:
Image is one of the biggest issues that we face. Many women don't see themselves as computer scientists - they have an idea that you just sit in front of a computer and type.
block-time published-time 10.12am ET
The people we're developing in STEM right now won't be in the workplace until 2030, argues Meagan Gregorczyk. We can't wait that long. She points out that while education and encouraging more women to study STEM subjects is hugely important, we also need to focus on the women who are working in the industry right now, and how we can open up more opportunities for them.
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One audience member has pointed out that no one yet has really focused on the importance of education. You can't begin the process of change when people are already in the workplace, he says - you have to start teaching children about the importance of diversity and equality at a very young age.
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Bruce Campbell, Director, Technical Division at UNFPA is asking us to focus on the young girls coming up through the education system and thinking about the role that tech will play in their life and work. Can we remove the barriers that may hold them back? What role can tech play in removing these barriers?
block-time published-time 9.55am ET
Women are the ones who go out and buy a lot of the tech and appliances around the house, yet none of these products are being created by women, Jinisha Patel, Organizer of the International Women's Hackathon, points out.
The subject of role models comes up again: 'If I didn't have a computer science teacher who believes in me, I wouldn't be studying tech,' Patel says.
block-time published-time 9.52am ET
We want girls to have role models who work in tech, says Candace Button of Facebook. She emphasises the importance of networks: building a support group of people inspire you. Would it have been better if half of my role models were female? she asks. Of course.
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Meagan Gregorczyk, Director, HR, CA Technologies is making an important point about the language we use to talk about women in tech.
I hear so many stories about the barriers to women in the tech industry. I think we have a responsibility to talk about the industry in a positive way - there are women running companies and leading in the tech industry, and we need to talk more about this, she says. We need to work on creating a more inclusive environment.
block-time published-time 9.34am ET
Panel: tech and women's rights
The first panel of the day is focussing on the tech industry and will be moderated by Telle Whitney, CEO and President, Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology.
She begins by talking about the impact of technology on our lives - looking to the future, tech innovation has the potential for empowering women, their families and their lives worldwide.
Whitney goes on to share some sobering stats: only 18% of computer science graduates in the US are women. Women hold between 10 and 15% of the senior positions in tech. In the tech industry, only 7% of the venture capital goes to women-owned businesses.
Belinda Parmar wrote a great piece for us recently about the importance of changing these stats by transforming some ingrained stereotypes about the industry.
block-time published-time 9.22am ET
Here we go - opening remarks, day two
Ursula Wynhoven, General Counsel & Chief, Governance and Social Sustainability, UN Global Compact and Kristin Hetle, Director of Strategic Partnerships, UN Women are welcoming delegates. They are repeating a key message from yesterday about the crucial role of the private sector in driving forward gender equality.
Hetle says she listened to yesterday's speakers with 'a rising feeling of joy.' I can really relate to this - yesterday was an incredibly positive day, full of success stories. There is a long way to go, but I think it is important not to forget how far we've come and celebrate our successes.
Barriers has fallen between business and women's organisations and governments.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 9.25am ET
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Yesterday was incredibly inspiring, I still can't believe quite how much was packed into four hours! As I have a brief moment of calm before today begins in earnest, now seems like a good time to share some of the tweets from the event so far. Follow us on @gdnwomenleaders for more updates, or check out #WEPs.
Women & girls' empowerment is essential to economic and social progress. That's why it's important to have biz on board. @LizBroderick#WEPs
- WEPs (@WEPrinciples) March 10, 2015
" @WEPrinciples : When women have confidence and self esteem, we are going to have something wonderful. -Luz María Jaramillo @PavcolSAS " #WEPs
- Empower Women (@Empower_Women) March 10, 2015
Women's rights are human rights. Human rights are women's rights #UNSG#WhenWomenThrive#WEPShttp://t.co/j9vvl6Y7YJpic.twitter.com/2N0Sa5O9xq
- Mercer (@MercerInsights) March 10, 2015
block-time published-time 8.34am ET
Day two: welcome back
Welcome back to the Women's Empowerment Principles annual event. It's day two, and we have a new venue, the Wyndham New Yorker hotel, and a slightly different format - today will be much more interactive, with panel discussions, breakout sessions and networking. The closing remarks will be delivered by the fantastic Geena Davis around 5pm EDT/9pm GMT.
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That's all for now!
I'm off to give my eyes a bit of a screen break and enjoy all the fine wine New York has to offer. I'll be back tomorrow, kicking off at 9am EDT/1pm GMT.
block-time published-time 5.35pm ET
One more thing...
Thanks to a computer glitch at a rather crucial moment, a couple of updates on Hillary Clinton's keynote address got a little lost in the internet void.
I'd just like to add in a link to No Ceilings: The Full Participation Project, and a report that has been produced in partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which Clinton mentioned in her address. As you'll see if you take a look, the report includes a huge number of inspiring stories, as well as a wealth of data to help us understand how far we've come and how far we have to go when it comes to gender equality and women's empowerment across the world.
block-time published-time 5.29pm ET
Closing remarks from H.E. Zorana Mihajlovic, Deputy Prime Minister, and Minister of Construction, Transport & Infrastructure, Republic of Serbia
Mihajlovic is of four women in Serbian government.
She says that there is a long way to go in Serbia when it comes to gender equality: at job interviews, women are often told that the job is 'not suitable for women' and more remarks are often made about appearance than what they have to say. Only 10% of women are in the leading positions in companies.
Each country must create conditions where everyone has an equal chance to work.
In Serbia, 75 companies signed the WEPs to commit to equality, an important step forward.
We must fight for this every second; women and men.
Mihajlovic ends by saying 'thank you for your commitment, she says. Let's keep moving and let's keep working.'
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González asks, what is the one change you would like to make to your company this year? She also suggests several hashtags for this discussion: #inclusivevaluechains #doinggoodanddoingbusiness and #businessforthelongterm
Barbara Landmann
I'd like to see at least 20% more women join me as one of the top 200 women at our company. If we set those goals in a very transparent way, and measure our progress I believe we can achieve this.
Karla Rodriguez Helgueros
To continue to empower women and get them out of their homes and replicate our success throughout the state.
block-time published-time 5.04pm ET
This panel is looking for suggestions for how to move 'faster and bigger' to close the gender pay gap and achieve gender equality, so each panelist will share thoughts and personal experiences.
Maurice Sehnaoui, Chairman General Manager, BLC Bank
BLC was the first bank in the region to join with the global women's alliance and sign the WEPs agreement.
There is a need to work with financial institutions so they understand the gender bias when it comes to lending to women. In 2012, there was an increase of 69% in loans to women and every year this amount is doubling. 'Within the bank itself, what is important is having equal opportunities for both genders, so we are reaching parity without discrimination,' Sehnaoui explains.
Actions speak louder than words. We need to eliminate bias - this is difficult but very important in a man's world.
Barbara Landmann, Senior Vice President, Field Force Operations, Alcatel-Lucent
The gender pay gap the company's French unit reduced from 7% to 1% in the space of one year. This is something the company is working to replicate in other regions. Landmann repeats the importance of having a plan and measuring progress and success.
What you measure will improve.
Gustavo Perez Berlanga, Vice President, Corporate Social Responsibility, Restaurantes TOKS
Perez Berlanga starts by emphasising the important of responsible business, of focussing on something more than just money.
He shares an inspiring story about a project aimed to empower women in the Central Mountains of Guanajuato in Mexico.
The women started a business producing marmalade, and first made under $80 USD per month. In 2006, the Toks restaurant chain started a partnership with these entrepreneurs and in 2014, these women sold more than $500,000 USD to the restaurant chain.
He introduces Karla Rodriguez Helgueros, Project Manager, Cuerpos de Conservacion de Guanajuato Foundation - one of the women from the project.
I believe this company giving us their hand gave us an opportunity. We need more companies like this to generate and grow all over the world.
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Panel discussion: call for a new business/UN paradigm
It's time for the final panel discussion of the day, moderated by Arancha González, Executive Director, International Trade Centre.
First up, here is what González has to say about what the WEPs mean to her.
The WEPs are more than just a set of principles. They are a movement bringing together businesses, civil society and governments from all over the world around the simple idea that investing in women's economic empowerment is about investing in our societies. It's Annual Event provides an invaluable opportunity to exchange compelling data and case studies about women's economic empowerment, share them with the public via social media, and take the messages home to convince more corporations to sign up to the principles. Every current signatory could undertake to mentor ten new ones very year in a virtuous chain to expand the movement around the world.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 5.04pm ET
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Symon Brewis-Weston, Chief Executive Officer, Sovereign Assurance is the final award winner.
It's not just changing the numbers, it's about changing the culture. If we don't do something totally different, things are not going to change.
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Jean Pascal Tricoire, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer, Schneider Electric begins by saying that, in terms of gender equality, we are nowhere near where we should be.
When you work in technology and energy, it isn't a very female industry, he explains. It is an economic imperative for the company to achieve an equal workforce.
First we have to train men with gender awareness sessions, so people understand where the problem is, you also need to support women so they lean in and take the opportunities available.
Tricoire says that the WEPs have provided an important framework for changes within the company. It's not an easy transition, he says, but it is something that women and men must work on in partnership.
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Angélica Fuentes, Chief Executive Officer, Omnilife and Founder, Angelíssima; Founder and Chair of the Angélica Fuentes Foundation is the next winner.
On my watch, I wanted to create a different culture, Fuentes says. She wanted women to believe they can be more than simply a daughter, a wife or a mother.
'Words definitely move, but example pulls.' She says she wants to be an example and a role model to her young daughter, who is here today.
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Alexander Wrabetz, Director General, Österreichischer Rundfunk is next.
'When we started this process, it was clear we needed a plan. For this purpose, we implemented an equal opprtunity plan, with three main elements.' First, we have set quotas for all areas where women are underrepresented, he says. This has reduced the gender pay gap - there is a special budget dedicated to this cause.
Secondly, it is about changing the culture of an organisation. All employees have attended an equality workshop and the company is encouraging more men to take parental leave (we are shown a video of an employee talking about the benefits of taking leave and spending time with his son).
As a media company, we have a responsibility to our viewers and listeners - we have an underrepresentation of female experts, he explains, as women tend to be more modest, they question whether they are the right person. 'There are no men-only discussions now in my company.'
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Frank Vettese, Managing Partner and Chief Executive, Deloitte Canada is the first award winner.
I recently stopped talking about diversity and started talking about inclusion. It's about the inherent value of each person and an organisation must be flexible to draw that out.
We're taking direct action to change the composition of our leadership, he continues. Two of the five service areas of the company are now lead by women. The composition of the company's 30 person board went from three women to eight recently and as of tomorrow, the new CEO in the US is a woman. (This is met with a flood of applause.)
block-time published-time 3.41pm ET
WEPs CEO Leadership Awards
Elizabeth Broderick, Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Australian Human Rights Commission and Chair, WEPs Leadership Group has stepped up to introduce the awards.
If we don't actively and intentionally include women, the system will exclude them.
block-time published-time 3.38pm ET
An audience member, a student, has pointed out that there is a pipeline problem: we need to see WEPs in our textbooks and reflected where it all begins, in the classrooms. There is all round agreement.
Another audience member has asked about the role of men in women's empowerment. Each panelist offers some thoughts...
Shanaaz Preena: 'We run gender sensitivity awareness programmes, sensitising the men, empowering the women and setting a level playing field. A lot of men are amazed at how much they weren't aware of.'
Luz María Jaramillo de Méndez: 'This is really an issue that we have to be aware of - if we don't work shoulder to shoulder, men and women - we will not achieve anything. We've seen a lot of issues in a world led by men, we need to learn from history.'
Kalpona Akter: 'Until we work together, nothing will change. We need to be at the same table and discuss the issue.'
Karin Finkelston: 'The key point is that most of the business leaders are men. We need to take this up a notch in terms of letting people know the business case in empowering women.'
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Shanaaz Preena, Group Director, Human Resources, MAS Holdings is is sharing inspiring stories of the women their organisation has worked with, empowering them, giving them the opportunity to work and learn skills that allow them to support their families.
Karin Finkelston, Vice President, IFC Global Partnerships, World Bank Group starts by saying how inspiring it is to be here among so many wonderful stories.
Empowering women economically is key, she says. Investing in female entrepreneurs is a big part of this. Information is key: 'data not only measures progress, it inspires it.'
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Next is Luz María Jaramillo de Méndez, President, Pavimentos Colombia S.A.S, who talks about the steps her company has taken to promote gender equality - 50% of the company's executive management group are women.
'They say that in Colombia when you get a job you have a high risk that your boss will be a woman,' she jokes. An audience member asks why there are so many women leaders in business in Colombia.
Women are very studious, we work hard, she says. Women often take the lead, the role of a working mother is very common.
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Kalpona Akter, executive director of the Bangladesh Centre for Worker Solidarity is the first panelist to speak.
'There is a long road ahead for women's empowerment; women are silenced in the factories and at home,' she says. 'There is fear of losing our jobs, we are told we are worthless and shouldn't be leaders.'
Workers voices, especially those of women need to be included and listened to.
She describes the crucial role that global corporations can play: if they take meaningful action in their supply chain, much can be done in improving lives.
She introduces a young guest, an 18 year old girl who was working in a factory building when it collapsed. She is still waiting for compensation, as are over a thousand workers and families. She wants to let the world know that while women need these jobs, they want to work with dignity.
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Panel: not business as usual
Minor tech drama there... updates to follow!
In the meantime, we're moving on to the first of our panel discussions. Moderator Linda Tarr-Whelan, Former US Ambassador to the UN Commission on the Status of Women and Delegate to Fourth World Conference on Women has stepped up. She explains that each panelist with have four minutes to answer a question, followed by a 20 minute Q&A.
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'The business case for gender equality is also the human case. The WEPs community coming together marks the beginning of a new stage, a different kind of relationship between the business community and the UN,' says Joe Keefe.
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Joseph Keefe, President & Chief Executive Officer, Pax World Management and Chair, WEPs Leadership Group
As a businessperson, I have to look to the research. The key to building a more profitable business is inclusion. Where women are empowered, society prospers.
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Mary Robinson, United Nations Special Envoy for Climate Change
We have to take a combined approach, seeing that climate change, gender and human rights are all integrated.
'I'm very aware from travelling around the world that there is a difference of perception in different parts of the world about climate change', Robinson says.
Human-induced climate change might put countries out of business. This doesn't conform to the universal declaration of human rights.
What will out grandchildren say about what we did and didn't do in 2015? 'We need an alliance, to have a safe world for our children, grandchildren and their children.'
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She thanks delegates for all their work so far, and says that our role now is to pass the baton to a new generation.
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Clinton says these issues are still deeply personal for her. Her mother was born in a time where there weren't a lot of opportunities for women - but she always encouraged her daughter to work hard and believed in herself.
We are here to build on the progress of the past and seize the promise of the future.
She asks everyone to stop for a moment and think of the women who have made a difference in our lives. The relatives, the teachers...
Clinton reminds us to remember those women and men on the frontlines, doing the sometimes dangerous work of holding up the possibility of freedom.
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There has never been a better time in history to be born a woman. But we're still not there yet. More than 30 million girls never go on to secondary school. Every year more than a million girls are never born because of gender biased sex selection. More than half the nations in the world still have no laws preventing domestic violence.
Rights have to exist in practice, not just on paper. They have to be made real in people's lives.
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Clinton begins by harking back to Beijing and the Platform for Action, reflecting on the progress so far. The momentum for change is here, she says. She applauds everyone who has worked to make sure the stories of women and girls are not lost. The progress of the past 20 years was not an accident.
block-time published-time 2.13pm ET
Keynote address: Hon. Hillary Rodham Clinton
The full participation of women and girls is the great unfinished business of the 21st century - and not just for women. For everyone.
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H.E. Ban Ki-moon, United Nations secretary general stands to add his welcome. He describes the launch of the WEPs, explaining that the ambition was to deeply engage businesses on gender equality and sustainability. Nearly 1000 companies have now made a commitment to implement the guiding principles.
He asks for everyone's help - spreading the word among business networks and encouraging more business leaders to join the movement and commit to the WEPs. 'We need to work together and hold ourselves and others accountable.'
Women's rights are human rights, human rights are women's rights.
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Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, under-secretary-general and executive director, UN Women is welcoming delegates, including a 'future president' - this is immediately met with deafening applause.
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And we're off...
The Guardian's Jo Confino takes to the stage first. He welcomes everyone to the event, commenting on the excitement and energy in the room. He has asked for a minute's silence, giving everyone the opportunity to remember those who have come before us and paved the way.
block-time published-time 1.21pm ET
A bit of background
The Women's Empowerment Principles were launched on International Women's Day 2010, providing guidance to businesses on empowering women in the workplace, marketplace and community. You can read more about them here.
This year is particularly important as it marks the twentieth anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action, launched at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995. This mission statement has played a key role in many of the developments in gender equality and women's empowerment in recent years.
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Welcome to the Women's Empowerment Principles annual conference
Hello from sunny New York! Over the next couple of days we'll be reporting live from the WEPs annual conference. We'll be chatting to attendees and speakers, sharing highlights from the event and keeping you up to date with all developments.
This is a chance for the business community, as well as leaders from government and the UN, to discuss the advancement of gender equality in the workplace and beyond.
If you'd like to have a look at the programme, read about what's coming up and find out more about the speakers, all the information you need is here. The impressive lineup of speakers includes Hillary Clinton, who will deliver the keynote address this afternoon.
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The Guardian
March 11, 2015 Wednesday 3:47 PM GMT
Mark Carney defends Bank of England over climate change study;
Governor hits back at Nigel Lawson's description of research into effects of global warming on insurance industry as 'green claptrap'
BYLINE: Jennifer Rankin
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 552 words
Climate change is one of the biggest risks facing the insurance industry, the governor of the Bank of England has said after a former Conservative chancellor dismissed a study on global warming as "green claptrap".
Speaking at the House of Lords, Mark Carney mounted a robust defence of the Bank's work on the impact of climate change on the insurance industry in the face of claims by Nigel Lawson that it had its priorities wrong.
Lawson, who has claimed "there is no global warming to speak of going on at the moment", a view that puts him outside the overwhelming scientific consensus, attacked the bank for "focusing on green claptrap" rather than the remaining problems in the UK's financial sector.
Lawson was referring to a recent speech by Paul Fisher, a senior policymaker at the Bank, who warned insurers they could take a "huge hit" by investing in fossil fuels, which could collapse in value if action is taken to curb greenhouse gas emissions in line with scientific advice. Fisher is deputy head of the Bank's Prudential Regulation Authority, which supervises insurers and banks with the aim of ensuring financial stability.
The Bank has recently surveyed the insurance industry on its fossil fuel investments, as it investigates the risk of an economic crash if action on climate change renders oil and gas assets worthless. The contribution from Threadneedle Street is expected to be published after the election by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) as part of a bigger report on the impact of climate change.
More frequent storms, hotter summers and an increase in flooding have driven up the global insurance industry's annual weather-related losses to $200bn (£133bn) a year - a fourfold increase in 30 years. But the insurance industry's investments in fossil fuel companies have attracted less attention.
Carney told the Lords economic affairs committee that the potential impact of climate change was a fundamental issue for industry regulators. "In the insurance business one of the top risks is climate change... it is absolutely essential to oversee and supervise the third largest insurance market in the world."
Carney said the issue of stranded carbon - where coal, oil and gas may have to be left in the ground - was about proper reporting to determine the true value of corporate assets. "It could well be the case that [the insurance industry] is well provisioned, but we have a responsibility to run that down."
The Bank last year added its voice to growing concern about the risks of a "carbon bubble" to the global economy. As oil and gas companies are among the biggest in the world, a sudden collapse in asset prices could trigger an economic crash.
At a World Bank meeting last year, Carney said the vast majority of fossil fuel reserves may be "unburnable" if global temperatures are to be limited to 2C, as pledged by the world's governments.
Earlier in the session at the Lords, which ranged widely over economic and monetary policy, Carney said he expected inflation to fall to 0% and stay there for much of the rest of the year. The consumer price index tumbled to 0.3% in January, raising fears of deflation. However, Carney said it would be foolish for the Bank to resort to financial stimulus to fight the "one-time adjustment" of falling oil prices.
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The Guardian
March 11, 2015 Wednesday 2:38 PM GMT
The current economic development model is defunct - we need to ditch it;
A radical shift in distribution to favour the poorest is the only way to reconcile the twin challenges of halting catastrophic climatic change and ending poverty
BYLINE: Andrew Simms
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 1063 words
21 months and counting
What is development? To many conventional economists it has been China, though not without irony. Its export-led development model and advantage in all economic sectors created its superpower status, and left it accounting for the vast majority of those lifted out of extreme poverty globally.
But there's a problem with the model. "Beijing is not a liveable city," said the city's mayor, Wang Anshun, recently. The price of rapid industrialisation and urbanisation has been pollution: air not fit to breathe, and visitor numbers declining - a sort of anti-development. It's a crisis echoed in India where recent research estimated pollution caused the collective loss of 2.1bn life years.
Knowing it has a problem, India announced a plan to double coal taxes to pay for clean, renewable energy alternatives . In China premier Li Keqiang announced a lower economic growth target, a much harder line on environmental safeguards and a reduced dependence on energy intensive manufacturing for export. China plans to reduce energy use per unit of GDP by 3.1% in 2015 and has a longer-term ambition for the middle of the century to cap coal use at half of total energy consumption.
But lower growth still means growth at 7%. At that rate, the Chinese economy, already the world's second largest, will double in size in 10 years. To underline an obvious but often overlooked fact, in terms of climate change, it doesn't matter how much you improve the energy intensity of your economy if the economy itself grows by a higher factor. Emissions still rise. This is the current picture globally.
Relative efficiency improvements by some nations, such as the UK can also flatter to deceive, because they don't account for how economies that become more service-driven tend to export their emissions along with their manufacturing.
China is relatively resource poor. To fuel its extraordinary growth and exports, since the early 1970s it has needed more natural resources than its own ecosystems can provide.
Per person, China's ecological footprint is more than double what its own land, fisheries and forests can provide. Carbon emissions are a big part of that footprint too, even though a significant proportion are accounted for by producing goods ultimately consumed elsewhere. And here's the challenge. Tens of millions in China still live below the absolute poverty line of $1.25 a day, and the nation has relied on a model of export-led resource intensive development to tackle that. Something which itself relies on a model of the world's existing wealthy and over-consuming people buying still more of their exports.
That, in turn, puts more pressure on the land and forests of Africa, other parts of Asia and Latin America, as China scours the world for resources. Take China out of the global poverty reduction equation, however, and you're left with vanishingly little progress. Now, the costs of China's approach, both at home and abroad, are forcing a rethink. But the whole world is part of the model pointing to the need for systemic change.
Later this year the world will agree to a new set of global goals on sustainable development to replace the millennium development goals (MDGs).
Among many other goals these will include commitments to end poverty in all its forms everywhere, prevent dangerous climate change, and to promote sustained and sustainable economic growth. But, with the current economic models, are these goals remotely compatible? A new paper in the journal World Economic Review shows the global economy on a wildly unequal trajectory that makes this not just unlikely, but absurd. Updating and further developing our joint research of 2006, David Woodward reveals how the share of the world's poorest in economic growth shrank over three decades from 1980.
Those living below $1.25 and $2 per day have been getting an ever smaller slice of a growing cake. That means, paradoxically, the world's already wealthy must consume disproportionately more to raise the incomes of the poorest.
As a result, ending poverty under the current model is slow, inefficient and runs into practical, planetary problems. The scale of the global economy is already pushing us into ecological overshoot.
Woodward calculates that because of the gap between rich and poor, on current trends, to get everyone in the world to at least the fairly miserable, $1.25 per day absolute poverty line, would still take another 100 years. It would also require a global economy about 10 times the size of the overburdening one we have already. Worldwide, average per capita income would need to be $100,000.
For meaningful progress - getting everyone on to $5 per day, which is more in keeping with meeting basic needs - would take two centuries and require GDP per person of $1m. It's why Woodward called his paper ' Incrementum ad Absurdum,' and why he comments, understatedly, " We cannot realistically hope to achieve this through existing instruments of development policy."
To assume such a course of action is viable requires both magical thinking and being in denial about how the economy is still allowed to operate. Just last month alone the boss of oil company BP took a 25% pay rise while company salaries were frozen, and the chief of Barclays bank took £5.5m in pay while the bank was in the process of cutting 19,000 jobs. Economic decisions ranging from airport expansion to tropical deforestation are justified for their contribution to development - however self-serving on the part of the developer.
But it is becoming fashionable to argue that the climate debate should not be loaded with the broader ambitions of progressive politics, to get a better deal for the poor and the marginalised. But what if these two issues are genuinely hard-wired? The world is signing-up to end all poverty. The physics of planetary boundaries means in global aggregate terms we need to consume less. So, to stay the right side of environmental thresholds, a radical shift in distribution to favour the poorest becomes the only way to reconcile the twin challenges of halting catastrophic climatic upheaval and 'ending poverty'.
While the citizens of New Delhi and Beijing choke through smogs to get to work each day, we now have to peer through the veils of defunct development models to find a different, better collective future.
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The Guardian
March 11, 2015 Wednesday 1:34 PM GMT
Republicans' new climate strategy: just ban the words 'climate change';
Florida governor Rick Scott's language prohibition for state employees is forefront of climate denialism as public policy
BYLINE: Jeb Lund
SECTION: COMMENT IS FREE
LENGTH: 1099 words
You might have missed it, but Florida has solved climate change. Our state, with 1,300 miles of coastline and a mean elevation of 100 feet, did not, however, limit greenhouse emissions. Instead, the state's Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), under Republican governor Rick Scott, forbade employees from using terms like "climate change," "global warming" or "sea-level rise". They're all gone now. You're welcome, by the way.
It's pointless to call linguistic distortions of reality like this Orwellian: people tune you out when you use that word and, besides, Big Brother at least had wit. These are just the foot-stamping insistent lies of intellectual toddlers on the grift. It is "nuh-uh" as public policy. This is an elected official saying, "I put a bag over your head, so that means now I'm invisible" and then going out looting. Expect to see it soon wherever you live.
The Florida Center for Investigative Reporting broke the news on Sunday, stating that the prohibition on the terms "climate change," "global warming" and "sea-level rise" went into effect after Scott's inauguration. Former DEP counsel Christopher Byrd and five other former employees stated that the policy was unwritten and "distributed verbally". Even when working on projects with people outside their department, employees had to scrub reports of any mention of the terms and, when necessary, replace them with euphemisms. For instance, "Sea-level rise was to be referred to as 'nuisance flooding'" - like your high-rise atop the San Andreas fault features an "increased likelihood of intermittent wobbliness".
The unwritten nature of the rule was perfect for Scott, who issued a non-denial denial when pressed by reporters in Tallahassee. When it comes to the tough questions, Scott's happy to plead ignorance or claim he wasn't there at the time. The same guy who abused his Fifth Amendment privilege a whopping 75 times before his company was assessed $1.7b in fines for Medicare and Medicaid fraud knows the value of not having to defend a policy that "doesn't exist" (just as much as climate change "doesn't exist").
Making the science invisible is a much better plan than the current Republican strategy of foregoing all policy decisions by pretending to be too stupid to understand science. Scott already tried the "I'm not a scientist!" excuse anyway, and for his troubles had to entertain a clutch of scientists in Tallahassee trying to explain climate change to him. He gave them a 30-minute limit, spent nearly half of it on chit-chat, stonefaced through the remainder and then bolted.
Claiming that you're not a scientist trips you up when you do other science-based things with the same tools. For instance : Scott's environmental policies read like a textbook version of regulatory capture, slashing budgets while staffing agencies with developers and their lawyers. Environmental regulation enforcement dropped by two-thirds while DEP staffers were given bonuses for accelerating permitting for development. Meanwhile, Scott capped environmental penalties for Big Sugar and fought the federal government on clean-water standards. Homeboy made scientific decisions like he was slogging through the 'Glades in hip-waders, dipping litmus paper in graduated cylinders, testing for phosphate runoff and not finding nearly enough.
The contradiction between not being educated enough to understand science, but being smarmy enough to deregulate in the face of it, only emphasize how political his decisions are, because "I'm not a scientist" only works on voters if they think you are categorically an idiot.
Unfortunately, Scott has a history of being a political animal who repeatedly seeks to disappear the problematic. For example, revelations of his "climate change"-as-a-word denialism came just weeks after Scott possibly illegally met with cabinet members over the dismissal of the nearly-universally praised Florida Department of Law Enforcement Commissioner Gerald Bailey. Bailey charged that Scott's office demanded his resignation after Bailey refused to : falsely tie a Clerk of Court to an ongoing criminal investigation; expedite a criminal investigation of a Scott appointee; allow FDLE vehicles to be used for Scott's 2014 campaign events; and help write Scott's law-enforcement platform for the campaign. When asked to rebut Bailey's charges, Scott replied, "The facts are the facts and I've given you the facts." Every word of that statement that's not an article or a conjunction is meaningless. At least he's consistent.
Leaving aside Scott's propensity for burner phones, private emails and blind trusts, his administration's record for attempting to "disappear" problems impacts non-Floridians more than they realize. Scott's budget-balancing, for instance, sought to reduce costs by subjecting welfare applicants and government employees to mandatory drug tests. This gambit tanked when Florida spent nearly $400,000 in legal fees failing to defend the law and only nabbed 2.6% of welfare applicants in a state with a population-wide drug use rate of 8%. Still, the state had to reimburse the 97.4% of applicants who passed - at a rate of $30 per test - which, rounding up, worked out to a projected whopping $100,000 total in annual savings on welfare payouts. Whether the mandatory tests benefitted any of Scott's friends in his former health care business, or any health care businesses in which he is currently invested (through those blind trusts!) or directly benefited the Solantic Corporation, which he previously owned and temporarily transferred into a revocable trust in his wife's name, is anyone's guess. What is certain is that Republicans in 12 other states think that mandatory drug tests for welfare applicants are a great idea.
That's the problem with Weird Florida jokes: like the old Molly Ivins line about George W Bush and Texas, if it failed here, why not try it on the rest of the nation? "I'm not a scientist!" is a grifter idiot's special plea that works even better when the government's policies recognize nothing at all like science. North Carolina, Louisiana and Tennessee have all, to a certain extent, tried to solve climate change by either officially obfuscating it or penalizing the act of not ignoring it. In a modern Republican Party increasingly not only impervious to fact but outright hostile toward it, that's an idea that travels well. And if refusing to use the words "climate change" is enough to politically erase a global phenomenon guaranteed to drown Florida's most populous city, then who knows who or what else won't exist next?
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The Guardian
March 11, 2015 Wednesday 1:22 PM GMT
The personal is political - we have to change how we live
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 1212 words
The Guardian's focus on climate change is to be welcomed ( Why we put the climate on the cover, 7 March) - but needs to inform all its political and economic content for years to come and not be just one more issue that is addressed and ticked off before attention moves elsewhere again. I am hoping there will be much to stimulate readers around what we can do, as individuals and communities, actively to hobble the headlong rush of humanity over the precipice.
Related: Capitalism v the environment | Letters
For a start, with the election looming, we can challenge candidates and parties on their commitments. This could, for example, involve redirecting the £6bn of subsidies for the fossil-fuel industry away from anything to do with extraction and towards clean and renewable sources of energy. It could bring an end to fracking in the UK and re-establish the pre-eminence of the Climate Change Act over the recent covert introduction of conflicting commitments in the Infrastructure Act. Simple questions, the answers to which may determine whether a candidate deserves your vote or not.
And we need to confront one of the great "socially constructed silences" ( thank you, George Marshall ) around climate change. We need to reduce our demand for energy: to accept we can no longer do what we want, when we want, without taking into account the impact on the world around us and on future generations. It might be a message that the Guardian's advertisers are uncomfortable seeing promoted, but we need to consume less, or Monty Python's M Creosote sketch may come to feel like a prescient allegory for the last years of the Anthropocene. Dave HunterBristol
Related: Working towards practical solutions to climate change | Letters
· Naomi Klein is right to say ( Report, 7 March ) that regardless of how hard I try to live differently, I inevitably blink first. Even if I fully acknowledge what is happening, what choice do I have but to continue living in the world as it is? Every time I get into my car, I look away. Every time I buy something, I look away. Every time I heat my house, I look away. But if I cannot look to governments to take a lead, I have no choice but to look to my own actions. Surely the only way is that we each do what we can, with what we have, where we are. Individual life changes do count, both psychologically and materially. They hasten the tipping point.
It is hypocritical for those who realise the immensity of the threat to continue living as if individual efforts make no difference - especially flying the world to attend ironic conferences about climate change. If there is a way to live now, one which effectively out-stares the monster of climate change, surely those who know this have an obligation to set an example, to show how it can be done. Martin SandbrookMinchinhampton, Gloucestershire
· There is a simple way to cut our personal greenhouse gas emissions by 50% overnight. Stop eating meat and dairy. The UN calculates that 51% of all greenhouse gas emission impacts derive from animal agriculture (direct and indirect CO2 emissions, plus other impacts such as methane and ammonia - as reported in Pollutionwatch, 9 March 2015). Meat and dairy also account for massive freshwater pollution through agricultural run-off; soil erosion (as highlighted in the Guardian many times by George Monbiot); the feeding of over 70% of the world's human-fit grain to animals; depletion of fish in the oceans (ground fishmeal is a common ingredient of animal feed); the waste of vast amounts of fresh water; habitat destruction and land misuse on a huge scale - not least the destruction of rainforest, particularly in the Amazon basin, driven by cattle grazing and soya production, the majority of which is fed to animals.
Related: Sustainable art and architecture | Letters
Going vegan is by far the most effective single action individuals can take to cut emissions, much more effective than fiddling with your central heating, or changing your car, or holiday destination. Going vegan has none of the time lags of other efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; you can do it today, with immediate effect and with zero cost. Miles HalpinWirksworth, Derbyshire
· You would think, reading most of what is written, that a greener life is a harder life. It's as if the major changes consumers need to make to prevent climate catastrophe involve hair-shirt privation. Naomi Klein alludes only briefly to the notion that a society run within our means would be a better one for all, both individually and collectively.
But where we live more simply and locally, our mental and physical health is enhanced and we also have far less impact on the environment. And for people to make these changes, there is no need to wait for the government or scientists. It is our consumption of their products that makes producers increase carbon emissions. We must emphasise the many positives of a life free from addiction to fossil fuels. Barry O'DonovanLondon
Related: The importance of living your values | Letters
· Naomi Klein acknowledges that the carbon emitted into the atmosphere remains there for hundreds of years. Yet progress around the world continues to be measured in terms of carbon reductions which, however impressive when revealed as efficiency gains, energy-renewables switching or low-carbon developments, make no contribution to reducing its concentration. It can only reduce the rate at which the concentration goes on rising.
Evidence of ice melting in the polar regions indicates that the tipping point beyond which this process can now be reversed has already passed. The Global Commons Institute's recent carbon budget allocation tool reveals the outcome of any proposal in relation to any budget under consideration. Sadly, there is no escape from coming to terms with the model's figures on, for instance, sea-level rises, acidification and temperature increase. Dr Mayer HillmanSenior fellow emeritus, Policy Studies Institute
· Alan Rusbridger is right that we need to leave most proven fossil-fuel reserves in the ground if we are to avoid disaster. But let's be clear what that would involve. This massive cut in supply would cause a massive increase in the price of energy, unless governments throughout the world were to introduce strict rationing. Either way, most of us would rarely be indulging in carbon-hungry activities such as flying in planes, driving our cars or eating red meat. Policies such as carbon pricing, which many people call for, would not overcome this reality; they would be mechanisms for implementing it.
Related: Report on the human cost in desert areas | Letters
How many people would vote for these dramatic changes in lifestyle? I would. I hope many other Guardian readers would. But most people would not. That is why we have to invest in another strategy if we are serious about preventing runaway climate change: this is carbon scrubbing, geoengineering and reforestation. This can be funded by a financial transaction tax that only needs the consent of the 10 or so leading economies. It wouldn't be easy, but it is possible, whereas agreeing and actually implementing a worldwide policy of leaving most of the oil, coal and gas in the ground is not. Richard MountfordTonbridge, Kent
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The Guardian
March 11, 2015 Wednesday 1:14 PM GMT
Capitalism v the environment
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 388 words
Alan Rusbridger failed to mention ( Why we put the climate on the cover, 7 March ) that Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything is subtitled Capitalism v the Climate. Her thesis is that global capitalism, as it demands ever-increasing consumption of goods and services by the world's population, is the main driver of catastrophic climate change. The agents of capitalism like to believe that consumption will go on for ever, and ignore, and persuade us to ignore, the unpleasant fact that the earth's resources are not infinite.
The sad reality is that so entrenched is capitalism in governments, corporations, banking systems and other global elites, and so dependent on it are "we", the ordinary working people of this planet, for our lifestyles, comfortable, impoverished or luxurious as they may be, that the chances of getting rid of, or even modifying, capitalism are effectively nil. It's all about power, and the ability to enforce the status quo. The likelihood is, as Tom Lehrer put it: " We will all go together when we go." Tony CheneyIpswich, Suffolk
· The market cannot solve climate change because there are simply not enough short-term profits in it. The only thing that will change this is a complete turning on its head of global economic priorities to the collective planning of an alternative energy strategy for the planet. This requires public investment on a massive scale. The free marketeers in government, the rich 1% and those running global industries would rather see the planet burn than accept that. Philip RamsellStockport
· Many, including me, will agree with Naomi Klien's views on tackling inequality, but to link this with action on climate change is a fatal error. The conservative right, particularly in the US, will simply see this as further proof that action on climate change is letting in socialism by the back door. The message we need to put across is that whether you are the looniest leftie, the most rightwing capitalist or, like most of us, somewhere between those two extremes, then catastrophic climate change is not in your interest and will be a disaster for your children and grandchildren. Climate change is now so urgent that we have to save the planet first and argue about politics afterwards. All political factions have to work together. Martin WoodBradford on Avon, Wiltshire
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The Guardian
March 11, 2015 Wednesday 1:12 PM GMT
Boris Johnson told to divest £4.8bn pension fund from fossil fuels;
London assembly members vote in support of motion calling for mayor to support divestment from coal, oil and gas companies
BYLINE: Karl Mathiesen
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 801 words
Boris Johnson has been told by the London assembly to pull City Hall's £4.8bn pension fund out of coal, oil and gas investments, after assembly members voted on Wednesday on a motion in support of the fossil fuel divestment movement.
The motion calls on the mayor to publicly support the principle of divestment and to begin the process of dumping the fossil fuel portfolio of the London Pension Fund Authority (LPFA). But the vote is non-binding, meaning the mayor is bound only to consider its proposals and write a response.
The motion was proposed by the Green party's Jenny Jones and was unanimously supported by Labour and the Liberal Democrats. Six of the Conservative's nine members were absent. Those who were present voted against.
Jones said she was "delighted" the motion had passed and while it had no executive value it would force Johnson to seriously consider divestment.
"It's impossible to know what the mayor thinks on any one subject at any given hour of the day, quite honestly," said Jones. "And I would imagine that he would think this is scaremongering. But people who know more about climate change than he does, which isn't difficult obviously, feel that this is an urgent threat. And I think there's a lot of people out there that think this is very timely and might even encourage the mayor to listen."
The mayor was not present at the plenary meeting and declined to comment on his position on divestment.
A spokesperson for Johnson said: "The Mayor will consider all of the Assembly's motions at today's plenary. The Mayor takes climate change mitigation extremely seriously and is helping drive forward the transition to a low carbon economy."
A spokeswoman for campaigners Divest London said the motion would force the mayor to reveal his position on fossil fuels and reinforce his intention to meet his commitment to reduce London's carbon emissions by 60% by 2025.
"This is a really positive step forward and puts pressure on Boris to divest London from fossil fuels. He came into office making big promises on carbon emissions reductions for London and he has been very good at ignoring them. The motion forces him to make clear his position on fossil fuels, and particularly fracking, to the British public," she said.
"The motion will add momentum to the many other municipal campaigns around the country."
According to scientists, the vast majority of coal, oil and gas reserves cannot be burned if global emissions reduction targets are to be met. This places the companies that own these reserves at financial risk, high profile figures including the Bank of England governor have said.
The LPFA manages the pensions of City Hall employees and many other local authorities. It holds roughly £48m worth of shares in some of the companies most exposed to stranded fossil fuel reserves - Rio Tinto, Shell, BP and BHP among others. It also holds shares in several cigarette giants.
The global divestment campaign argues that institutions such as the LPFA have a financial and moral imperative to dump their shares in fossil fuel companies. The LPFA said it would not comment in the London assembly vote.
Labour's environment spokesman Murad Qureshi called on the mayor to support the motion divesting from fossil fuels, and make London a "world leader in tackling the injustice of climate change".
"Agreeing to divest from fossil fuels would not only boost London's contribution to tackling climate change and secure our capital's future prosperity, it would offer reassurance to those concerned the mayor had lost sight of [his emissions reduction] objective."
A spokesman for Labour's shadow energy minister, Caroline Flint, said London Labour's position on divestment did not reflect the national party's opinion that divestment is untenable because the UK will need to use fossil fuel energy for decades to come.
The assembly's Liberal Democrat environment spokesman Stephen Knight said: "Moving public sector pension investments away from industries and fuels of yesterday and instead investing in growing new green industries is an important part of the vital mix of policies we must now fully adopt to end our long standing dependence on fossil fuels."
Conservative assembly member James Cleverly said divestment was "fundamentally flawed".
"I think there are better ways of generating social good with the pension fund," he said. "Rather than preventing funding in certain areas, I think it is much more productive to encourage finance in places we know people can be directly helped."
The Assembly also passed a motion urging the mayor to recognise the science of climate change, which has been confirmed by 97% of scientists, and take it into account in his policies. All assembly members voted in favour except the three Tories present.
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The Guardian
March 11, 2015 Wednesday 12:59 PM GMT
Does climate change really cause conflict?;
While researchers agree that climate change can exacerbate human conflict, there are many that caution against using it to explain the root causes of war
BYLINE: Amy Westervelt
SECTION: VITAL SIGNS
LENGTH: 1014 words
Humans have fought over resources for millennia, so recent studies indicating a link between severe drought and the civil war in Syria shouldn't come as a complete surprise. That said, some researchers warn we might be jumping to conclusions too quickly.
Any attempt by scholars over the past several years to link climate change with conflict has been hotly contested, and not just by climate deniers. Many respected conflict researchers believe that climate change is happening, that humans are contributing to it, and that it's a big problem, but that focusing on it as a cause of war may be wrongheaded.
The problem is both scientific and social. "If you want to show that climate change has contributed to an increase in civil violence, then you need to control for other factors," explains Andrew Solow, senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts. "This is a fundamental scientific principle. But it is difficult to do."
Half a dozen or so researchers have attempted to do this, and a few have come close. In 2013, Stanford researchers Sol Hsiang and Marshall Burke, for example, conducted a meta analysis of 50 studies on conflict and climate change and found that higher temperatures and extreme precipitation tend to correlate with greater incidence of conflict.
I sometimes have the feeling that some people only care about human suffering if it can be traced to climate change.
Andrew Solow
But dig into any particular case and the connection is less clear-cut. "The factors influencing civil violence can be quite complicated and vary in complicated ways from situation to situation," Solow says. "It's like what [Tolstoy] said about unhappy families: they are all unhappy in different ways."
In many cases, the researchers themselves are appropriately cautious when making any claims about the connection between climate and conflict. In a statement that accompanied Hsiang and Burke's study, for example, Hsiang wrote: "There's no conflict that we think should be wholly attributed to some specific climatic event. Every conflict has roots in interpersonal and intergroup relations. What we're trying to point out is that climate is one of the critical factors [that] affect how things escalate, and if they escalate to the point of violence."
Although some have criticized the pair's attempts to quantify how climate change impacts the risk of conflict, the bulk of the criticism - both of the Stanford study and the more recent study linking climate change with the conflict in Syria - has been of the media's oversimplified take on the research.
Each time a study on this connection is released, the majority of headlines tend to be along the lines of "War Linked to Global Warming." Newspapers might be excused for using such headlines as opposed to the more accurate but unwieldy: "Global Warming Might Exacerbate Some of the Factors that Can Lead to Conflict". But scientists warn that when discussing these issues, nuance is important.
"I have tremendous respect for the authors of the recent study of violence in Syria," Solow says. "But given the history of Syria and the region generally, I find it hard to believe that, but for the drought, this violence would not have occurred."
Edward Carr, a University of South Carolina geography professor, has been a particularly vocal opponent of such reductive takes on climate change and conflict. When Hsiang and Burke's paper came out, Carr explained his criticism of work connecting climate change and conflict as being driven by a deep concern "that work on this subject (which remains preliminary) might disproportionately influence policy decisions in unproductive or even problematic directions (such as by contributing to the unnecessary militarization of development aid and humanitarian assistance)".
Climate as threat multiplier
It might be more accurate to consider climate change in the way that the Pentagon has come to think of it: as a "threat multiplier".
"Rising global temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, climbing sea levels and more extreme weather events will intensify the challenges of global instability, hunger, poverty and conflict," Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said in a statement announcing the US defense department's 2014 Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap.
As a precursor to conflict, lack of access to basic human needs is a major driver and it's only getting worse.
Pete Newell
Pete Newell, a retired army colonel and a consultant to the defense department and other government agencies, says he has seen the impacts of water and energy scarcity firsthand in conflict zones. "In my personal opinion, that underlies a lot of the issues and conflict," Newell says. "I saw it a few years ago, watching tribes along the Iraq-Iran border going to war over water rights. And it's becoming worse as populations migrate to urban coastal centers and those areas' ability to provide services are overwhelmed. As a precursor to conflict, lack of access to basic human needs is a major driver and it's only getting worse."
Focus on access, not climate
Researchers searching for the climate-conflict nexus wouldn't disagree with Newell, necessarily, so much as expand upon this line of reasoning.
"I'll put this in a crude way: no amount of climate change is going to cause civil violence in the state where I live (Massachusetts), or in Sweden or many other places around the world," Solow says. "If we want to reduce the level of violence in other places, then it would be more efficient to focus on these factors: to bring people out of abject poverty, to provide them with the technology that loosens the connection between climate and survival, to reduce corruption, and so forth, rather than on preventing climate change. I sometimes have the feeling that some people only care about human suffering if it can be traced to climate change."
This article was amended on 9 March 2015. A quote misattributed a statement from Tolstoy as one from Freud. It was further amended on 10 March 2015 to correct the name of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
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The Guardian
March 11, 2015 Wednesday 10:34 AM GMT
Climate sceptics attempt to block Merchants of Doubt film;
Climate denier Fred Singer lobbied fellow sceptics to create a backlash, and proposed legal action, against the film that exposes industry's role in manipulating US debate on climate change
BYLINE: Suzanne Goldenberg
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 694 words
On screen, the man widely regarded as the grandfather of climate denial appears a genial participant in a newly-released expose about industry's efforts to block action on global warming.
But behind the scenes, Fred Singer has lobbied fellow climate deniers to try to block the film, Merchants of Doubt, and raised the prospect of legal action against the filmmaker.
"It's exactly what we talk about in the film. It's a product of a playbook which is to go after the messengers and attack and try and change the conversation, and try to intimidate, and it is very effective," said Robert Kenner, the filmmaker.
Since the film's release, Kenner, and Naomi Oreskes, a Harvard professor and co-author of the book on which the documentary is based, have come under attack in climate denier blogs, and in email chains.
The backlash appears to have been initiated by Singer, 90, a Princeton-trained physicist who has a cameo in the film.
Related: Merchants of Doubt film exposes slick US industry behind climate denial
Singer dismisses the dangers of secondhand smoking. He also denies human activity is a main cause of climate change. "It's all bunk. It's all bunk," a seemingly jovial Singer says in the film.
By last autumn however Singer appeared to be having second thoughts about his participation in the project.
In a series of email exchanges with a global network of climate deniers from Christopher Monckton to the Harvard-Smithsonian scientist Willie Soon, Singer raises the prospect of blocking the film's release.
"Gents, Do you think I have a legal case against Oreskes? Can I sue for damages? Can we get a legal injunction against the documentary?" Singer wrote last October. "I need your advice."
In another email, Singer asks the group: "Has she finally gone too far?...Maybe this is the right time for legal action. What say you?"
The cry for help got an immediate response. Monckton offered to help draft a legal complaint against Oreskes.
James Enstrom, an epidemiologist who dismisses the public health dangers of air pollution, advised Singer he had "a very strong case" for complaining to Oreskes's employers.
"I suggest you attack Oreskes by filing short grievances with Harvard and Stanford," Enstrom wrote.
"Good thought," Singer said.
By 6 March, Singer had moved on to challenging Kenner directly, raising the prospect of legal action. In a letter, he claimed he was called "a liar for hire" in the documentary.
The phrase does not appear in the film, Kenner said. However, it does appear in media coverage of the film.
"I have some experience with libel suits," Singer writes in the letter. "I would prefer to avoid having to go to court; but if we do, we are confident that we will prevail."
He goes on to criticise Kenner for basing his film on the Oreskes book, saying: "It is rather too bad that you got mixed up with Naomi Oreskes. She claims to be a historian of science; unfortunately, she has only demonstrated that she's a great polemicist with a rather well-defined bias."
On 9 March, Enstrom also wrote to Kenner, echoing Singer's claims. "I am concerned that your film makes statements about Dr Singer that could be considered defamatory," he wrote. "Because your film is based on the book 'Merchants of Doubt' by Naomi Oreskes, PhD, you need to know about her contentious and controversial background."
Enstrom called on Kenner to arrange a debate between Oreskes and Willie Soon, the Harvard-Smithsonian researcher exposed for taking industry funding, when his film is screened in Boston later this month.
Singer did not respond to requests for comment. Oreskes said such attacks were typical of Singer. "This is what he does." she wrote in an email. "We are not intimidated because we know that our work is factual, based on years of research, and backed up by extensive documentation... And we never used the term he accuses us of using, so there is no basis for complaint."
On Tuesday, meanwhile, Steve Milloy, a blogger who denies the existence of climate change published a blogpost about Kenner's brother, a 60s era radical.
"I am really just coming on their radar as the film is coming out, and the attacks are just heating up," Kenner said.
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The Guardian
March 10, 2015 Tuesday 8:39 PM GMT
Working towards practical solutions to climate change
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 550 words
Good to read that the Guardian will be giving climate change more coverage ( Why we put the climate on the cover, 7 March). One vital issue that has so far received only limited attention is the lack of a global-level regulator to make sure that in future the global aggregate of fossil-fuel emissions is drastically reduced each year, as dictated by climate science. Climate change is a global issue. It calls for worldwide regulation. Articles published by Scientists for Global Responsibility and the Green House thinktank in Cambridge explain how this could be carried out by an independent trust acting on behalf of all humanity. It could operate a global licensing system as a backup to the system of inter-governmental negotiation, which has failed because it is a system of negotiation between nation-state governments, and which might, but might well not, achieve the necessary global reductions. The new system is described at CapGlobalCarbon.org. The Guardian would be an ideal forum for discussion of this idea and for tracking the many steps required to turn a good idea into a successful project. John JoplingCloughjordan, Co Limerick, Ireland
· Publishing a long extract from Naomi Klein's latest book, This Changes Everything, is not going to have much effect on reducing the "havoc and stress to our species". Her article canters through the science and glacially slow progress of governments to tackle the issue, interspersed with wistful expressions of hope that "climate change could become a catalysing force for positive change". But where are the practical ways in which ordinary people can make a difference? Paradoxically, the section of society probably best placed to create positive change is the very group she criticises most. Business - multinationals in particular - is the key to building low-carbon economies, reducing environmental impacts and inspiring large numbers of people to modify their consumption habits.
Rather than treat all businesses as pariahs, why not work with some of the more progressive ones to help their consumers become a catalysing force? Why not urge Naomi Klein's thousands of followers and the Guardian's readers to use their buying power to reward companies that are trying to decarbonise their business? That would be a lot more effective than reams of rhetoric or never-ending debate. Rusbridger describes the Guardian as "this extraordinary agent of reporting, argument, investigation, questioning and advocacy". Why not add change to this list? Richard AldwinckleLondon
· You assert ( Editorial, 9 March): "So the phenomenon of the climate change refugee is not new. What is new is that, this time, the problem is of human making." You blame global warming and climate change caused by the profligate burning of fossil fuels. Thus droughts and floods force people to migrate - with sad consequences, such as those who drown in perilous seas. Not once do you remind us that the world population explosion is also to blame for global warming. Each of us has a carbon footprint. Naomi Klein ( This changes everything, 9 March) similarly ignores this most obvious fact. I would like to see a higher proportion of the UK's foreign aid assigned to supporting family planning in those nations that might request it. Giles YoungsDrinkstone, Suffolk
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The Guardian
March 10, 2015 Tuesday 8:37 PM GMT
The importance of living your values
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 187 words
Your warning on the disaster that climate change could bring if we don't reduce our use of resources ( Wraparound of main section, 7 March ) comes in an edition that comprises 118 Berliner-size pages, a fashion magazine, a television guide, a general magazine, a cookery supplement, five advertising supplements, four advertising flyers and a plastic bag. Need one say more? Gerrard RavenTeddington, Middlesex
· Three cheers for Alan Rusbridger's valedictory initiative to wrap the Guardian in the compelling narrative of climate-change action. The exhortation to other organisations to desist from fossil-fuel use is duly noted. So when will the Guardian discontinue full-page colour advertisements for carbon-intensive luxuries, such as gas-guzzling status cars, business-class air travel in petro-state-owned airlines, and extravagant international holidays? Or is the whole business less black-and-white than the ink on your page suggests? What if we focus instead on addressing the huge gaps in current engineering capability to deliver the needed change? Paul YoungerProfessor of energy engineering, University of Glasgow
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The Guardian
March 10, 2015 Tuesday 8:23 PM GMT
Sustainable art and architecture
SECTION: GLOBAL
LENGTH: 329 words
The choice of images by Antony Gormley to accompany Naomi Klein's climate-change forebodings couldn't be more inappropriate. Gormley, creator of Angel of the North, along with Damien Hirst, Anish Kapoor and other modern sculptors with a penchant for oversized metal structures, contributes prodigiously to carbon emissions. Their personal vision blinds them to their destructive legacy. A cultural ethic that respects and cherishes, not degrades, the environment is called for. John LloydLondon
· The terrifying essay by Naomi Klein highlights another issue: we need a Green party that focuses relentlessly on dealing with climate change and not one that, as seems to be happening under its new leadership, wants to become an offshoot of Labour. Chris HardyLondon
For the most part the press has ignored, trivalised or even denied climate change, so I await with great interest what you will be publishing in the coming days. · Jonathan Freedland (8 March) mentioned George Marshall and his latest book, Don't Even Think About It - Why our brains are wired to ignore climate change. Next Saturday (14 March) at 2.30pm George is talking to the Montgomery Energy Group about this book and the measures it discusses.
Mike Membery Llandyssil, Powys
· Ah. Heads of state will be jetting into Paris for December's climate conference, will they ( Keep it in the ground, 10 March)? It's so reassuring to know they've understood global warming. Ann KramerHastings, East Sussex
· Re your Keep it in the ground journey: please could you include a proposal to make it mandatory for all new buildings to have solar panels? Gillian CaddickPeterborough, Cambridgeshire
· Hurrah for Alan Rusbridger and the Guardian. Nothing has given me so much hope for the future of the human race as your paper over recent days. Heartfelt thanks. If only I could vote for a Guardian party on 7 May Kate GibbsLlanfairfechan, Conwy
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The Guardian
March 10, 2015 Tuesday 3:02 PM GMT
'By separating nature from economics, we have walked blindly into tragedy';
Economic policy must be combined with climate and technology if we are to stand any chance of saving ourselves, argues the prominent American economist
BYLINE: Jeffrey Sachs
SECTION: GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT PROFESSIONALS NETWORK
LENGTH: 1121 words
Recent news brings yet another example of hubris followed by crisis followed by tragedy. The hubris is our ongoing neglect of human-induced climate change, leading to climate disruptions around the world. One of the many climate crises currently under way is the mega-drought in São Paulo, Brazil. The recent tragedy is an epidemic of dengue fever in ?the city, as mosquitos breed in the makeshift water tanks that have ?bought in to maintain supply through the drought.
Welcome to 'the age of sustainable development'. We are learning a hard truth: the world economy has crossed the " planetary boundaries " of environmental safety. We now face a momentous choice. Will we continue to follow our blind economic model at growing threat to humanity, or will we choose a new direction that finally combines economic progress with social justice and environmental safety?
São Paulo is just one of many such cascading disasters. My colleagues at the Earth Institute of Columbia University recently detailed how Syria's disastrous war was triggered in part by a devastating drought that itself was a signal of long-term drying in the eastern Mediterranean. Others have used sophisticated climate models and a deep reading of past climate history to show that California's extreme drought is a foreshadowing of mega-droughts ahead in the 21st century in the US southwest and mid-plains states, as a result of human-induced climate change.
But it happens that 2015 is a key year of decision for sustainable development. Twenty-three years after the Rio Earth Summit, the 193 UN member states have resolved to adopt sustainable development goals (SDGs) this September. Just before that they will meet in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to redirect global financial flows towards sustainable investments in health, education, and renewable energy, and away from dangerous fossil fuels. And in December, they have the final opportunity to conclude a climate change agreement that can keep global warming below the agreed upper limit of 2-degrees Celsius.
Related: Ban Ki-Moon: the secretary general strikes back
These are momentous decisions, yet still badly understood globally. Our mental models, analytical fields of study, and ethical decision making is poorly equipped to handle the challenges of sustainable development. We have been walking blindly into tragedies and more will come unless we learn to open our minds and our ethical reasoning to the current crisis. My new book The Age of Sustainable Development is an attempt to help the public understand both the growing crisis and the ways to overcome it.
We need a new way of thinking, one that tightly links the human-made world of economics and politics with the natural world of climate and biodiversity and with the designed world of 21st century technology. Consider my own home field of study, economics. Sometime in the 19th century, economics largely dropped its traditional attention to land, water and food, as industry replaced agriculture as the leading economic sector. Economists decided, by and large, that they could ignore nature - take it "as given" - and instead focus on market-based finance, saving, and business investment. Mainstream economists derided the claims of "limits to growth."
Related: Will the SDGs be the last hope for lost causes?
Of course this was never correct; economies have always depended on what we now call "natural capital." Yet the complete separation of economics and nature was the predominant way of economics thinking and teaching until very recently. Libertarian free-marketers in the US and UK hold to this day that climate change must be a hoax because if it were true it would overturn the laissez-faire economic philosophy.
Economics also needs to team up again with the engineering world, to realise that the economy is a designed system, and one in which smart thinking is required to get the right design. Urban historians know that great cities emerge from a combination of planning and self organisation; and in the same way, safe and prosperous economies in the 21st century will need a combination of targeted technologies (eg zero-carbon energy, smart urban grids, and climate-resilient agriculture); forward-looking infrastructure plans at the local, national, and regional levels; and the usual surprises, breakthroughs and evolution of market-based change.
Related: Technology and people power: 5 ways to shape the sustainable development goals
Sustainable development offers not only a new analytical frame, but also a new way of choosing our common future. It suggests an ethical framework that is consistent with the great moral traditions of both East and West. At the core of sustainable development is the normative idea that we must combine economic prosperity with social justice and protection of the physical world. At this advanced stage of environmental threats to the planet, and in an era of unprecedented inequality of income and power, it's no longer good enough to chase GDP. We need to keep our eye on three goals - prosperity, inclusion, and sustainability - not just on the money.
Fortunately, if we can just draw our attention to these broader goals, we will learn that they are easier to achieve than we might think. We are the inheritors and beneficiaries of one of the great technological revolutions of human history - the digital age - which rivals steam and electricity in its fundamental power to advance the global economy, and to do so in harmony with environmental needs. A zero-carbon global energy system, for example, is within reach thanks to breakthroughs in renewable energy and efficient energy transmission and use.
We have entered a new age of sustainable development whether we like it or not, even whether we recognise it widely or not. As the great biologist E O Wilson has put it, we have stumbled into the 21st century with stone-age emotions, medieval institutions, and near godlike technologies. In short, we are not yet ready for the world we have made. The sustainable development goals will be a vital opportunity to give ourselves new guideposts and measuring posts for prosperity, justice, and environmental safety in our fast-moving, rapidly changing, and dangerously unstable world.
Jeffrey Sachs is director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University. His latest book is called The Age of Sustainable Development. Follow @JeffDSachs on Twitter.
Join our community of development professionals and humanitarians. Follow @GuardianGDP on Twitter.
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The Guardian
March 10, 2015 Tuesday 1:00 PM GMT
Consensus and geoengineering - how to convince people about global warming;
Social scientists are debating how best to shift public opinion on global warming
BYLINE: Dana Nuccitelli
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 1092 words
Everyone agrees that global warming has become a polarized issue. Liberals tend to view themselves as being on Team Human-Caused Global Warming is a Problem, and conservatives tend to view themselves on Team No It's Not. Convincing people to change their beliefs and leave their cultural group is a challenge with any polarized subject.
When it comes to climate change, the scientific evidence falls squarely behind the first team, and so the question becomes how we reduce the polarization that makes so many people culturally identify with second team. That's a question social scientists have been grappling with for years.
One suggested approach involves consensus messaging - telling people about the 97% expert consensus on human-caused global warming. People tend to badly underestimate the expert consensus on this issue, and research has shown that communicating the 97% consensus makes people more likely to accept the scientific reality of human-caused global warming and the need to do something about the threats it poses.
Expert Consensus is a Gateway Belief
A new study by social scientists at Princeton, Yale, and George Mason universities goes further yet to suggest that perception of the expert consensus is a "gateway belief" that opens people to the acceptance of other important concepts.
increasing public perceptions of the scientific consensus causes a significant increase in the belief that climate change is (a) happening, (b) human-caused and (c) a worrisome problem. In turn, changes in these key beliefs lead to increased support for public action. In sum, these findings provide the strongest evidence to date that public understanding of the scientific consensus is consequential.
The study illustrates "the gateway belief model" in the following figure.
In the study, the scientists asked people to rate their beliefs about these key issues before and after being told about the 97% expert consensus. The results validated the model. Subjects' perceived expert consensus increased dramatically, and their belief in climate change, its human causation, concern about it, and support for public action all increased as well.
The increase in concern about climate change is a key result. Most people, including a majority of Republicans, support taking action to slow global warming. But they view it as a low priority, so they don't mind when policymakers fail to take action. Hence there's no penalty for climate denial in Congress, whereas there's a big financial reward from the fossil fuel industry for delaying climate action. That calculation won't change until people view tackling global warming as a higher priority. This study suggests that consensus messaging may help people grasp the importance of the problem.
The gateway belief model makes sense because people don't have the time to learn about every important issue, so we often defer to the experts. As shown by a 2013 study led by Stephan Lewandowsky,
when in doubt about scientific facts, people are likely to use consensus among domain experts as a heuristic to guide their beliefs and behavior.
Dan Kahan at Yale is also a social scientist, and has argued that consensus messaging is "counterproductive" and "deepens polarization." However, both Lewandowsky's research and this new study find that consensus messaging "neutralizes the effect of worldview" because "Republican subjects responded particularly well to the scientific consensus message." Especially when they saw it in pie chart form.
Geoengineering Messaging
Kahan prefers to reduce polarization about climate change by telling people about geoengineering. He's run experiments in which subjects read a fictional article about new technologies to offset global warming by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and reflecting sunlight into space. After reading the fictional article, conservatives become more likely to accept the science behind human-caused global warming, and so polarization is reduced.
The problem, as Andy Skuce notes in detail at Skeptical Science, is that the fictional article bears little resemblance to the realities of geoengineering. The technologies are described as "more effective than enactment of emissions restrictions" and would "spare consumers and businesses from the heavy economic costs associated with the regulations necessary to reduce atmospheric CO2 concentrations".
In reality, proposed geoengineering technologies are generally very expensive, would require international cooperation and regulation, and are extremely risky. As Skuce notes, even the scientists who are among the biggest advocates for geoengineering research agree that the technologies entail high risks, and their implementation should only be considered in the event that we first fail to mitigate global warming through carbon pollution reductions and have become desperate to slow rapid climate change.
Use the Brakes, not the Airbags
If the Earth's climate were a car, right now we're already driving dangerously fast and accelerating. Carbon pollution cuts would be the brakes, and geoengineering would be the airbags. Kahan's experiment tells people that we don't need to use the brakes because the airbags will protect us, and we can have fun going fast in the meantime.
What Kahan has shown is that when presented with a fictional silver bullet solution to climate change, those with an ideological opposition to real solutions (like making polluters pay for their carbon emissions) become more willing to accept climate science realities. As with many previous studies, it confirms that much of the rejection of human-caused global warming stems from ideological opposition to the proposed solutions, rather than actual doubts about the science.
Kahan believes that telling people that scientists are studying geoengineering may still reduce polarization for some groups. He notes that different communications approaches will work for different people,
I believe professional communicators must use the data that I and others develop in lab studies and apply their own judgment about how the mechanisms involved should inform their work
In short, we have data indicating that if we tell people the experts agree we need to put on the climate brakes, more will accept that reality. And telling people that scientists are also working on an airbag system may also make more people accept the dangers that we face.
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The Guardian
March 10, 2015 Tuesday 12:00 PM GMT
Keep fossil fuels in the ground to stop climate change;
In the fourth piece in the Guardian's major series on climate change, George Monbiot argues that once coal, oil and gas are produced, they will be used. And yet, after 23 years of UN negotiations there have been almost no steps taken to stop the production - rather than the use of - fossil fuelsYou can read previous pieces here
BYLINE: George Monbiot
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 2083 words
If you visit the website of the UN body that oversees the world's climate negotiations, you will find dozens of pictures, taken across 20 years, of peopleclapping. These photos should be of interest to anthropologists and psychologists. For they show hundreds of intelligent, educated, well-paid and elegantly-dressed people wasting their lives.
The celebratory nature of the images testifies to the world of make-believe these people inhabit. They are surrounded by objectives, principles, commitments, instruments and protocols, which create a reassuring phantasm of progress while the ship on which they travel slowly founders. Leafing through these photos, I imagine I can almost hear what the delegates are saying through their expensive dentistry. "Darling you've re-arranged the deckchairs beautifully. It's a breakthrough! We'll have to invent a mechanism for holding them in place, as the deck has developed a bit of a tilt, but we'll do that at the next conference."
This process is futile because they have addressed the problem only from one end, and it happens to be the wrong end. They have sought to prevent climate breakdown by limiting the amount of greenhouse gases that are released; in other words, by constraining the consumption of fossil fuels. But, throughout the 23 years since the world's governments decided to begin this process, the delegates have uttered not one coherent word about constraining production.
Compare this to any other treaty-making process. Imagine, for example, that the Biological Weapons Convention made no attempt to restrain the production or possession of weaponised smallpox and anthrax, but only to prohibit their use. How effective do you reckon it would be? (You don't have to guess: look at the US gun laws, which prohibit the lethal use of guns but not their sale and carriage. You can see the results on the news every week.) Imagine trying to protect elephants and rhinos only by banning the purchase of their tusks and horns, without limiting killing, export or sale. Imagine trying to bring slavery to an end not by stopping the transatlantic trade, but by seeking only to discourage people from buying slaves once they had arrived in the Americas. If you want to discourage a harmful trade, you must address it at both ends: production and consumption. Of the two, production is the most important.
The extraction of fossil fuels is a hard fact. The rules governments have developed to prevent their use are weak, inconsistent and negotiable. In other words, when coal, oil and gas are produced, they will be used. Continued production will overwhelm attempts to restrict consumption. Even if efforts to restrict consumption temporarily succeed, they are likely to be self-defeating. A reduction in demand when supply is unconstrained lowers the price, favouring carbon-intensive industry.
You can search through the UN's website for any recognition of this issue, but you would be wasting your time. In its gushing catalogue of self-congratulation, at Kyoto, Doha, Bali, Copenhagen, Cancún, Durban, Lima and all stops en route, the phrase "fossil fuel" does not occur once. Nor do the words coal or oil. But gas: oh yes, there are plenty of mentions of gas. Not natural gas, of course, but of greenhouse gases, the sole topic of official interest.
The closest any of the 20 international conferences convened so far have come to acknowledging the problem is in the resolution adopted in Lima in December last year. It pledged "cooperation" in "the phasing down of high-carbon investments and fossil fuel subsidies", but proposed no budget, timetable or any instrument or mechanism required to make it happen. It's progress of a sort, I suppose, and perhaps, after just 23 years, we should be grateful.
There is nothing random about the pattern of silence that surrounds our lives. Silences occur where powerful interests are at risk of exposure. They protect these interests from democratic scrutiny. I'm not suggesting that the negotiators decided not to talk about fossil fuels, or signed a common accord to waste their lives. Far from it: they have gone to great lengths to invest their efforts with the appearance of meaning and purpose. Creating a silence requires only an instinct for avoiding conflict. It is a conditioned and unconscious reflex; part of the package of social skills that secures our survival. Don't name the Devil for fear that you'll summon him.
Breaking such silences requires a conscious and painful effort. I remember as if it were yesterday how I felt when I first raised this issue in the media. I had been working with a group of young activists in Wales, campaigning against opencast coal mines. Talking it over with them, it seemed so obvious, so overwhelming, that I couldn't understand why it wasn't on everyone's lips. Before writing about it, I circled the topic like a dog investigating a suspicious carcass. Why, I wondered, is no one touching this? Is it toxic?
You cannot solve a problem without naming it. The absence of official recognition of the role of fossil fuel production in causing climate change - blitheringly obvious as it is - permits governments to pursue directly contradictory policies. While almost all governments claim to support the aim of preventing more than 2C of global warming, they also seek to "maximise economic recovery" of their fossil fuel reserves. (Then they cross their fingers, walk three times widdershins around the office and pray that no one burns it.) But few governments go as far as the UK has gone.
In the Infrastructure Act that received royal assent last month, maximising the economic recovery of petroleum from the UK's continental shelf became a statutory duty. Future governments are now l egally bound to squeeze every possible drop out of the ground.
The idea came from a government review conducted by Sir Ian Wood, the billionaire owner of an inherited company - the Wood Group - that provides services to the oil and gas industry. While Sir Ian says his recommendations " received overwhelming industry support ", his team interviewed no one outside either the oil business or government. It contains no sign that I can detect of any feedback from environment groups or scientists.
His review demanded government powers to enhance both the exploration of new reserves and the exploitation of existing ones. This, it insisted, "will help take us closer to the 24bn [barrel] prize potentially still to come". The government promised to implement his recommendations in full and without delay. In fact it went some way beyond them. It is prepared to be ruthlessly interventionist when promoting climate change, but not when restraining it.
During December's climate talks in Lima, the UK's energy secretary, Ed Davey, did something unwise. He broke the silence. He warned that if climate change policies meant that fossil fuel reserves could no longer be exploited, pension funds could be investing in " the sub-prime assets of the future ". Echoing the Bank of England and financial analysts such as the Carbon Tracker Initiative, Davey suggested that if governments were serious about preventing climate breakdown, fossil fuel could become a stranded asset.
This provoked a furious response from the industry. The head of Oil and Gas UK Malcolm Webb wrote to express his confusion, pointing out that Davey's statements came "at a time when you, your Department and the Treasury are putting great effort into [making] the UK North Sea more attractive to investors in oil and gas, not less. I'm intrigued to understand how such opposing viewpoints can be reconciled." He's not the only one. Ed Davey quickly explained that his comments were not to be taken seriously, as "I did not offer any suggestions on what investors should choose to do."
Barack Obama has the same problem. During a television interview last year, he confessed that " We're not going to be able to burn it all." So why, he was asked, has his government been encouraging ever more exploration and extraction of fossil fuels? His administration has opened up marine oil exploration from Florida to Delaware - in waters that were formally off-limits. It has increased the number of leases sold for drilling on federal lands and, most incongruously, rushed through the process that might, by the end of this month, enable Shell to prospect in the highly vulnerable Arctic waters of the Chukchi Sea.
Similar contradictions beset most governments with environmental pretensions. Norway, for example, intends to be "carbon neutral" by 2030. Perhaps it hopes to export its entire oil and gas output, while relying on wind farms at home. A motion put to the Norwegian parliament last year to halt new drilling because it is incompatible with Norway's climate change policies was defeated by 95 votes to three.
Obama explained that "I don't always lead with the climate change issue because if you, right now, are worried about whether you've got a job or if you can pay the bills, the first thing you want to hear is how do I meet the immediate problem?"
Money is certainly a problem, but not necessarily for the reasons Obama suggested. The bigger issue is the bankrolling of politics by big oil and big coal, and the tremendous lobbying power they purchase. These companies have, in the past, financed wars to protect their position ; they will not surrender the bulk of their reserves without a monumental fight. This fight would test the very limits of state power; I wonder whether our nominal democracies would survive it. Fossil fuel companies have become glutted on silence: their power has grown as a result of numberless failures to challenge and expose them. It's no wonder that the manicured negotiators at the UN conferences, so careful never to break a nail, have spent so long avoiding the issue.
I believe there are ways of resolving this problem, ways that might recruit other powerful interests against these corporations. For example, a global auction in pollution permits would mean that governments had to regulate just a few thousand oil refineries, coal washeries, gas pipelines and cement and fertiliser factories, rather than the activities of seven billion people. It would create a fund from the sale of permits that's likely to run into trillions: money that could be used for anything from renewable energy to healthcare. By reducing fluctuations in the supply of energy, it would deliver more predictable prices, that many businesses would welcome. Most importantly, unlike the current framework for negotiations, it could work, producing a real possibility of averting climate breakdown.
Left to themselves, the negotiators will continue to avoid this issue until they have wasted everyone else's lives as well as their own. They keep telling us that the conference in Paris in December is the make or break meeting (presumably they intend to unveil a radical new deckchair design). We should take them at their word, and demand that they start confronting the real problem.
With the help of George Marshall at the Climate Outreach and Information Network, I've drafted a paragraph of the kind that the Paris agreement should contain. It's far from perfect, and I would love to see other people refining it. But, I hope, it's a start:
"Scientific assessments of the carbon contained in existing fossil fuel reserves suggest that full exploitation of these reserves is incompatible with the agreed target of no more than 2C of global warming. The unrestricted extraction of these reserves undermines attempts to limit greenhouse gas emissions. We will start negotiating a global budget for the extraction of fossil fuels from existing reserves, as well as a date for a moratorium on the exploration and development of new reserves. In line with the quantification of the fossil carbon that can be extracted without a high chance of exceeding 2C of global warming, we will develop a timetable for annual reductions towards that budget. We will develop mechanisms for allocating production within this budget and for enforcement and monitoring."
If something of that kind were to emerge from Paris, it will not have been a total waste of time, and the delegates would be able to congratulate themselves on a real achievement rather than yet another false one. Then, for once, they would deserve their own applause.
· Twitter: @georgemonbiot. A fully referenced version of this article can be found at Monbiot.com
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The Guardian
March 9, 2015 Monday 5:57 PM GMT
We need regenerative farming, not geoengineering;
The quick fix mindset behind geoengineering must be transformed to one that seeks a humble partnership with nature if we are to address climate change
BYLINE: Charles Eisenstein
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 1100 words
Geoengineering has been back in the news recently after the US National Research Council endorsed a proposal to envelop the planet in a layer of sulphate aerosols to reduce solar radiation and cool the atmosphere.
The proposal has been widely criticised for possible unintended consequences, such as ozone depletion, ocean acidification and reduced rainfall in the tropics. Perhaps even more troubling, geoengineering is a technological fix that leaves the economic and industrial system causing climate change untouched.
Related: Geoengineering: it could be a money-making opportunity for business
The mindset behind geoengineering stands in sharp contrast to an emerging ecological, systems approach taking shape in the form of regenerative agriculture. More than a mere alternative strategy, regenerative agriculture represents a fundamental shift in our culture's relationship to nature.
Regenerative agriculture comprises an array of techniques that rebuild soil and, in the process, sequester carbon. Typically, it uses cover crops and perennials so that bare soil is never exposed, and grazes animals in ways that mimic animals in nature. It also offers ecological benefits far beyond carbon storage: it stops soil erosion, remineralises soil, protects the purity of groundwater and reduces damaging pesticide and fertiliser runoff.
But these methods are slow, expensive and impractical in feeding a growing population, right?
Wrong. While comprehensive statistics are hard to come by, yields from regenerative methods often exceed conventional yields (see here and here for scientific research, and here and here for anecdotal examples). Likewise, since these methods build soil, crowd out weeds and retain moisture, fertiliser and herbicide inputs can be reduced or eliminated entirely, resulting in higher profits for farmers. No-till methods can sequester as much as a ton of carbon per acre annually (2.5 tons/hectare). In the US alone, that could amount to nearly a quarter of current emissions.
Estimates of the total potential impact vary. Rattan Lal of Ohio State University argues that desertified and otherwise degraded soils could sequester up to 3bn tons of carbon per year (equal to 11bn tons of CO2, or nearly one third of current emissions). Other experts foresee even greater potential. According to research at the Rodale Institute, if instituted universally, organic regenerative techniques practiced on cultivated land could offset over 40% of global emissions, while practicing them on pasture land could offset 71%.
That adds up to land-based CO2 reduction of over 100% of current emissions - and that doesn't even include reforestation and afforestation, which could offset another 10-15%, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Of course, none of this is license to perpetuate a fossil fuel infrastructure, since there is an eventual limit to the amount of carbon that soil and biomass can store.
Related: Eat more meat and save the world: the latest implausible farming miracle | George Monbiot
Working with nature
Given that they are better even from purely commercial considerations, why haven't regenerative practices spread more quickly? An answer commonly offered by farmers themselves is that "people are slow to change." Maybe so, but in this case there is more to it than that. Regenerative agriculture represents more than a shift of practices. It is also a shift in paradigm and in our basic relationship to nature - as a comparison with geoengineering highlights.
First, regenerative agriculture seeks to mimic nature, not dominate it. As Ray Archuleta, a soil-health specialist at the USDA, puts it, "We want to go away from control and command agriculture. We should farm in nature's image." In contrast, geoengineering seeks to take our centuries-long domination of nature to a new extreme, making the entire planet an object of manipulation.
Second, regenerative agriculture is a departure from linear thinking and its control of variables through mechanical and chemical means. It values the diversity of polycultures, in which animals and plants form a complex, symbiotic, robust system. Geoengineering, on the other hand, ignores the law of unintended consequences that plagues any attempt to engineer a highly nonlinear system. It exemplifies linear thinking: if the atmosphere is too warm, add a cooling factor. But who knows what will happen?
Third, regenerative agriculture seeks to address the deep basis of ecological health: the soil. It sees low fertility, runoff and other problems as symptoms, not the root problem. Geoengineering, on the other hand, addresses the symptom - global warming - while leaving the cause untouched.
Related: Geoengineering is no place for corporate profit making
There is no quick fix
Unlike geoengineering's quick fix, regenerative agriculture cannot be implemented at scale without deep cultural changes. We must turn away from an attitude of nature-as-engineering-object to one of humble partnership. Whereas geoengineering is a global solution that feeds the logic of centralisation and the economics of globalism, regeneration of soil and forests is fundamentally local: forest by forest, farm by farm. These are not generic solutions, because the requirements of the land are unique to each place. Unsurprisingly, they are typically more labour-intensive than conventional practices, because they require a direct, intimate relationship to the land.
Ultimately, climate change challenges us to rethink our long-standing separation from nature in which we think we can endlessly engineer our way out of the damage we have caused. It is calling us back to our biophilia, our love of nature and of life, our desire to care for all beings whether or not they make greenhouse gas numbers go up or down.
Geoengineering, beyond its catastrophic risks, is an attempt to avoid that call, to extend the mindset of domination and control to new extremes, and to prolong an economy of overconsumption a few years longer. It is time to fall in love with the land, the soil, and the trees, to halt their destruction and to serve their restoration. It is time for agricultural policy and practice to become aligned with regeneration.
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The Guardian
March 9, 2015 Monday 4:55 PM GMT
10 myths about fossil fuel divestment put to the sword;
As environmentalist Bill McKibben lays out the case for divesting from coal, oil and gas companies, we examine some of the popular myths around fossil fuel divestment· What is fossil fuel divestment? Find out here
BYLINE: Damian Carrington
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 1837 words
1. Divestment from fossil fuels will result in the end of modern civilisation
It is true that most of today's energy, and many useful things such as plastics and fertilisers, come from fossil fuels. But the divestment campaign is not arguing for an end of all fossil fuel use starting tomorrow, with everyone heading back to caves to light a campfire. Instead it is arguing that the burning of fossil fuels at increasing rates is driving global warming, which is the actual threat to modern civilisation. Despite already having at least three times more proven reserves than the world's governments agree can be safely burned, fossil fuel companies are spending huge sums exploring for more. Looked at in that way, pulling investments from companies committed to throwing more fuel on the climate change fire makes sense.
2. We all use fossil fuels everyday, so divestment is hypocritical
Again, no-one is arguing for an overnight end of all fossil fuel use. Instead, the 350.org group which is leading the divestment campaign calls for investors to commit to selling off their coal, oil and gas investments over five years. Fossil fuel burning will continue after that too, but the point is to reverse today's upward trend of ever more carbon emissions into a downward trend of ever less carbon emissions. Furthermore, some of those backing a "divest-invest" strategy move money into the clean energy and energy efficiency sectors which have already begun driving the transition to a low-carbon world.
3. Divestment is not meaningful action - it's just gesture politics
The dumping of a few fossil few stocks makes no immediate difference at all to the amount of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere. But this entirely misses the point of divestment, which aims to remove the legitimacy of a fossil fuel industry whose current business model will lead to "severe, widespread and irreversible" impacts on people. Divestment works by stigmatising, as pointed out in a report from Oxford University: "The outcome of the stigmatisation process poses the most far-reaching threat to fossil fuel companies. Any direct impacts pale in comparison."
The "gesture politics" criticism also ignores the political power of the fossil fuel industry, which spent over $400m (£265m) on lobbying and political donations in 2012 in the US alone. Undercutting that lobbying makes it easier for politicians to take action and the Oxford study showed that previous divestment campaigns - against apartheid South Africa, tobacco and Darfur - were all followed by restrictive new laws.
Those comparisons also highlight the moral dimension at the heart of the divestment campaign. Another dimension is warning investors that their fossil fuel assets may lose their value, if climate change is tackled. Lastly, backing divestment does not mean giving up putting direct pressure on politicians to act or any other climate change campaign.
4. Divestment is pointless - it can't bankrupt the coal, oil and gas companies
More organisations are divesting all the time, from Oslo city council to Stanford University to the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, but the sums are indeed relatively small when compared to the huge value of the fossil fuel companies. But the aim of divestment is not to bankrupt fossil fuel companies financially but to bankrupt them morally. This undermines their influence and helps create the political space for strong carbon-cutting policies - and that could have financial consequences.
Investors are already starting to question the future value of the fossil fuel companies' assets and, for example, it is notable that no major bank is willing to fund the massive Galilee basin coal project in Australia. This myth can also be turned on its head by considering the risk of fossil fuel companies bankrupting their investors. Many authoritative voices, such as the heads of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, and the Bank of England, Mark Carney, have warned that many fossil fuel reserves could be left worthless by action on climate change. If the retreat from fossil fuels does not happen in a gradual and planned way investors could lose trillions of dollars as the " carbon bubble " bursts.
5. Divestment means stocks will be picked up cheaply by investors who don't care about climate change at all
To sell a stock you have to have a buyer. But the amounts being divested are too small to flood the market and cut share prices, so they won't be going cheap. Also, the buyers of the stock are taking on the risk that the fossil fuel stocks may tank in the future, if the world's nations fulfil their pledge to keep global warming below 2C by sharply cutting carbon emissions. If these stocks are risky, then the public and value-based institutions primarily targeted by the divestment movement should not be holding them. The argument that owning a stock gives you influence over a company leads us neatly into the next divestment myth.
6. Shareholder engagement with fossil fuel companies is the best way to drive change
This argument would have merit if there was much evidence to support it. When, for example, the Guardian asked the Wellcome Trust to give instances where engagement had produced change, it could not. And as campaigner Bill McKibben has pointed out, engagement is unlikely to persuade a company to commit to eventually putting itself out of business. In fact some market regulators, such as in the US, do not allow this kind of engagement.
The leading environmentalist Jonathon Porritt spent years engaging with fossil fuel companies only to conclude recently that such efforts were futile. Nonetheless, serious engagement could drive some change and 2015 has seen both BP and Shell having to support such shareholder resolutions. But such resolutions need specific changes and deadlines to be effective. Whatever your view, remember this is not an either/or situation. Many campaigners view divestment as the stick and engagement as the carrot, with both aiming for the same ultimate goal.
7. Divestment means investors will lose money
Many of those who have divested so far are philanthropic organisations, universities and faith groups who use their endowments to fund their good works. Selling out of fossil fuels would cut their income, say critics, as those companies have been very profitable investments over the last few decades.
The first response to this is money does not trump morality for many of these groups. But the second is that when it comes to investments, the past is no guide to the future. Coal stocks have plummeted in value in recent years, as has the oil price in recent months, meaning recently divested funds have actually avoided losses. Furthermore, a series of analyses have suggesteddivestment need not dent profits.
Of course, oil prices might rebound, possibly even coal prices. But such volatility is unwelcome for investors looking for steady incomes. And for long-term investors, major financial institutions including HSBC, Citi, Goldman Sachs and Standard and Poor's have all warned of the risks posed by fossil fuel investments, particularly coal.
Perhaps the best response to this myth is that the proof of the pudding is in the eating: over 180 organisations have already asked themselves if divestment would help or hinder their missions and then gone ahead and done it. The most notable is the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, founded on a famous oil fortune. Valerie Rockefeller Wayne noted that funding companies that cause the problems being tackled by their programmes is pretty dumb: "We had investments that were undermining our grants."
8. Fossil fuels are essential to ending world poverty
Fossil fuel supporters often argue that coal, oil and gas made the modern world and is vital to improving the lives of the world's poorest citizens. It is an emotive argument. But the most recent report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, written and reviewed by thousands of the world's foremost experts and approved by 195 of the world's nations, concluded the exact opposite. Climate change, driven by unchecked fossil fuel burning, "is a threat to sustainable development," the IPCC concluded.
It warned that global warming is set to inflict severe and irreversible impacts on people and that "limiting its effects is necessary to achieve sustainable development and equity, including poverty eradication". The IPCC went even further, stating that climate change impacts are projected "to prolong existing and create new poverty traps".
That could not really be clearer. The challenge is to ensure poverty is ended by the large-scale deployment of clean technology, and shifting money out of fossil fuels by divesting could help that.
9. Most fossil fuels are owned by state-controlled companies, not the publicly traded companies targeted by divestment
This is true. The International Energy Agency estimates that 74% of all coal, oil and gas reserves are owned by state-controlled companies. The most straightforward response to this is that divestment is just one of many ways of trying to curb carbon emissions and that international action at state level will of course be essential. But there are reasons why divestment could help. The listed fossil fuel companies have huge influence and undermining their power could embolden politicians in leading nations to deliver ambitious international climate action.
In any case, many of the biggest state-controlled companies float some of their stock, while also contracting the publicly traded companies to help extract their reserves. Furthermore, the state-controlled reserves tend to be the ones that are easiest and cheapest to extract and are therefore the most sensible to use in filling up the last of the atmosphere's carbon budget, the trillion tonnes or so of carbon that scientists say is the limit before dangerous climate change kicks in. Last, the extreme and expensive hydrocarbons that really must stay in the ground - such as tar sands, the Arctic and ultra deep water reserves - are the near exclusive preserve of listed companies.
10. It's none of your business how other people invest their money
First, some divestment campaigners target their own pensions funds - it is their money. But even if it is not, the impacts of fossil fuel investments are not limited to the stock owners themselves. The carbon emissions from fossil fuel burning are causing climate change that affects everyone on Earth. Furthermore, the "none of your business" argument would imply no divestment campaign was legitimate, meaning the harm caused by tobacco and apartheid South Africa would have gone on longer.
More information:
350.org's Fossil Free campaign
Carbon Tracker Initiative
The Burning Question, by Mike Berners-Lee and Duncan Clark
The geographical distribution of fossil fuels unused when limiting global warming to 2C, by Christophe McGlade and Paul Ekins (Nature, 2015)
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The Guardian
March 9, 2015 Monday 12:49 PM GMT
What is fossil fuel divestment?;
This Q&A is part of the Guardian's ultimate climate change FAQ· See all questions and answers· Read about the project
BYLINE: Emma Howard
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 354 words
Divestment is the opposite of investment - it is the removal of stocks, bonds or funds from certain sectors or companies. The global movement for fossil fuel divestment (sometimes also called disinvestment) is asking institutions to move their money out of oil, coal and gas companies for both moral and financial reasons. These institutions include universities, religious institutions, pension funds, local authorities and charitable foundations.
Evidence shows that proven fossil fuel reserves are more than three times higher than we can afford to burn in order to stay below the generally agreed threshold for dangerous climate change. Fossil fuel companies are currently banking on extracting these reserves and selling them - and are actively prospecting for more. By supporting these companies, investors not only continue to fund unsustainable business models that are bound to make climate change worse, but they also risk their financial assets becoming worthless if international agreements on climate change are met. These investments are creating a " carbon bubble " worth trillions of dollars based on assets that could prove to be unusable. The Bank of England is conducting an investigation into whether these over-valued assets could plunge the world into another economic crisis. Although the impact of divestment on share prices may be relatively small, the reputational damage can have serious financial consequences.
Since 2010, the movement for fossil fuel divestment, started by 350.org, has persuaded 180 institutions, worth $50bn (£33bn) to divest, with Stanford University in the US, Glasgow University in the UK and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund among the most notable.
It is the fastest growing divestment campaign in history and could cause significant damage to coal, gas and oil companies according to a study by Oxford University. Previous divestment campaigns have targeted the tobacco and gambling industries and companies funding the violence in Darfur. Divestment is perhaps most well known for its role in the fight against apartheid in South Africa.
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The Guardian
March 9, 2015 Monday 10:57 AM GMT
Climate activism is doomed if it remains a left-only issue;
Faced with collective catatonia, environmentalists need to learn from successful political campaigns
BYLINE: Jonathan Freedland
SECTION: COMMENT IS FREE
LENGTH: 1088 words
In all those sci-fi horror stories foretelling the end of the world, the imagined reaction was never boredom. Panic and hysteria, yes. Sex with strangers, most certainly. We could picture all that at the moment doomsday loomed. But inertia, inattention and a shrugging desire to turn over to the other channel - well, HG Wells never foresaw that.
Yet that is the collective reaction of our species to the warnings that we are frying our planet. People barely discuss climate change. Research shows that most have never mentioned it outside their immediate family; one in three have never talked about it at all. When asked to list the issues that matter most, voters put global warming at or near the bottom of the league - and that's only if prompted. Most wouldn't even think of it. Faced with a climate catastrophe, our response is catatonia.
When candid, news editors and TV producers admit they presume their audience files climate change under "worthy but dull". They know they should care, but they struggle. It's this torpor that those marching in London on Saturday are trying to break through - and which the Guardian is trying to puncture with its new series today.
But it is an uphill struggle. For the media, climate change is Kryptonite. It fails to tick almost every one of the boxes that defines a story. For one thing, it's not new: it's a perennial part of the background noise of 21st-century life. If John F Kennedy had two in-trays on his desk, one marked "urgent," the other "important", climate change falls into what the media regard as the wrong category. It's important but doesn't feel urgent.
It lacks a hard deadline: there's a Paris summit in December but there have been summits before. The climate crisis lacks a specific location. What places there are - those that will be hit first by, say, rising water levels - are far away. It's long on technical details, stats and numbers, and short on human narrative - it lacks a clearly defined, single villain. Above all, it's a bit of a downer. Plenty of news is depressing - Isis, child abuse, austerity - but a world rendered uninhabitable to human beings? Faced with that, who wouldn't rather talk about the boy who turned up at school dressed as Christian Grey ?
True, the press don't do much to challenge this, but the cast of mind goes far beyond journalists. Cognitive psychologists speak of "loss aversion" : when presented with a choice between a relatively small sacrifice now and an uncertain but larger loss a generation from now, human beings rarely make the apparently obvious and rational move, to make the sacrifice. Add to that our "optimism bias": the tendency to assume that all will be well in the end - that "they" will think of some whizzy technical fix to keep the world's temperature stable, and humanity will dodge the bullet.
What makes all this harder is not only the absence of a villain, but the fact that the most obvious culprit is us. As George Marshall, author of Don't Even Think About It: Why our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change, puts it: "There is no outsider to blame. We are just living our lives - driving the kids to school, heating our homes, putting food on the table."
That can induce a sentiment terminal to any campaign: fatalism. If nothing less than total transformation is required, then we might as well give up. Climate catastrophe soon occupies the same psychological space we reserve for death itself: an awful, inevitable fact of life that we shove to the margins, where we won't have to contemplate it. In the words of one cognitive theorist, "A psychologist could barely dream up a better scenario for paralysis."
If this is the mountain in humanity's way, how can we hope to get around it? First, campaigners have to present their case as a simple, compelling story that everyone can understand. This argument, like any political argument, won't be won with data and graphs but with a narrative. It has to address our hearts, not our heads.
The appeal of the phrase that animates the Guardian's campaign - "Keep it in the ground" - is that it is simple and intelligible. We can't burn the coal, oil and gas that's in the ground without torching our precious planet, so let's keep it in the ground. But that's only a start.
Next, the case for the climate has to be at least as much about remedy as diagnosis. If climate campaigners are heard as constant purveyors of gloom, they won't be heeded. Even the medieval preachers forever reminding their flocks death was coming tempered the message with the promise of salvation. In this regard Naomi Klein's book, This Changes Everything, is a good example of how it should be done, offering a solution to every problem.
If the threat is a preoccupation confined to only one half of the political spectrum, meaningful action will never come
But that still leaves what may be the largest political challenge. Right now, climate change has become an issue of the left. One look at the speakers lined up for today's London rally confirms it: trade union leaders, the Labour MP John McDonnell and Russell Brand. In the US, climate scepticism has become one of the defining traits of the right, a more reliable marker even than attitudes to abortion or gun control.
This is a disaster. If the threat to our planet is a preoccupation confined to only one half of the political spectrum, meaningful action will never come. This has to be the cause of all humanity. That means a new, additional climate case has to be made, one that will appeal to the right - and come from the right. That's hardly an impossibility. Who was the first world leader to dedicate a speech to climate change, but Margaret Thatcher in 1989? Angela Merkel is as sound as any left politician on the subject. Had John McCain beaten Barack Obama in 2008, the US would still have had a president who understands the climate crisis.
A climate campaign of the right would appeal to values and identity over data. It might, says Marshall, use the vocabulary of "pollution", and frame climate change as a matter of inter-generational debt: yet another burden we are unjustly passing on to our children and grandchildren. It would talk less of protecting the abstract global "environment" and more of conserving the visible, local "landscape".
Some greens would experience this as a painful compromise. But it is unavoidable. The alternative is a noisy chapel where the preacher stirs the converted - while outside there is only the rustling silence of a world that would rather look the other way.
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The Guardian
March 9, 2015 Monday 3:05 AM GMT
Byron Bay first regional Australian city to commit to zero emissions;
Byron shire says it aims to be a 'zero emissions community' within 10 years by upgrading public transport, improving agriculture and retrofitting buildings
SECTION: AUSTRALIA NEWS
LENGTH: 592 words
Byron Bay has become the first place in Australia outside the major cities to commit to cutting its greenhouse gas emissions to zero over the next 10 years.
Byron shire, which encompasses Byron Bay and parts of the New South Wales north coast hinterland, said it aimed to be a "zero emissions community" by 2025 by cutting greenhouse gases in a range of areas.
The plan will involve boosting renewable energy uptake, retrofitting existing buildings, creating new public transport options and electric vehicle opportunities, changing land use practices and improving the management of waste and water.
The council will be the first to use research conducted by Beyond Zero Emissions on how to take Australia's economy into "negative emissions" and help global efforts to avert the prospect of dangerous climate change.
Beyond Zero Emissions said it was in conversation with a number of other councils to implement similar emissions-cutting strategies.
The City of Sydney and the City of Melbourne both have policies to be "carbon neutral", while the South Australian government announced a similar plan for Adelaide last month.
Simon Richardson, mayor of Byron Shire, said the region was already making efforts to cut emissions through its strong take-up of rooftop solar and its launch of a community-owned clean energy generator and retailer last year.
"Byron is a logical fit for this because we are well on the path with renewable energy - you don't need to twist many arms in Byron," Richardson told Guardian Australia.
"Beyond Zero Emissions have put together a roadmap and we've taken up the mantle. It's a whole-of-community approach, with renewable energy, agriculture and buildings."
Richardson said the details of any incentives or penalties to push down emissions still needed to be finalised, but that he was confident Byron could get state or federal funding where needed.
"Transport is probably the biggest challenge as public transport around here is pretty poor but we've got a rail corridor that's underutilised," he said.
"We've had indications from the state government that they want to explore this space. There's an economic argument too, not just a feel-good environmental outcome. We can save money from polluting industries, there are clear economic benefits."
Beyond Zero Emissions has developed research on removing emissions from waste, energy, transport and land use with the help of the University of Queensland and the University of Melbourne.
Steve Bygrave, chief executive of the non-government organisation, said there's a "very holistic" approach councils can take to lower emissions.
"We've shown that every existing building in Australia can be retrofitted to become zero emissions," he said. "Better public transport and electric vehicles won't happen overnight, but we want to roll this out to every community in Australia.
"There is a lot of frustration with the national government, as shown by the lack of vision in the intergenerational report when it came to climate change. People on the ground just want to get on with it, regardless of the lack of progress nationally, and councils are well placed to do that.
"The required scale of action needed on climate change is unparalleled. But when you look at large changes in the past, it always comes from the bottom up. Political leaders have to respond to action on the ground."
Bygrave said he had spoken to councils in Victoria and NSW and would be targeting Queensland's Sunshine Coast next to get further commitments to slash emissions to zero.
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The Guardian
March 8, 2015 Sunday 11:06 PM GMT
Intergenerational report: assumptions about government spending are a confusion of idiocy;
The report happily assumes that the government would not change any spending policy for 40 years and debt by 2055 would reach 122% of GDP
BYLINE: Greg Jericho
SECTION: BUSINESS
LENGTH: 1568 words
The Intergenerational report released on Thursday is a document so weighed down with imagined economic assumptions made for partisan political reasons that it is barely worth reading, let alone being the basis of a "conversation" with the Australian people about the next 40 years.
Intergenerational reports are always political documents, but they are not supposed to be partisan. Joe Hockey, betraying perhaps an insecurity about his own performance as treasurer, has decided to act as though he were in opposition and has made the report as much about kickingLabor's economic performance than attempting to paint a picture of the challenges for the next 40 years.
Every intergenerational report is only as good as the assumptions on which the predictions are based - especially those pertaining to demographics. And while some of the predictions about the ageing population and the implications that will have on employment participation and economic growth are worth considering, the assumptions about government spending over the next 40 years are pretty much a farrago of idiocy.
For no good reason whatsoever, Hockey has decided for the first time to include in the report projection based on policies of the former government. But he takes as the ALP's "previous policy" that represented in the 2013-14 mid-year economic and fiscal outlook (Myefo) - a document produced by the Abbott government and which saw the 2013-14 deficit increase by $10.26bn due to "policy decisions" taken by the Abbott government.
The 2013-14 Myefo was itself designed to make it appear the ALP had blown the budget, and thus using that as the starting point to predict budget deficits over the next 40 years is a fairly dodgy exercise.
But from this beginning, the report happily assumes that under the scenario the government would not change any spending policy for 40 years, debt by 2055 would reach 122% of GDP.
Yeah, right.
To get to that figure, not only does it assume there will be no changes in spending, but even more stupidly, that while the deficit grew ever more over the next 40 years, governments would be cutting income taxes at the same time.
As Jeanie Buellerwould say, dry that one out and you could fertilise the lawn.
The report estimates that from 2020-21 tax rates will be capped at "a constant 23.9% of GDP". This level was picked because it was the "average of the period 2000-01 to 2007-08". Why this seven year period was chosen for the average however is left unsaid.
To keep the tax ratio at that level in the face of increasing wages, which would see income tax receipts rise, the report implicitly suggests taxes would be cut - all the while debt rises to 122% of GDP?
Yeah ok, seems legit.
There is no logical reason to keep the tax rate fixed at 23.9%. There is no optimal level of taxation. If we look across advanced economies from 2001 to 2007, Australia's level of taxation across all forms of government was quite low:
That this arbitrary tax level is chosen just highlights the political nature of this document. It does not suggest that if government expenditure is growing that revenue must grow to match - but rather that expenditure must be cut.
It also ignores some quite massive social implications.
Nowhere is inequality mentioned, despite the report assuming that Newstart will rise only by CPI for the next 40 years, while average weekly earnings are assumed to rise by 1.5% above inflation.
This would see those on Newstart in 2055 receiving around 10% of average earnings, compared with around 17% now, and just below 25% in 1990.
It also dismisses climate change as no big thing.
Absurdly it contains no budgetary or economic impacts of climate change beyond 2020, and the document is at pains to make it clear one nation cannot change the climate.
The report enters levels of satire when it boasts (without any evidence) that the government's Emissions Reduction Fund will achieve "verified domestic emissions reductions through incentives" rather than simply drive "domestic production offshore - a process which would cost Australian jobs for no decrease in global emissions".
Oddly however, given the government specifically compares the impact of the ALP policies in the 2013-14 Myefo with its own current policies, it doesn't compare the costs and impacts of the carbon tax with direct action out to 2055 - perhaps because after 2020 the government hopes climate change will go away.
The report also suggests that "some economic effects (of climate change) may be beneficial - where regions become warmer or wetter this may allow for increased agricultural output - while others may be harmful".
Ahh wonderful - a perfect balance!
The economic growth projections which underpin the assessments about budget deficits are based on some pretty odd assumptions about population, participation and productivity growth.
The history of the assumption of net migration over the four intergenerational reports highlights just how rubbery these "40 year" predictions can be. Every report has increased the assumption of net migration over that in the previous report. This year's report is no different, but the figure it used remains well below what is the likely outcome.
Migration is a very important aspect for predicting the next 40 years. The main challenge we face is an ageing population in which there will be fewer prime working age people for every person retired. It means our labour participation rates will fall because a smaller percentage of the adult population will be working.
We're already seeing this happen. In December 2010 a record high 67.7% of the adult population was participating in the labour force - it is now 64.7%. In that time the participation rate of workers aged 25-64 is actually holding up quite well. But they make up less of the population than they used to:
When predicting population growth you use two methods - fertility rate, and migration.
A high fertility rate is actually a cost on the economy and the budget in the near term because children don't work. Migrants however, as the report make clear, "tend to be younger, on average, than the resident population" and they "increase overall labour force participation rates."
The report also notes that "high levels of net overseas migration might increase productivity, as the skills focus of Australia's migration program means that migrants may, on average, be better educated than the average Australian".
This is important because higher productivity is one of the great drivers of a higher standard of living.
The intergenerational report estimates net overseas migration (the number of migrants minus the number of Australians leaving) over the next 40 years will grow by 215,000 per year. That figure is higher than the 180,000 estimated in the 2010 report, well above the 110,000 estimated in the 2007 report and miles above the 90,000 estimated in the first report in 2002.
But even the 215,000 is below what the ABS estimates in its population projections. The median population projection assumed currently by the ABS is for 240,000 migrants a year.
It's also worth noting that the Department of Immigration estimates net migration to increase from 225,800 last to 256,900 in 2018.
The report even estimates from 2007-2018 annual migration will be the equivalent of 1.1% of the population, but will then for reasons unknown fall to just over 0.5% from then till 2055.
The report notes that this 0.5% level was the average observed between 1973 and 2006. Why that 33-year period suddenly became an important benchmark for migration levels is unsaid. Why not the past 40 years? Why not 2001-2007 as was the case for tax?
The report thus assumes that in the face of an ageing population, Australian governments would shrink the real migration intake - even though that would exacerbate the problem!
The only reason you would make such an assumption is if you wanted to be able to paint a picture of slowing growth, falling participation, rising debt and deficits and weak economic growth - exactly the picture Joe Hockey wants to suggest would have been the case under an ALP government. And exactly the picture he wants to paint in order to justify his proposed cuts to government expenditure.
To demonstrate how absurd this suggestion is, the report even notes that if the net migration intake was estimated at 250,000 per year (i.e. still less than is expected in 2018), then the improvement in real gross national income per person by 2055 would be the same as if the report assumed the unemployment rate for the next 40 years was 4% instead of 5%.
On ABC's AM program, Hockey suggested "Immigration is, you know, is a rather lazy way to try and grow your economy. What we've got to do is increase our output per hour."
Yes we do need to increase our productivity, but given immigration can assist with that Hockey is in essence arguing that we should ignore that solution in favour of a tougher one!
Joe Hockey asserted in the past month that the report would make people "fall off their chairs". It shouldn't. There's nothing particularly scary in it, and as the report itself notes, "the projections in this report are very unlikely to unfold over the next 40 years exactly as outlined. Things will happen that are not anticipated in the report's assumptions, and government policy will change."
Indeed. By 2055, this report will be nothing but an odd curio from our political history.
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The Guardian
March 8, 2015 Sunday 6:48 PM GMT
The Guardian view on climate change and social disruption: how one form of chaos breeds another;
Swings in temperature and rainfalls have often led to war and population displacement in the past. They may already be doing so again
BYLINE: Editorial
SECTION: COMMENT IS FREE
LENGTH: 722 words
In 2014, around 3,500 boat people died trying to cross the Mediterranean to enter Europe. They risked their lives and lost. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees around 218,000 people got to Europe "by irregular means" last year. They took a chance and survived.
Among them were those fleeing the violence in Syria, and of these, a proportion must be counted as climate refugees. Possibly because of global warming, the years 2007 to 2010 saw the most sustained drought on record in the Fertile Crescent. Agriculture collapsed, and around 1.5 million people abandoned failing farms in the countryside for Damascus and other cities. That is, they became climate refugees. Livestock was obliterated, cereal prices doubled, and children started to sicken with nutrition-related illnesses. The 2011 Syrian uprising against the Assad regime began in the crowded settlements of climate refugees.
That label is a new one, but the idea is not just old, but prehistoric. The animating concern of the Guardian's Keep it in the Ground series is that burning existing stocks of oil, gas and coal could, as Naomi Klein has written, result in cities drowning, citizens fleeing storms and droughts, and whole cultures being swallowed by the sea. Don't dismiss this as wild speculation: anthropology and archeology are demonstrating how climate chaos has produced exactly such effects in the past.
The first migration into Europe and Asia by homo sapiens out of Africa has been linked to the intermittent greening and parching of what's now Saudi Arabia, in line with the ups and down of various ice ages. Rapid climate change obliterated one culture in Inner Mongolia more than 4,000 years ago, when it appears some of the displaced may have moved south and helped found what became China. Climate scientists have recently linked the collapse of the Mediterranean civilisation of the late bronze age to water shortages and hunger. Similarly, the failures of the Harappan civilisation in the Indus valley, and the Pueblo culture of the American southwest have been linked to drought. The Assyrian empire centred on Nineveh - remnants of which are now being demolished by Islamic State - fell in the 7th century BC, a time of climate stress.
So the phenomenon of the climate refugee is not new. What is new is that, this time, the problem is of human making. Families are being driven from their land and livelihoods by changes effectively engineered by human action: the profligate burning within the last two centuries, of fossil fuels buried in the 60m years of the carboniferous period. Governments have repeatedly been warned that this is a problem that can only get worse, that drastic and concerted action is needed, and that by 2050 up to 150 million people could be displaced. In 2010 alone, according to UN International Secretariat for Disaster Reduction figures, 150 million were affected by floods. Flood refugees get the chance to go home when the waters recede. But in the decades to come, as rainfall patterns shift and the seas rise, some people - in Bangladesh, in Florida, in the Nile delta - will see their homes submerged forever. Islanders will find their coral atolls untenable. California is now in the grip of catastrophic drought linked to climate change and - remember John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath - California is now the most populous US state, thanks at least in part to settlers who walked off dusty Oklahoma farms eight decades ago. If California's vineyards and orchards continue to desiccate, then some could start to consider the return journey, for the same reason that Syrian and Libyan families take to the perilous seas: because there is no choice.
There are many reasons for civil war and social conflict, but extremes of temperature and drought often seem to be at play. The message from the packed, unseaworthy boats bobbing on the Mediterranean is that people are prepared to die to get to Europe, and Europeans are not prepared to kill to stop them. There is more to come. If the climate modellers are correct, then in a few decades, the climate refugees won't only be outsiders, trying to get in. As temperatures soar and southern Europe dries up, people could one day start to abandon their farms and orchards and move north to seek sustenance and water. We really are all in this together.
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The Guardian
March 8, 2015 Sunday 11:19 AM GMT
Time to Act: climate change protesters march in London;
Caroline Lucas among speakers and Naomi Klein records video message for event, which is part of a series in cities around the worldDid you attend the march? Share your photos and stories via GuardianWitness
BYLINE: Karl Mathiesen
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 579 words
Thousands of climate change protesters gathered in central London on Saturday to urge strong action at the Paris climate conference in December.
Protesters set off from Lincoln's Inn Fields and headed for Westminster to hear from speakers including the Green party MP Caroline Lucas and the head of Greenpeace UK John Sauven.
The Campaign Against Climate Change, who organised the march, said "well over 20,000" people attended. The number of attendees was buoyed by the bright sunshine of early spring. Last September 40,000 people took to London's streets as part of the biggest demonstration on climate change action in history.
Sauven said the protest on Saturday was the first step in a year of climate action. "This is much smaller in terms of its aims and objectives [than the global day of action in 2014]. But I think it's also just the beginning. By the time we get to Paris then we have to have far bigger numbers than we had last year in September."
Lucas said climate change was visible and demanded action. "It's time to stand up against those determined to burn the last drops of oil and gas and be confident in our power to build a better future," she said. "In coming together we help build the climate movement and inspire others to join us."
She said there had been a failure of political leadership: "It's a refusal on the part of most politicians to stand up to fossil fuel lobbyists, listen to the scientists, and act in the public interest."
The author Naomi Klein urged grassroots activists to redouble their efforts during the months before December's climate change conference in Paris. In a video message for the rally, she said it was not only political leaders who held the power to act on climate change.
Related: Don't look away now, the climate crisis needs you | Naomi Klein
"Here we are, with just nine months ahead of those critical climate talks in Paris. It's not nine months to pressure our leaders to act. We have nine months to act ourselves. Nine months to become the leaders we need. To lead from below, from the streets, from the neighbourhoods, from the smallest towns to the biggest cities," the author said.
The designer Vivienne Westwood, who also made a video message, said: "You're not alone, people know what's going on. We must keep up the fight against climate change, the clock is ticking."
Leila Wilmers, 30, who attended the rally, said both government and big business needed to do more than "just telling people to switch their lightbulbs off and so on".
Andrew Musser, 30, a physicist at Cambridge University, said: "The government policy is quite bizarre. They say they're concerned about the environment but then they propose wide-scale fracking. I think they need to move to renewable energy, particularly hydropower and solar power."
The Guardian has launched a campaign to examine the consequences of climate change. Alan Rusbridger, the editor-in-chief, wrote : "The coming debate is about two things: what governments can do to attempt to regulate, or otherwise stave off, the now predictably terrifying consequences of global warming beyond 2C by the end of the century. And how we can prevent the states and corporations which own the planet's remaining reserves of coal, gas and oil from ever being allowed to dig most of it up. We need to keep them in the ground."
Metropolitan police officers were stationed around the march following a back down on their previous refusal to police peaceful protests last month.
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The Guardian
March 7, 2015 Saturday 8:01 AM GMT
Smart meters may not be delivered to UK homes on time, MPs warn;
Delays to government's flagship energy scheme to supply smart meters to 30m UK households and small businesses by 2020, enabling them to cut bills, could lead to it being a 'costly failure'
BYLINE: Fiona Harvey
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 705 words
Smart meters that would enable people to see their own energy use in real-time will not be delivered on time on current form, depriving households of a cheap and easy way of cutting down on their energy bills, an influential group of MPs has warned.
As a result, the government-sponsored scheme to supply them risks being a "costly failure", according to the energy and climate change committee.
If the meters were rolled out on schedule, with 53m of them in total installed in each of the UK's 30m homes and small businesses by 2020, the savings in energy efficiency could amount to £17bn across the country, against a likely cost of up to £11bn to be met by consumers.
But Tim Yeo, chair of the House of Commons energy and climate committee, warned: "Time is running out on the government's plan to install smart meters in each of the UK's 30m homes and businesses by 2020 [as] a series of technical and other issues have resulted in delays. The programme runs the risk of falling far short of expectations. At worst, it could prove to be a costly failure."
He urged ministers to get the roll-out back on track: "The government can continue with its current approach and risk embarrassment through public disengagement on a flagship energy policy, or it can grip the reins and steer the energy industry along a more successful path which brings huge benefits for the country."
Plans for a national roll-out of smart meters to every household have been in the works for more than five years.
Baroness McDonagh, chair of Smart Energy GB, the organisation charged by the government with informing the public on smart meters, said the roll-out would be "one of the largest upgrades to the nation's infrastructure that we have seen in a generation. We have an important task ahead of us to engage the whole country to ensure that every household and microbusiness will take advantage of this new technology and transform their experience of buying gas and electricity."
But the plans have been plagued by a series of delays, both over the costs and the technology. A survey carried out for Smart Energy GB showed earlier this week that fewer than one in five people know what smart meters are, though nearly 60% of those who do know would like to have one.
One key delay has been an argument between utilities and the government on how much of the £200 cost of each installation should ultimately be added to consumer bills. For utilities, the meters are attractive because they remove the need for meter readers to visit peoples' homes, and they supply detailed data on customer consumption, which can be used to tailor their tariffs or for other purposes. But if consumers use the meters to cut down on the energy they waste, the utilities could lose out on sales in the longer term.
The devices, which households can use to control their electricity use and heating, come in varying degrees of complexity, with simple meters showing consumption in real-time and more expensive models capable of altering the demand for electricity from appliances, for instance by turning down fridges for short periods.
This variation has been another source of delay, as companies have wrangled over what functions should be standard, and the government has been reluctant to dictate detailed technical specifications.
The energy and climate change committee identified a series of problems with the roll-out plans, including issues with dealing with multiple occupancy buildings, the compatibility of technology from different suppliers, and a "slow start" to generating public enthusiasm for the new meters.
More than 1m smart meters have been installed so far, most of them by British Gas.
Lawrence Slade, chief executive of Energy UK, which represents the industry, said: "The national roll-out of smart meters is one of the most significant infrastructure projects that the energy sector has seen for years. It will make estimated bills a thing of the past, help improve energy efficiency and be of great value to consumers. As with any project of this size there are many challenges to overcome and government support is essential. However, the industry is committed to facing these challenges, finding cost-effective, practical solutions for consumers."
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The Guardian
March 6, 2015 Friday 3:32 PM GMT
National Climate March: your photos, videos and experiences;
Will you be in London for the demonstration tomorrow? What are the main issues related to climate change that you feel most strongly about?
BYLINE: Tom Stevens and Guardian readers
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 312 words
Following on from the People's Climate March last September, thousands of people are expected to join in the demonstration in London tomorrow. Are you planning on taking part? If so we'd like to see your photos and hear your experiences.
To make this a national event local organisers have been helping out, arranging coaches with several pick up points across the country. There will also be a wide range of speakers at the event, including Caroline Lucas, Tina Louise Rothery and Rumana Hashem. Individuals and groups have set up 'blocs' on the march, that give them a chance to join others who are passionate about any particular issues that are related to climate change.
Are you going with family, friends or are you looking forward to catching up with like minded individuals at the event? What are the main issues related to climate change that you feel most strongly about? We would also like to hear from anyone volunteering at the event, and anyone that has been recruited as a steward for the day. So if you are attending the climate march in London in any capacity, share your photos, videos and experiences with us.
You can do so by clicking on the blue 'Contribute' button on this article. You can also use the GuardianWitness smartphone app or the new Guardian app and search for 'GuardianWitness assignments.
GuardianWitness is the home of user-generated content on the Guardian. Contribute your video, pictures and stories, and browse news, reviews and creations submitted by others. Posts will be reviewed prior to publication on GuardianWitness, and the best pieces will feature on the Guardian site.
The Guardian is embarking on a major series of articles on the climate crisis and how humanity can solve it. You can read Naomi Klein's article on how we can potentially avert disaster and improve society in the process
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The Guardian
March 6, 2015 Friday 2:24 PM GMT
Working for Shell didn't stop me having morals or accepting climate change;
Blaming and demonising each other won't solve our dependency on fossil fuels or combat climate change, says Mark Moody-StuartOil company employees should consider quitting their jobs
BYLINE: Mark Moody-Stuart
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 1034 words
I have spent almost 50 years working in the extractive industries or related fields. Indeed, as a director of Saudi Aramco, I still do. I have always considered that the supply of reliable economic and convenient energy makes an essential contribution to the economic and - in many cases - social and sustainable development of society.
However, as with most things we humans set our hands to, this has never been without downsides.
Fired by coal and powered by steam, the industrial revolution brought progress from which we all benefit today. Damaging local environmental side-effects were addressed by a gradual switch to cleaner burning and less polluting hydrocarbon fuels. However, another more global side-effect has emerged: climate change.
Related: Oil company employees should consider quitting their jobs | Jonathon Porritt
In the late 1990s, Shell and BP publicly acknowledged this and have not retreated from this position. Although both companies have effectively withdrawn from solar and wind energy, I believe Shell is probably the world's largest producer of biofuels and one of the largest producers of hydrogen.
It surprises many people that Saudi Aramco is investing in both solar and wind energy, to avoid the waste of hydrocarbons needed to meet Saudi Arabia's seemingly insatiable, and often wasteful, use of energy.
The industry is not, as Jonathan Porritt might have us believe, a bunch of climate change-denying dinosaurs living in what he calls "a morality free zone", whose economic interests blind us to change. Of course, there are those in the industry - I suspect in about the same proportion as in all walks of life - who question the almost universally-accepted orthodoxy.
Unfortunately, recognising a problem is not the same as finding a solution. In this case, the solution is made more difficult by the reliance of the present global economy on the supply of relatively affordable and convenient energy from fossil fuels.
Time for carbon price
Were it not for the urgency imposed by the threat of rapid climate change, we could relax in the knowledge that a gradual evolution of the global energy system would continue: the same process that has been going on for more than a century. However, as a result of climate change, there is a need to accelerate the transformation.
I suggest that there are two essential drivers of change, both of which require cooperation between different sectors of society.
Related: It's wrong to say oil companies and their employees don't have morals
The first is putting a price on carbon. This is one of the rational methods of encouraging the development of a low-carbon economy and of differentiating between more and less damaging forms of fossil fuels. Shell, BP and many in other industries have called for this and have applied it internally when making investment decisions. My preference would be for an effective cap and trade system, which gives us some chance of avoiding the most damaging consequences of climate change, but in the absence of this a carbon tax is a start, although a less ideal and flexible one.
While I am a strong believer in the power of markets and price signals, regulatory frameworks are necessary to guide the market in societally desirable directions. This approach can be used to set minimum carbon efficiency standards which would, in the absence of carbon capture and storage, effectively restrict fossil fuel consumption for power generation to low carbon intensity fuels.
Fossil fuel stalemate
So why do we not see faster adoption of these two relatively simple approaches to driving our energy systems in a sensible direction? It is probably because each part of society shifts the responsibility of action to another. Governments are nervous about moving faster because of the reaction of consumers and voters to increasing costs. They are also concerned about damaging the economy and of reducing industrial competitiveness.
Businesses in various sectors stoke this fear, while at the same time complaining that governments are not grasping the mettle and working to establish an effective carbon price or regulatory framework. Consumers (including perhaps Jonathan Porritt?) put all the blame on companies for not investing in the right things.
Related: Most people are not alarmist or in denial about climate change
It puzzles many people that oil companies continue to develop oil and gas fields and seek new sources, when one day we may only need hydrocarbons for petrochemicals and lubrication. Although the demand for liquid hydrocarbons is declining in Europe and North America due to increased efficiency, it is growing elsewhere as economies develop and modernise.
These developing economies will not follow exactly the same path as the OECD countries have done, but most people see a continued rise in global demand for oil and gas, before it reaches a downward turning point. In the meantime, we have to find and develop enough hydrocarbons to meet the growing demand and, equally important, offset the decline of existing sources.
Any thoughtful energy company will be working to make sure its own portfolio of assets remains robust against relatively high carbon prices. There are serious economic risks in erring in either direction, just as there are climate risks if we do not manage the energy transition properly.
I do not believe this means those working in one part of the market are morally bankrupt or less responsible than others. It does mean that we need to unite to put in place the price and regulatory frameworks to ensure a rational social and economic transition.
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The Guardian
March 6, 2015 Friday 1:53 PM GMT
Green news roundup: Alan Rusbridger and Naomi Klein on climate change;
The week's top environment news stories and green events. If you are not already receiving this roundup, sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox
BYLINE: Environment editor
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 319 words
Welcome to our new climate change project
This week we begin a major new series on climate change. Guardian editor-in-chief, Alan Rusbridger, explains why
Read an exclusive extract from Naomi Klein's book, This Changes Everything: 'Climate change could become a galvanising force for humanity'
Environment news
Industry lobbyists weakened Europe's air pollution rules, say Greenpeace
Prince William in China: illegal wildlife trade a 'vicious form of criminality'
Health costs of hormone disrupting chemicals over (EURO)150bn a year in Europe, says study
Indigenous Peruvians win Amazon pollution payout from US oil giant
Air pollution will kill thousands in Europe, EEA warns
Great Barrier Reef lobbying: Australian government offers junkets to journalists
Peregrine falcon found shot dead at Derbyshire Wildlife Trust's headquarters
Infrastructure boom threatens world's last wildernesses
Sellafield cleanup costs rise by £5bn in year, says watchdog
El Niño finally arrives but is weaker than expected, says US agency
On the blogs
Ecologically disastrous dams may get the go-ahead
Doubt over climate science is a product with an industry behind it
Canadian government pushing First Nations to give up land rights for oil and gas profits
Viral China pollution film is brave, personal and powerful
Multimedia
Lewis Pugh's Antarctic swim - in pictures
The week in wildlife - in pictures
International Polar Bear Day - in pictures
Underwater Photographer of the Year 2015 winners - in pictures
Features and comment
Fairies' woodland homes face planning control
Lifespan of consumer electronics is getting shorter, study finds
Would a Labour or Tory government be better for the environment?
Five things we've learned about the state of the UK's environment
Should the UK be subsidising the world's first tidal lagoons?
Bay of Whales is a terrifying place to swim, says oceans campaigner
And finally...
University installs prototype 'pee power' toilet
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The Guardian
March 6, 2015 Friday 12:31 PM GMT
Gormley climate change artwork shown for first time in the Guardian;
The Antony Gormley artwork, called Connection, accompanies an extract from Naomi Klein's book on climate change to raise awareness of how mankind is impacting the planet and 'sleepwalking into a massive human disaster'
BYLINE: Mark Brown
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 569 words
A work by the artist Antony Gormley has been shown for the first time in the Guardian as the newspaper published an extract on Friday from Naomi Klein's book on climate change.
The piece, called Connection, shows a disturbing silhouette of a giant body against a deep glow which could be manmade or natural. Both the body and the landscape appear to be equally toxic, raising questions of how humanity is impacting the planet through climate change.
"It's very important that the image is not a didactic one," said Gormley of the work, made with aniline dye on paper.
"Hopefully it gives you an opportunity to put yourself in the place offered by this silhouette and to think about your connection to and dependence on the context in which we find ourselves... the most important being the elemental world that we have managed for the first time ever, for any species, to have destabilised."
The image will wrap around Saturday's printed copy of the Guardian and be handed out at a climate change protest march through central London.
Gormley was minded to share the image because of the concerns he shares with the marchers about the irreparable damage we are doing to the planet. "We are sleepwalking into a massive human disaster."
He said he despaired of politicians who thought no further forward than the next five years - "they are just not capable of long-term thinking." Gormley has also shared an art work with the Guardian not seen in public before, called Evening IV, made with carbon, casein and Indian ink on paper. It accompanies the extract from Klein's book, This Changes Everything - Capitalism vs Climate.
The Canadian author's book argues that capitalism is ill-suited to handle the challenge that global warming presents - and that tackling climate change can also address inequality in society.
Gormley agrees. "If the division between rich and poor is already chronic and very consciously in people's minds now, then the division between those who are banished from their homes because of rising sea levels and temperatures will be a hell of a lot more painful.
"As Naomi Klein has ceaselessly pointed out, we have to make politicians take notice.
"Short termism is the way capitalism works and the way politicians work and capitalism is not going to solve this. We have to find another form of defining value that is not market value.
"Nobody wants to face the truth that actually air, water, sunlight are resources that are certainly not free."
Gormley has made previous work which explores questions around climate change, not least Another Place which consists of 100 cast iron sculptures of Gormley's own body on Crosby beach, looking out at the water from the mouth of the Mersey to the River Alt.
The figures ask questions around humanity's relationship with nature, whether we are a toxic body and whether we can live sustainably.
Related: Don't look away now, the climate crisis needs you
Gormley believes the human population will level out at 7-8bn despite UN projections suggesting it will hit 9bn in 2050, prompting huge questions. "Can we feed ourselves? Can we achieve, as a result of the challenge of climate change, social justice? It seems to me this is our biggest challenge but also our biggest potential disaster.
"Can we change what looks like Armageddon into a real go to find global governance that will allow human beings to work with the forces of nature in a sustainable way?"
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The Guardian
March 6, 2015 Friday 11:07 AM GMT
Most people are not alarmist or in denial about climate change;
The focus courting or battling with the tiny minority of individuals who self-identify as a climate change sceptic is a distraction to the majority of people
BYLINE: Adam Corner
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 947 words
No-one likes to be pigeon-holed, but labelling and counter-labelling is an inevitable part of any contentious discussion. From the 'pro-lifers' in arguments about abortion (implying that supporting abortion is 'anti-life'), to the 'Dignity in Dying' campaign (suggesting that their opponents are in favour of an undignified death), categories and classifications define the debates - and often act to denigrate opposing views.
But climate change has been dogged by obsessive (and often vitriolic) name-calling. Whether its 'denier', 'sceptic', 'lukewarmer' or 'alarmist', no-one seems entirely happy with the box they find themselves put in. And new research published recently by Candice Howarth and Amelia Sharman argues that these rigid and often binary labels are producing an unhelpfully antagonistic and combative discourse on climate change.
Related: UK flood victims less likely to be climate sceptics
In a paper reviewing and analysing the wide variety of labels applied to people holding different opinions on climate change, Howarth & Sharman begin by emphasising that for an issue like climate change - which is emotionally charged and politically complex - being able to categorise people based on their attitudes makes a lot of sense. But they also argue that many popular labels are accentuating divisions rather than promoting open dialogue.
Are you a denier?
The term 'denier' has proven particularly controversial: by invoking both negative stereotypes about psychological health and the spectre of anti-Semitism, the term is doubly problematic. Yet the alternative 'sceptic' is no less troublesome. All scientists are 'sceptics', in that they will only accept a hypothesis when there is reliable and consistent evidence for it, and other alternatives have been rejected. But scepticism has come to describe the views of those who dispute mainstream science - an ongoing bone of contention for the scientific community.
Howarth & Sharman suggest that the very act of creating and applying labels can cause opinions to become increasingly static, and may further emphasize a sense of 'in-group cohesion', exacerbating the lack of a constructive dialogue. But perhaps most importantly, binary (and often derogatory) labels simply do not capture the breadth of public opinion, which for the most part is neither 'alarmed' nor 'in denial' about climate change.
How to lead on climate change
Our experience at COIN supports the paper's arguments: sustained and meaningful public engagement with climate change and climate solutions is only likely to be unlocked by seeking a multitude of understandings and perspectives on the issue. Another recent paper (in the journal Nature Climate Change ) argued that public acceptance of the scientific consensus on climate change depends on first strengthening the social consensus around policies for reducing carbon emissions (rather than the other way around). Polarising and antagonistic labels are unlikely to be helpful in achieving this.
Related: Have the Church of England's ethics got stuck on fossil fuels?
Whatever label you choose to apply, uncertainty about climate change, at root, is driven by people's values and political beliefs, which become entangled with judgments about climate science. People work backwards from policies they don't like the sound of, and downgrade their assessment of the validity of the science. Overcoming this impasse means 'opening up' the debate to dozens of competing perspectives, rather than 'closing it down' through enforced labels and linguistic categories.
The difficulty, of course, is that there are real, statistically robust relationships between people's political and social beliefs and their views about climate change - and these can be hard to discuss in a 'neutral' way. Conservatives really are more likely to doubt the seriousness of climate change - and this means politics is part of the way that science folds into society, whether we like it or not. But do conservatives have a problem with climate change, or have climate change campaigners failed to communicate in a way that makes sense to the centre-right?
Achieving a consensus
Some will no doubt argue that people acquire the labels they deserve - and that 'flat-earther', climate denying, conspiracy theorists have no interest in productive dialogue with screeching, doom-mongering 'eco-loons'. A climate change bun fight is certainly an entertaining way to kill a spare few minutes on social media. But for the vast majority of people who don't fall easily into any obvious climate-category, the focus on baiting, courting or battling with the tiny minority of individuals who self-identify as a climate change sceptic is a distraction.
The real challenge is in creating a chorus of voices that may have very different perspectives, but are nonetheless focused on the common goal of a safe, secure climate for everyone. Nurturing a broad-based social consensus is more important than scoring points in a name-calling debate.
Maybe we need a new label for this kind of approach...any suggestions?
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The Guardian
March 6, 2015 Friday 3:52 AM GMT
Even the most powerful leaders feel powerless to drive change;
In the runup to the UN climate talks in Paris, the leaders willing to take risks will be the ones transforming capitalism as we know it
BYLINE: Jo Confino
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 890 words
We can talk endlessly about the grip the globalised economic system has over us, but it is a myth that we are facing an impregnable monolithic structure we are powerless to change.
The system has been built around the ideas and thoughts of a few powerful individuals that have, over time, been systemised into rules and institutions that hold it together.
Related: Five ways that people frame climate change debates
But once enough people in positions of influence start to change their minds, or when the public mood significantly changes, systems that look solid are always shown to be built on shifting sands.
The problem with the current form of capitalism is that the elite is still gaining more than it is losing, there is a belief the system is too complex to transform, and some believe it is better to stick with the devil we know than risk the sort of economic collapse we have seen in countries like Greece.
That is why it is such an important time for leaders to show us a more positive alternative future, but where are they?
I was speaking to a senior UN official just the other week, who was in a meeting of world leaders who spent much of the time bemoaning the lack of leadership at this time of great crisis. She says she sat there aghast, thinking over and over again: "But you are the leaders, you are the change."
I asked Guilherme Leal what he feels around perceived feelings of powerlessness. The CEO of Natura will hear none of the talk that we are enslaved to the current economic paradigm. He points to the arrival of Pope Francis in the Vatican as an example of how one individual can drive transformation in even the most difficult of circumstances.
Related: Buying our products won't buy you a pass to heaven, says Natura founder
"The institution was full of problems just before his election," says Leal. "He went there as an individual saying, I am not able to bless you but I need your blessing. He's getting much more change in the whole institution than others who are respecting the system, the red shoes, gold hats, and things like that."
Leal's comments came to mind when I listened to the UK's energy secretary Ed Davey say that the success or otherwise of this December's climate change talks in Paris will rest not so much on all 195 countries agreeing a deal, but on the courage of a few key individuals sitting around the negotiating table.
Davey argued that "historical record shows many examples of national leaders pursuing narrow interests, playing to domestic galleries and ignoring wider imperatives and horrific costs", making the stakes for Paris very high.
"And that is why I do believe personality matters," said Davey. "It will matter who is sitting round the table in Paris in December. Who will be willing to take risks, to embrace enlightened self-interest, to move beyond the narrow confines of their domestic politics, to take that leap?"
The power of individuals to either support transformation or kill if off is also a key factor in whether corporations can drive the sustainability agenda.
I recently witnessed a team of senior executives within a multinational corporation go through the process of creating a new sense of corporate purpose. Re-imagining the benefit of the company to broader society went reasonable smoothly. There was also clear agreement on how to align this to a comprehensive strategy of change. So far so good.
But as soon as the conversation turned to the realities of implementation, it ran into a brick wall. It focused on the egos of individual executives, who would almost certainly seek to block progress.
All of this goes to show that transformational change depends on the outcome of the battle we face, whether as individuals, communities or nations, between the temptation to look after only ourselves or to serve the greater good.
Related: We could end up with 'as much plastic in our oceans as fish'
Paul Polman, CEO of consumer goods giant Unilever, talked at the recent 10th anniversary of the Prince of Wales Corporate Leaders' Group on the need to protect the world's remaining tropical forests. He quoted Gandhi, who said that "what we are doing to the forests of the world is but a mirror reflection of what we are doing to ourselves and to one another".
In other words, to change the outer world, we need to change our mindset. Bill McDonough, co-creator of the cradle-to-cradle design concept, gave the same message at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, when he spoke of the growing problem of plastic waste going into our oceans being the result of our way of thinking.
"Being less bad is not being good," he said. "We need to start from the mindset of what would plastics look like if the ocean is fabulous."
What both Polman and McDonough are really saying is that if we choose to look more deeply, the economic system is not a monolith, but a permeable membrane which we can pierce at any moment when we have new eyes to see it.
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The New York Times
March 6, 2015 Friday
Late Edition - Final
Tobacco to Climate Change: Science vs. Spin
BYLINE: By A. O. SCOTT
SECTION: Section C; Column 0; Movies, Performing Arts/Weekend Desk; Pg. 6
LENGTH: 1069 words
Late last month Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, brandished a snowball on the Senate floor, suggesting that the ugly winter weather afflicting the Eastern Seaboard was evidence that global warming is a hoax. This moment of political theater was widely ridiculed (by Jon Stewart and others), but ''Merchants of Doubt,'' Robert Kenner's informative and infuriating new documentary, ought to remind us that the denial of climate change is hardly a joke.
And those who promote it -- in the news media, in political discourse, in serious-looking reports published by dubious think tanks -- are anything but fools. ''Merchants of Doubt,'' based on Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway's book of the same title, examines the history of corporate-financed public relations efforts to sow confusion and skepticism about scientific research. The filmmakers interview scientists, activists and whistle-blowers who have tried to expose such activities, as well as some of its perpetrators, repentant and otherwise.
''If you can 'do tobacco,' '' one of the perpetrators is quoted as saying, ''you can do just about anything in public relations.'' The reference is to the long campaign to obfuscate and undermine attempts to make the public aware of the dangers of cigarettes. As early as the 1950s, tobacco companies were aware -- thanks to their own research -- that their products were hazardous and habit forming, but they waged a prolonged and frequently successful campaign to suppress and blur the facts. Their tactics included sending dubiously credentialed experts out into the world to disguise dishonesty as reasonable doubt. ''We just don't know.'' ''The science is complicated.'' ''We need more research.''
The pro-tobacco strategy also called for smearing critics and invoking noble ideals like personal freedom against inconvenient facts like nicotine addiction. Thanks to thousands of pages of documents leaked to Stanton A. Glantz, a doctor and anti-tobacco crusader, the scale and the details of the deception are well known. The image of tobacco company executives taking an oath at a congressional hearing and proceeding to lie about what they knew is part of the collective memory. It also opened the door to lawsuits that led, in 1998, to the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement.
''Merchants of Doubt'' links cigarettes and climate -- with a fascinating and troubling detour into an investigation by The Chicago Tribune of the flame-retardant industry -- by noting that both the playbook and many of the players are the same. ''I'm not a scientist,'' a recently adopted catchphrase among Republican politicians, echoes earlier evocations of complication and confusion. In both cases the science could hardly be clearer, but pseudo-experts can be brought before the cameras to peddle the idea that no real consensus exists. False information need not be coherent to be effective, and the specters of vanished liberty and tyrannical government regulation are easy enough to conjure.
And science can be tricky to explain and to defend, especially in the shouting-heads cable news format. The scientists Mr. Kenner interviews -- notably James E. Hansen, formerly of NASA, who was among the first to establish a link between carbon emissions and climate change -- tend to be earnest and serious. The scientific method is also predicated on intellectual humility, on falsifiable hypotheses and endless revisions in the face of new data. Public relations, in contrast, is built on slickness, grandiosity and charm. These traits are exemplified by Marc Morano, a cheerful and unapologetic promoter of climate-change skepticism and currently the executive director of the website Climate Depot.
One of the film's conceits is that the actions of Mr. Morano and his colleagues can be con games and magic tricks. A professional magician, Jamy Ian Swiss, is on hand to fool an audience with a deck of cards and to draw a distinction between his own ''honest lies'' and the shady doings of corporate shills and spinners. But his presence, and the animated playing cards that sometimes fly across the screen, feel like a glib and somewhat condescending gimmick, an attempt to wring some fun out of a grim and appalling story.
More than that, the analogy between climate-change denial and classic confidence schemes doesn't really hold up. Since the '80s and '90s, when the tobacco industry was trying to slow down regulation and lawsuits, the political landscape has changed, and so have the techniques of the anti-science side. Some of the attorneys general who forced the 1998 settlement were Republicans, after all. By contrast, in 2010 Bob Inglis, a conservative Republican congressman from South Carolina, was defeated in the primary after publicly acknowledging the reality of climate change.
Climate-change denial has been raised to an ideological principle, a tenet of modern conservative and libertarian politics. Deceit and secrecy are hardly necessary when large portions of the public eagerly accept the message. If anti-environmentalist politics resemble a game of three-card monte, it's one in which all the cards are face up and the marks place their bets on a nonexistent ace. Anyone who points out the error can be accused of liberal bias, and credulous journalists will give equal weight to both sides of the ''debate.''
The noticeable bias in ''Merchants of Doubt'' is toward optimism. The strongest convention in contemporary documentary filmmaking is to end on a note of hope, appealing for action on the part of an audience that is congratulated for awareness and good sense. Mr. Inglis, both a casualty of the war on truth and a warrior in its service, provides an upbeat message, accompanied by beautiful images of our abused planet. His words, and the film as a whole, express the faith that reason and facts can defeat propaganda and falsehoods. There is plenty of cause for skepticism on that matter, unfortunately.
''Merchants of Doubt'' is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Obscene displays of greed and dishonesty.
Merchants of Doubt
Opens on Friday
Directed by Robert Kenner; based on the book by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway; directors of photography, Don Lenzer, Barry Berona and Jay Redmond; edited by Kim Roberts; music by Mark Adler; produced by Mr. Kenner and Melissa Robledo; released by Sony Pictures Classics. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/06/movies/review-merchants-of-doubt-separating-science-from-spin.html
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GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: Merchants of Doubt'' includes, clockwise from top, Marc Morano, a skeptic of climate change
Bob Inglis, a former Republican congressman
and the scientist James E. Hansen. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY SONY PICTURES CLASSICS)
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Review
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The Guardian
March 5, 2015 Thursday 7:24 PM GMT
The Guardian view on food security: if the dreamers lose, we face a nightmare;
Less food for more people on a hotter, drier Earth. How can we work to avoid this future?
BYLINE: Editorial
SECTION: COMMENT IS FREE
LENGTH: 534 words
By the time nations once again get round a table in Paris in December to discuss climate change, hunger should be on the menu. Researchers have just warned that a new and aggressive strain of yellow rust fungus is now a threat to Britain's wheat harvest. Another team has calculated that average yields of wheat per field, which only two decades ago were rising rapidly, are now down 2.5%, and barley by 3.8%. In each case, the scientists identify climate change as a contributing factor. Global warming has barely begun but climate scientists have been warning about the consequences for food security for 30 years.
The two latest bits of research into wheat yields are not isolated indicators of tomorrow's troubles. The big heat has yet to arrive. It will be catastrophic. Another group has studied the consequences for harvests of extremes of heat and calculated that for each 1C notch in the thermometer, global wheat yields could fall by 6%. Some latitudes will benefit, but overall, world harvests could fall. This is very bad news: wheat is one of the world's staples, and the world's largest source of vegetable protein. There are other factors at play in the fields. Within a decade, 2.9 billion people in 48 nations will experience chronic water scarcity, another research team warns.
Related: The global food security situation is critical. But there is still hope | Letters
Agriculture consumes 70% of the world water supplies and action is needed "to pre-empt looming conflicts born of desperation". Separately, US geologists have used historical analyses to work out what modern agriculture does to topsoil. When European settlers took the plough to the American heartlands, erosion accelerated one hundred-fold. At peak, an inch of soil was lost every 25 years. Before the Europeans, wind and water erosion took 2,500 years to remove the same thin layer. Because of erosion, overgrazing and drought, the planet's farmland is being degraded at a catastrophic rate. An estimated 10m hectares are now abandoned each year ; something the size of a family farm every minute. And as the food supply is threatened, demand will accelerate. There will be many more hungry people at the table.
In the last year, researchers re-examined UN population projections and decided that the global numbers may not peak at 9 billion. By 2100, the world could be home to 12 billion and still rising. By 2100, according to business-as-usual climate projections, temperatures will have risen by 4C and sea levels by a metre or so. So land that is ever less productive will be expected to deliver vastly more food at ever greater cost in fossil fuel energy to feed increasingly conflict-torn nation states.
Solutions exist but none are easy. All will require a generous adjustment between the haves and the have-nots and sustained global cooperation. That sounds like a dream, but the alternative is a nightmare. The enduring lesson of history is that drought and famine feed conflict, and conflict breeds more privation, and despair. Come December, each aspect of the climate challenge will have become more pressing, and more complex. Everything should be on the table in Paris except perhaps, symbolically, lunch.
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The Guardian
March 5, 2015 Thursday 7:23 PM GMT
The global food security situation is critical. But there is still hope
SECTION: GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT
LENGTH: 1519 words
Your editorial ( Hunger is coming. The temperature rises and rivers dry up. How can we feed the world?, 2 March) asks a crucial question. Policymakers tell us 70% more food must be produced by 2050 to feed the growing world population. Not so. We produce enough food to feed twice the current world population. But globally we waste 60% of it: through post-harvest losses, through its being thrown out by consumers and by the use of cereals to feed animals. For every 100 calories fed to animals in the form of human-edible crops, we receive 10 calories or less in the form of meat.
Just halving these various food wastes means we would need to produce less. It would allow us to farm less intensively with reduced monocultures and agro-chemicals. Degraded soils could be rebuilt, water used more sparingly and biodiversity restored. Developed world consumers would need to consume less meat and milk, which would come from animals mainly fed on pastures, crop residues and unavoidable food waste. Lower consumption of animal products would lead to a reduction in both diet-related disease and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Just halving EU meat and dairy consumption would lead to a 25-40% reduction in GHG emissions. A Chatham House paper shows that without such a shift in diets it will be impossible to keep temperature increases to below 2°C.
Our food system has been hijacked by the food industry, which has interposed itself between farmers and consumers, driving down farmers' margins and foisting overconsumption of unhealthy processed foods on to the public. We need a new model of food and farming. Peter StevensonChief policy adviser,Compassion in World Farming
In Africa, small-scale farmers produce over 70% of the food consumed, on less than 15% of the agricultural land
Nick Dearden, Global Justice Now
· Your editorial is right that food security needs urgent attention in Paris at December's global climate talks. But we do not have to wait for Paris. In September, global leaders will meet in New York to discuss replacements for the millennium development goals (MDGs). On the table for discussion is a new set of goals - sustainable development goals - which all countries, not just developing countries, are being asked to sign up to. One proposed goal is specifically on food security and sustainable agriculture, and others relate to climate change and access to water. 2015 is therefore a key year for sustainable development and we need pressure on governments to act in the run up to New York as well as Paris. Linda McAvan MEPChair, European parliament committee on international development
· Your editorial carries what is probably the most powerful message of the paper's 194 years. Before the international meeting in Paris in December to discuss climate change we have a general election that will determine who our representatives are and what line they take. Beyond the urgent domestic issues of today we should be asking candidates what their plans are for the UK in the near future regarding: becoming self-sufficient in food production; becoming carbon-free and self-reliant on solar, wind and wave energy sources; and boosting research that can help food production and alleviate water shortage worldwide. Michael BasseyAuthor, Convivial Policies for the Inevitable: global warming, peak oil, economic chaos
· The impact of climate change in exacerbating the food challenges we face does call for a profound rethinking of global agricultural practices. The good news is that solutions do exist. In Africa, small-scale farmers produce over 70% of the food consumed, on less than 15% of the agricultural land, with a tiny fraction of the emissions generated by industrial agriculture. The bad news is that the UK's aid programme is pushing a one-size-fits-all industrial model of agriculture that threatens the livelihoods of these small farmers. In the runup to Paris, if we want to address the intertwined threats of food and climate security, a good starting point would be for the Department for International Development to abandon financial support for the controversial New Alliance for Food Security, which imposes emissions-intensive agribusiness in countries across Africa at the expense of climate-friendly small farming practices. Nick DeardenDirector,Global Justice Now
· It's not that I disagree with the analysis in your editorial but to remark on the rate of erosion you quote for the US, a surface lowering of 1mm per year at peak - that's a loss of 10m 3of soil per year per hectare. Where did it all go? If it is based on Stan Trimble's work for a small portion of the US it might be OK, but if it is for the whole of the cultivated area of the US it is probably a gross overestimate, for it will be based on the universal soil loss equation. The USLE is not a good predictor of erosion rate, it might be OK, or of the right order, for an individual field in a particular year, but does not apply across the landscape. Not all fields erode and not every year. So when averaged across a landscape, rates are much lower than the rate per field.
Soils are being degraded by loss of organic matter, loss of fertility and compaction, as well as it's usually the best quality land that is built over, but rill and gully erosion might not be as severe as predicted. Wash erosion, which carries very small amounts of soil from the land, and is hardly noticeable also transports nitrate, phosphate and pesticides either attached to soil particles or in solution that, over the short term, are a much bigger problem - they are expensive to remove to make water drinkable. Robert EvansCambridge
· If food security is already becoming a major issue then the time to do something about it is now. One of the things we could do would be to challenge the religious and political pressures that deny women in developing countries access to family planning services. Many rich countries refuse to provide family planning in their overseas aid (the UK being an honorable exception) and many third world charities also refuse, but do not mention this in their requests for donations. The UN states that 225 million women in developing countries wish to avoid pregnancy but are not using modern contraceptives. If this wish could be met, food security would immediately become a smaller issue.It is worth remembering that smaller families are likely to be more resilient families - worldwide. Helen HaranSt Albans, Hertfordshire
· The risk from climate change to food security is indeed very serious and solutions are not easy. We need to reimagine agriculture. Incremental improvements to existing agro-ecosystems are important and must be pursued but just doing the same better is not going to close the future gap between demand and production. Nor will it reduce sufficiently the environmental burden from agriculture, including its greenhouse gas emissions. Two divergent paths are promising. One is a shift to more complex field-based ecosystems than monocultural arable crops, allowing simultaneous establishment, maintenance and harvesting of multiple crops from the same area. Another is "off-farm farming", which is already emerging: intense and efficient production of leaf protein is possible in indoor environments that are optimal for plant growth and not subject to the vagaries of the weather or invasion by pests. The recent launch of a UK agri-technology strategy is positive but what is needed, urgently, is a Manhattan-scale international project to deliver the technology required to meet an existential threat to humanity. Emeritus professor Mark KibblewhitePresident, The Institution of Agricultural Engineers
· Monday's editorial on food rightly didn't pull many punches on the gravity of the threats to global food supply.
The combination of falling yields, soil degradation, population growth and climate change will doubtlessly prove toxic if unresolved. Yet we cannot just rely on climate change cooperation to improve food security. Previous negotiations have routinely failed to match the precarity of the situation, and it will be a miracle if all nations in Paris agree on how we can prevent more than a 2C rise in global temperatures.
To tackle global food insecurity the UK must show more leadership on food and farming at home. We must waste much less and cut the impact of what we do produce. We need conservation tillage to lock up carbon and restore and enhance the natural resilience of soils. We need to eat less and better-quality meat, and more fruit and vegetables. And we need to reassess what our land is for and stop allowing development values to trump our long-term need for land for food.
None of these is a silver bullet. But they do offer practical solutions that don't rely on the dreamers. Graeme WillisSenior rural policy campaigner, Campaign to Protect Rural England
· I challenge the Guardian to find a single MP of any of the reputable parties who is prepared to put a figure, no matter how approximate, on the maximum population size for the UK commensurate with an acceptable quality of life. Les FarrisSouth Petherton, Somerset
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The Guardian
March 5, 2015 Thursday 5:25 PM GMT
UK trade deal finances 'dirty energy' projects in Mexico, says Greenpeace;
Credit scheme through UK Export Finance (UKEF) runs against government commitments to fighting climate change, say activists
BYLINE: Terry Macalister
SECTION: BUSINESS
LENGTH: 574 words
The UK government has become embroiled in a row over financial support for fossil fuel companies after announcing a $1bn (£660m) funding package involving Pemex, the Mexican state oil group.
Greenpeace said the move to provide credit for "dirty" energy projects under the UK Export Finance (UKEF) scheme flew counter to the government's commitments to fighting climate change.
The Tories and Lib Dems pledged in 2010 that export finance would be used to champion British companies that developed and exported innovative green technologies around the world, "instead of supporting investment in dirty fossil fuel energy production".
"The truth is that the 'greenest government ever' has spent the last five years bankrolling some of the dirtiest energy developments on the planet, from Russian coal mining to the Saudi oil industry," said Lawrence Carter, a Greenpeace UK energy campaigner .
Related: UK loaned £1.7bn to foreign fossil fuel projects despite pledge
"Our ministers should stop acting like the merchant bankers of climate change and start using export finance to promote the cutting-edge clean technologies that are reshaping energy markets the world over."
The financing agreement was revealed during a visit to Aberdeen by Matthew Hancock, the UK energy minister, alongside Mexico's president Enrique Peña Nieto who is on a wider state trip to the UK.
Mexico's energy system is undergoing significant reform and Nieto was visiting Scotland to speak to energy leaders across the business and education sectors, as well as signing agreements with the UK government for greater collaboration in the areas of energy and climate change.
"This visit today by President Peña Nieto to the UK's energy capital cements the already close links between our two countries and heralds an era of closer collaboration in energy," said Hancock.
"The government of Mexico expects $50bn of investment by 2018 in the wake of its energy reforms - boosting the economy and creating jobs while rejuvenating production," he added.
Related: UK spent 300 times more on fossil fuels than clean energy despite green pledge
Over the course of the parliament, UK Export Finance, a small government department, has given financial support worth only £3.6m to green energy projects around the world, it was revealed last month through data released to the Guardian under freedom of information rules.
A spokesperson for UKEF said the memorandum of understanding with Mexico was to work "towards" a line of credit and was not a firm commitment at this stage, or an investment.
"UK Export Finance's role is to provide financial support to UK exporters, primarily through providing insurance to exporters and guarantees to banks that enable them to take advantage of overseas contracts. As part of that, we have a dedicated Environmental Advisory team which reviews the environmental, social and human rights issues of projects covered by the OECD's Common Approaches, prior to the department agreeing to provide support."
Nieto was being introduced in Aberdeen to executives from BP and Shell, both of which have made no secret of their desire to enter the Mexican energy sector, which has been largely closed to foreign firms.
There is considerable excitement in western oil capitals about the onshore shale prospects that exist in Mexico. Equally, there are unexplored deep-water areas of the Gulf of Mexico, across the territorial dividing line from large US discoveries.
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The Guardian
March 5, 2015 Thursday 7:41 AM GMT
Intergenerational report, Ricky Muir's first speech, higher education - as it happened;
Intergenerational report forecasting Australia's gross debt could rise as high as $2.8tn in 40 years dominated the day. As it happened
BYLINE: Gabrielle Chan
SECTION: AUSTRALIA NEWS
LENGTH: 10518 words
block-time published-time 6.39pm AEST
Night time political summary
I will allow senator Macdonald to continue on in the senate and in the interests of sanity, proceed to the night time summary.
We had the dire forecasts of the intergenerational report, which indicated Australia's gross debt could rise as high as $2.8tn in 40 years unless the parliament agreed to a series of yet-to-be-legislated budget measures. The report has already been used to frame the coming budget, with a bit of a throwback to the last budget. There is very little in there on the economic impacts of climate change. But hey, climate change could be good or could be bad.
Scientists say notwithstanding the messages in the IGR on the need for innovation, the government has caused a funding crisis in research by tying $150m in grant funding to contentious higher education changes.
Cadbury has passed up a controversial $16m pre-election grant from Tony Abbott on the grounds it cannot build its $66m visitor centre which was to create more jobs in Tasmania.
Thanks for your company all week and thanks to the bureau, Mike Bowers for his pictures and Daniel Hurst, Shalailah Medhora and Lenore Taylor. They are irreplaceable for providing both reportage and caffeine.
Good night.
block-time published-time 6.19pm AEST
Senator Ian Macdonald is up in the senate again, saying he is still proud to say he has not read the Forgotten Children report by the Human Rights Commission.
These children have been anything but forgotten by the Abbott government.
We don't need a 300 page report to tell us that. We know that. That's why the Abbott government has taken all of the children out of immigration detention in Australia. So it tells us all about that and how bad it is. We don't need that. It's irrelevant.
Um. I'll leave it there.
block-time published-time 6.03pm AEST
Queensland LNP senator Matthew Canavan says the PUP motion on coal seam gas - reported earlier - is:
a communist solution to a communist situation.
He says he does not agree with the PUP motion but he agrees with the issue of more compensation to landowners effected by CSG.
Canavan is talking about the importance of water - as a public good - and how much environmental oversight Australia has.
He seems to have forgotten his government is trying to remove one layer of environmental oversight in the name of red tape reduction and devolve environmental powers back to the states. The amendment to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation has passed the house and has been blocked by senate.
block-time published-time 5.51pm AEST
National senator John Williams told the senate earlier in the debate that the Nationals had done the work on stopping the Shenhua coal mine application to allow the independent expert scientific committee to examine the application under the water trigger.
Who has now brought it to a stop? The member for New England Barnaby Joyce, the minister for agriculture took environment minister Greg Hunt up there, thank goodness the $150m scientific money is available. I give credit to the former member for New England Tony Windsor...
Greg Hunt referred the Shenhua application to the expert scientific committee last week.
block-time published-time 5.33pm AEST
Senator Bridget McKenzie is quoting the Victorian Nationals policy calling for a farmers veto on coal seam gas (which is causing a bunfight between the Victorian Liberals and Nationals.)
McKenzie is saying its a state issue and take the issue to state governments. Even though she supports the Victorian National policy on CSG.
Too often... we have emotive responses not driven by hard science.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 5.41pm AEST
block-time published-time 5.26pm AEST
The senate is debating a notice of motion on coal seam gas by Palmer United Party senators Glenn Lazarus and Dio Wang.
The motion:
acknowledges that the possible impact on human health and our water resources from coal seam gas (CSG) mining is not well understood; and
calls on the government to: (i) act with caution and stop approving CSG projects until such time as CSG mining is considered completely safe by scientists and qualified professionals, and (ii) establish a royal commission into the human impact of CSG mining.
Greens senator Larissa Waters has spoken in favour.
National senators John Williams and Bridget McKenzie have spoken against.
block-time published-time 5.11pm AEST
One more from Ricky Muir, on his childhood. He spent two years in kindergarten, because as he said, he turned out to be anti-social.
When I was about 11 years old, my father had a bad motorcycle accident, breaking every rib front and back, breaking his collar bone and destroying ligaments in one of his ankles, my mother had a bad back that needed surgery, work was scarce and we struggled. I watched as other kids at school went on holidays with their families, wore brand name clothing, attended concerts that I would have died to attend and got to enjoy some of life's simple luxuries that were simply out of reach for us.
And more, with a strong message to treasurer Joe Hockey who said the copayment was only worth a beer:
I don't have a long political past to speak about. I cannot speak about a time where I was a staffer for another senator or member or speak of time spent in university whilst completing a Bachelor of Political Science. I don't have a long seeded history with a traditional Party with deep seeded policy positions with rehearsed catch phrases to sell.
And I don't mind.
I have a long history of living at the receiving end of legislative changes, of feeling the squeeze of new, or higher taxes, feeling the pressure and even losing sleep when you realise that the general cost of living just went up a tiny $20 dollars a week. To everyone sitting in this chamber, if you think $20 a week is nothing, or just a pack of cigarettes and or a few beers, you have never lived in the real world.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 5.12pm AEST
block-time published-time 5.02pm AEST
Ricky Muir on the Mike Willesee interview.
Since winning my seat I have been offered a wealth of advice, say this, do this, don't do that and so on, but the most important thing I have learnt, and indeed have also had encouragement to do so, is to just simply be myself. Sure, I came up pretty bad in a debut interview with Mike Willesee, but I was never going to let that bring me down.
It became a point of reference for me to look back to at later stages of my life. I knew they had the footage, and I presumed they would use it, so I would like to pass on a thank you to Mike Willesee because he contributed to teaching me a valuable lesson and that really was just to be myself.
block-time published-time 4.57pm AEST
Is the system broken? Ricky Muir says no
Ricky Muir rejected the idea that the political system is broken. You people in the major parties are just doing it wrong.
Since being elected there has been plenty of commentary of how the voting system is broken and un-democratic which in my eyes completely misses the point. For my cross bench colleagues and I to be elected, people had to be voting for parties other than the major parties, and they did. A huge 24% in the senate. In my view, if you want a simple explanation of how this could occur, all the major parties need to take a long, hard look in the mirror.
I can tell you now, the system is not broken, and does not need to be fixed. Your disconnect from the average Australian, the way you treat the voters of Australia by saying one thing, but doing another is, in my view, why voters are looking for alternatives.
Then there has been statements thrown around such as the senate is dysfunctional and unworkable. Yet, when speaking to many around these halls, it seems pretty much business as usual. Perhaps people are getting the senate and the Government confused.
Motoring enthusiast party senator Ricky Muir gives his first speech in the senate this evening. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian
Notwithstanding his criticism of the majors, Ricky got a bit of love from Labor.
Good first speech @Ricky_Muir.
- Tim Watts (@TimWattsMP) March 5, 2015
block-time published-time 4.46pm AEST
Ricky Muir:
I, like so many other Australian's, am fed up with big political campaigns where on the lead up to an election we are told "There will be no carbon tax under a government I lead" or "there's no way that a GST will ever be part of our policy", or perhaps in more modern times be told that there is a mandate to repeal the carbon tax, only to find out after the election that this so called mandate also includes "fixing the budget" by hurting the disadvantaged in a barrage of measures that were mute in the election campaign.
There will be no changes to education, health or the renewable energy sector, and then before you know it, BAM, we are faced with the biggest changes to our university sector since 1989 when HECS was introduced, reform that will completely change our Medicare system and could damage primary health care, potentially leading to negative health outcomes. Not to mention the complete uncertainty in the renewable sector which is affecting investment and stopping projects from beginning; projects which will create employment. This is just the tip of the iceberg and to add insult to injury, this was done with little to no consultation. That doesn't sound like democracy to me.
And what justification is there for this? It usually sounds something like this, "we had to make the hard decisions because of the mess that was left behind because of those opposite". Is this fair on the Australian public who voted under the impression that a Government would honour its word? I can answer that, and the simple answer is no.
block-time published-time 4.38pm AEST
Ricky Muir:
As a voter I never agreed to be restricted to a two party system and hear many others say the same.
I was continuously unsatisfied with what appeared to be our only options at the time of an election were between two parties that were so ideologically different that middle ground was nowhere to be seen.
I was unsatisfied that our elected representatives were bound by pre-conceived party positions which in turn goes against the very definition of "representative democracy" as the voices of the people that they were supposed to represent seem to somewhat fall on deaf ears.
If every person sitting in this room voted to represent their state, after taking on their constituent's views, like I believe the senate was originally designed to achieve in 1901 when federation formed, and if all senators voted with their conscience, only then will we see the true representative democracy that Australia could be proud of.
And that is why I stood up to be heard.
block-time published-time 4.33pm AEST
Ricky Muir has described a difficult childhood, where his father was injured and the family could often not afford basic things that the other children at school had.
He does not believe parliament should be full of people from the "political class" and (somewhat proudly) cannot claim a background as a politician elsewhere, or a political staffer.
He meanders through democracy, the car industry, his kids and family and his suit. There is a lot of self-deprecating humour, a reference to Mike Willesee's shocking interview, where he stumbled through his understanding of the balance of power.
But overall, it is a decent speech, delivered with much greater confidence than those earlier days. He came across as everyman and his plea was for people to understand life for the average "working class family".
I will give you some excerpts shortly.
block-time published-time 4.15pm AEST
Australian Motoring Enthusiasts party senator Ricky Muir is giving his first speech. He is documenting his life in a very interesting earthy speech. More in a minute.
block-time published-time 4.09pm AEST
Working for the next generation
Liberal Kelly O'Dwyer waiting for her turn to contribute on the IGR debate. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian Labor MP Kate Ellis during question time ahead of parental leave. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian
block-time published-time 3.53pm AEST
Scary Joe.
IGR man: treasurer Joe Hockey Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian
block-time published-time 3.50pm AEST
Open the camera!
Foreign minister Julie Bishop and education minister Christopher Pyne. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian
block-time published-time 3.48pm AEST
Liberal Democrat David Leyonhjelm has given a speech opposing constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in parliament today.
Here is the key points of his speech:
The first statement is as follows:
The Parliament, on behalf of the people of Australia, recognises that the continent and the islands now known as Australia were first occupied by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
This is conjecture. Archaeologists make extraordinary discoveries all the time, and one of those discoveries could be that someone made it to Australia before the Aborigines. Statements like this belong in scholarly research, not legislation. Ever since the Enlightenment we have accepted that questions of fact are resolved by evidence, not by decree. You can't legislate a fact.
The second statement is as follows:
The Parliament, on behalf of the people of Australia, acknowledges the continuing relationship of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples with their traditional lands and waters.
This is stereotyping. It is likely that some Aboriginal people do not have a relationship with traditional lands and waters. What is the Parliament doing to these people when it asserts that Aboriginal peoples have such a relationship? It is denying their Aboriginality.
The third statement is as follows:
The Parliament, on behalf of the people of Australia, acknowledges and respects the continuing cultures, languages and heritage of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
This is divisive. It is likely that some Australians do not respect the cultures, languages or heritage of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. What is the Parliament doing to these people when it asserts that the people of Australia respect Aboriginal cultures? It is casting them as 'un-Australian'.
Discuss.
block-time published-time 3.23pm AEST
Clive Palmer is upset at the 'Liberal Party publication' that is the IGR that has "ignored the government's own data and continued to push lies told to the electorate by the prime minister.
block-time published-time 3.18pm AEST
Question time is over red rover.
Tony Burke announces Labor frontbencher Kate Ellis is off on parental leave from today and Speaker wishes her well.
Next up - a Labor matter of public importance on the politicisation of the intergenerational report.
Manager of opposition business Tony Burke talks with Mark Butler during question time. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian
block-time published-time 3.15pm AEST
Tony Abbott is asked about northern Australia, which he describes as our "next frontier".
After running through spending commitments, Abbott confirms the white paper on northern Australia will be out by mid year.
I want to confirm that by mid year the Northern Australia White Paper will be out. The focus is on building priority roads, developing water resources, attracting more investment and reducing red tape.
Prime minister Tony Abbott during question time. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian Tony Abbott talks to the leader of the house Christopher Pyne before question time. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian
block-time published-time 3.10pm AEST
Agriculture minister Barnaby Joyce is going through the recent rise in some commodity prices as well as exports and the prices of goats. To Labor, "I know you would be interested in goats".
Joyce is happy because the government is delivering.
We are delivering on drought...
It must be Thursday.
block-time published-time 3.07pm AEST
Sussan Ley, health minister, is asked about direct billing by Catherine King.
Speaker Bishop has to quell a rowdy house, particularly Mark Dreyfus, who is one of her favourites (not).
Ley cracks a few jokes about King not knowing about direct billing as Labor's health spokesman.
The health minister describes Labor as a "policy free zone" on health, which is not such a good idea given Ley held a press conference this week to say the Medicare copayment policy had been dumped. But there was no alternative. As yet.
block-time published-time 3.02pm AEST
Malcolm Turnbull is asked about the government's communication network for the future. He begins a dissertation on the intergenerational report and that through "every page, cries out for innovation, for science, for technology, for productivity".
Because the reality is if we are to win the opportunities that the future offers us, if we are to seize the future in the optimistic way the Treasurer has described, as the government described, then we need to be able to embrace the future, we need to be able to embrace volatility. Volatility has to be our friend not our enemy. The future is not something we proof ourselves against. It is something we embrace.
block-time published-time 2.58pm AEST
Madam speaker 94A's Wayne Swan @gabriellechan@GuardianAus#politicslivehttp://t.co/HMuCaQI5t3pic.twitter.com/oKj19kyGTr
- Mike Bowers (@mpbowers) March 5, 2015
block-time published-time 2.57pm AEST
Just on climate change, check out Lenore Taylor's story on how it was handled in the IGR. A taste:
Five years ago the 2010 intergenerational report declared that "climate change is the largest and most significant challenge to Australia's environment. If climate change is not addressed, the consequences for the economy, water availability and Australia's unique environment will be severe."
But the 2015 report has struck a markedly different tone.
Under the headline "climate change", it records the government's emissions reduction target and the $2.55bn emissions reduction fund that it states "will" meet this goal and "avoid achieving such reduction simply by driving domestic production offshore - a process which would cost Australian jobs for no decrease in global emissions".
block-time published-time 2.55pm AEST
Scott Morrison, social services minister, gets a question on the IGR and the future of workforce participation.
ScoMo is talking about the government being a "glass half full" type of operation.
There are developed countries all around the world who are going through the issue of an ageing of the population and we can either see that as a glass half full or a glass half empty and on this side of the house, we see that as a glass half full...because we can see that those Australians who have driven our economy as consumers and as workers over their lifetime from birth all the way through to now will continue. We want the super consumers, the baby boomers, to continue to be the super consumers of the future, to drive their economy and drive the opportunities that we can realise.
block-time published-time 2.50pm AEST
Labor asks Abbott : Will the PM's new-found passion for sensible conversations about facts and Australians living longer, why did the government freeze superannuation increases for 11m Australians costing billions of dollars in forgone retirement income and extra aged pension expenditure?
Abbott says because the super increase was linked to the mining tax, which we promised to dump.
block-time published-time 2.48pm AEST
Chris Bowen asks Joe Hockey: Why is the government claiming that the intergenerational report is independent when it's actually one last desperate attempt to sell your unfair budget?
There is a whole lot of argy bargy going on, with Joe Hockey baiting Wayne Swan, Chris Bowen and Mark Dreyfus.
How's that surplus going Member for Lilley (Swan)?
Which is possibly not the the best point for Hockey to make, when pre-election promises have shifted massively. As did Swan's.
When Hockey said Labor's IGR was a political document, Swan yelled: "that's a lie".
Madame Speaker asked him to withdraw and Swan refused.
He was thrown out of the chamber.
block-time published-time 2.38pm AEST
Labor's Jenny Macklin asks Tony Abbott about the cuts to pension indexation.
I refer to page 69 of the intergenerational report which assumes that pension indexation will switch from CPI to the higher average weekly earnings in 2028/29. From that year, pensions would be higher than under the Prime Minister's CPI adjustments. Will the Prime Minister now admit that pensioners will be worse off for 12 years because of his cuts to pension indexation? He can't say no. There's a graph in the book!
Tony Abbott says pensions will continue to go up twice a year.
This idea, Madam Speaker, that somehow there are cuts to pensions is simply false. Never ever will any pension go down.
Of course the point is that the indexation has been cut, so they continue to go up but at a slower rate.
block-time published-time 2.34pm AEST
A government question to Julie Bishop on the government's economic diplomacy record. She is going through the Chinese, Korean and Japanese free trade agreements and how they tick the boxes on the requirements outlined in the IGR.
block-time published-time 2.32pm AEST
Labor to Abbott: Is the prime minister's only plan for the future to make Australians work longer and to cut their pensions?
I certainly want Australians to achieve their economic potential. That's what I want.
block-time published-time 2.29pm AEST
Pat Conroy, MP for Charlton, has been chided for making disparaging remarks about older Australians. Speaker Bishop feigns outrage and Conroy denies the remarks but withdraws "to assist the house".
Madame speaker appears to be a good mood today.
block-time published-time 2.26pm AEST
A government question to Warren Truss, deputy PM and infrastructure guy. It's on how much the government is investing in infrastructure, most particularly the $3bn provided for western Sydney.
*NSW election* alert.
block-time published-time 2.23pm AEST
Greens Adam Bandt followed up with another question on climate change in the IGR.
Abbott says he is "taking strong and effective action on climate change".
By 2020, we will have delivered a 12% reduction - a 12% emissions reduction on 2005 levels and on a per capita basis we will have delivered a 30% reduction in emissions on 2005 levels, says the PM.
I know the term "previous government" was not included in that answer as much as it was in the IGR report.
block-time published-time 2.19pm AEST
Tony Abbott is asked by Labor about the IGR acknowledgement that "over the past 40 years climate change has caused the south of Australia to become hotter, drier and more vulnerable to fire. Why, then, does the report include absolutely no information about climate change over the next 40 years? Is this just another example of the prime minister's refusal to accept the science of climate change?"
Rise above politics, says Abbott.
I do hope that the opposition may be able to lift themselves from a spirit of partisanship, lift themselves from the kind of politicking which too often disfigures debate in this parliament and try to look fairly and squarely at the issues facing the country.
block-time published-time 2.16pm AEST
Climate change via intergenerational report
I have just looked up the relevant page and here is what it says:
Governments must continue to plan for the potential ceconomic and environmental effects of climate change. Some economic effects may be beneficial - where regions become warmer or wetter this may allow for increased agricultural output - while others may be harmful.
block-time published-time 2.14pm AEST
Facts are facts. Climate change may be beneficial.
Labor asks:
I refer to page 42 of the government's intergenerational report. Can the Prime Minister confirm that the government believes that climate change may be beneficial?
Tony Abbott:
I'm happy to say to the leader of the opposition that climate change is real. Humanity makes a difference and it's very important for government to put in place strong and effective policies to deal with it.
Just the facts ma'm.
The intergenerational report , it's been prepared by the experts in the Treasury. The intergenerational report, it just has facts and the facts aren't Labor, the facts aren't Liberal, the facts aren't National, the facts aren't Green. Facts are facts and what we must do as a nation is deal with the facts of the problems.
block-time published-time 2.09pm AEST
First government question on the intergenerational report. Here is the point of the report, via the prime minister.
The good news that the intergenerational report shows is that the structural reforms already proposed by this government and passed by this parliament have halved the deficit that was left to us by the former government.
block-time published-time 2.08pm AEST
In his statement, Bill Shorten addresses a common view.
Some people have said to me, "But it's drugs. People know the law of the land they travel into and really that's all that you can expect in this matter." What I would say is that - and this parliament, I genuinely believe, supports - the death penalty will solve nothing. The execution of these two young men will solve nothing.
block-time published-time 2.06pm AEST
Tony Abbott:
As someone who wants nothing but good for Indonesia, as a government, as a parliament that wants nothing but good for Indonesia, we are speaking as one united voice publicly and privately in every way we can. Pull back from this brink. Pull back from this brink. Don't just realise what is in your own best interests but realise what is in your own best values.
block-time published-time 2.04pm AEST
Tony Abbott :
This question of these impending executions, it touches our values. We are a decent and humane people who stand up for good wherever we can ask we certainly stand up for our citizens wherever we can.
I want the best for Indonesia, says Abbott, but how can it possibly help Indonesia to go ahead with these executions - some 60 foreigners.
block-time published-time 2.02pm AEST
Bill Shorten asks Tony Abbott to update the house on Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran.
Abbott thanks Shorten for the bipartisan gesture and agrees Shorten should also speak.
We are all Australians first and members of political parties second.
block-time published-time 1.58pm AEST
Meanwhile, actor Billy Zane is standing in front of Blue Poles and gives our nation's capital a big plug.
Infront of @JacksonPollack1 Blue Poles at the NGA in Canberra Australia. Great collection. Stunning futurist city. pic.twitter.com/gLbM38QSIi
- Billy Zane (@BillyZane) March 4, 2015
block-time published-time 1.54pm AEST
The conveyor belt is moving us onwards to question time at 2pm. #justsaying
block-time published-time 1.53pm AEST
ACTU: we knew about demographic challenges, now IGR will be used for austerity.
Ged Kearney, of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, says the government will use the IGR to push austerity style politics.
We've known for a long time is we will have demographic challenges in this country, but the government will use this as an excuse to make further cuts and subject Australians to, I guess, an austerity style of economic politics which hasn't worked around the world.
What we do know is we need to increase productivity, we into he had toincrease women and young people's participation in the workforce.
block-time published-time 1.43pm AEST
Acoss: IGR silent on poverty caused by government's last budget
Cassandra Goldie of the Australian Council of Social Services says some of the IGR numbers are useful but there are huge gaps.
Useful stuff = we are living longer, issues of spending in health and retirement.
Gap = what happens if we follow the government's policies that create greater poverty.
The big gap is why have we not got the analysis about into the future, particularly on proposed policies from this government on the last federal budget, if we kept down that path.
What would be the rate of increasing poverty in Australia? What would be the rise of inequality? We have no picture of that. We know from our numbers that if we stayed on the path that the government proposed last year, we would see a serious rise in the level of poverty into Australia and a serious guide of those doing well into the future and those being seriously left behind, and we question to theTreasurer. Why have we not got that analysis in the IGR?
Don't use it as a "blunt tool" to scare people into backing more hardline policies.
And - fix the hole in the budget caused by superannuation.
block-time published-time 1.32pm AEST
Seniors Australia: the challenge is around employment for fifty-plus
Chief executive Michael O'Neill, at National Seniors Australia, says the challenge is around productivity, particularly employment issues for people in their fifties.
It has been all too easy for commentators and others to predict the end of the world because of ageing.The economy and the outlook for the economy is actually quite positive in this report. Significantly, we're seeing increased participation rates amongst older Australians continuing to grow. We're rating against other OECD countries very positively in that regard.
Here's the big BUT:
If you lose your job at 55, you will be out of work on average for 72 weeks, and with that 72 weeks you may well not get another job. That's the kind of participation we need to deal with much more effectively than we do at the moment.
block-time published-time 1.26pm AEST
Labor's Anthony Albanese has called on Tony Abbott to "go back to the drawing board" on a jobs plan for Tasmania now that the $16m Cadbury cash boost is expected to be ditched.
After more than 500 days of dithering and delays by Mr Abbott over Cadbury, nothing has happened.
In that time domestic tourism has plummeted, with overnight trips down 6% in the year ending September 2014 and spending down 7%.
Last year it emerged that Cadbury had provided no business case for the grant prior to the money being allocated by the Abbott government in the 2014-15 budget.
block-time published-time 1.20pm AEST
The Greens are going to move to change the charter of budget honesty to ensure the parliamentary budget office does future intergenerational reports rather than directed by treasurer.
So that we get a decent document and make sure that into the future it will be the parliamentary budget office that writes it and not the partisan politics of evidence-free zones that seem to dominate the Liberal party.
block-time published-time 1.15pm AEST
Greens leader Christine Milne says the IGR should be the "death knell" of this government.
This is a junk document and should be tossed away. Just no credibility. These people are running a policy-free zone. It's just all ideology politics, rubbish, junk, no science, no evidence, no taking global warming seriously. It really is - it should be the death knell of this government.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 1.34pm AEST
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Christine Milne says the IGR is:
Politics, spin, and utter rubbish, because it ignores the greatest threat to our environment and our economy and that is global warming.
Treasurer Joe Hockey at a press conference for the release of the 2015 intergenerational report in Parliament House. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 1.34pm AEST
block-time published-time 1.07pm AEST
Chris Bowen is speaking now. He is making the point about the political nature of the document.
Well the previous shadow treasurer said of the 2010 intergenerational report, that it contained more hot air than the Hindenberg. What he was saying is he was predicting his own intergenerational report five years later.
Bowen says the government is stuck in opposition mode and has broken a promise to get to 1% of GDP in 2028-29.
Of course Tony Abbott promised at his election campaign launch that we'd reach that situation within a decade. The government has broken yet another promise. And of course the government's going out of their way to talk about previous policy mentioned 45 times in this document. But even as they do so, even as they engage in this political game, they do it in a way which is dishonest and incompetent.
The previous policy that this document refers to is not the policy of the previous Labor government. The previous policy in this document is from the mid-year economic forecast (Myefo) which the treasurer himself brought down, including $14bn of extra spending, including $9bn to the Reserve Bank, the doubling of the deficit.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 1.35pm AEST
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Not talkin' 'bout our generation.
Treasurer Joe Hockey talking the future. Photograph: Mike Bowers for Guardian
Point one.
Treasurer Joe Hockey with his pointer. Photograph: Mike Bowers
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 1.35pm AEST
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Joe Hockey says if all his budget savings were passed, Australians could expect to have tax returned by the government addressing bracket creep.
Q: Would you say to Australians out there working now that if all your budget agenda was passed that you could return bracket creep to them and they could get that tax break?
Yes, of course, of course. I mean that's self-evident.
block-time published-time 12.51pm AEST
Hockey is asked, given he is pushing innovation, isn't it a bit silly to have a fight in the Senate over research, outlined by Brian Schmidt earlier today?
Hockey says we need the higher education reforms and does not address the government's decision to link research and higher ed.
Also, if you are so committed to structural reforms, will you take them to the next election? In short, Hockey says we need it - but doesn't say whether he will take anything to the next election.
I don't think any political party, if it's being fair dinkum with the Australian people could pretend that the status quo is acceptable. You can't be nostalgic for 20-year-old public policy. The public policy of free education or free healthcare for everyone. That was 20 years ago.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 1.37pm AEST
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Joe Hockey is asked if his government - or a future one - will have to look at the tax treatment of superannuation.
Hockey says he does not want to look at policies of future government but does not say address the superannuation issue - the elephant in the room. He merely says the demographic trend is marching on.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 1.37pm AEST
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Joe Hockey mentions in passing that state governments did not want to be a part of the intergenerational report. For their own reasons. That's their business.
block-time published-time 12.40pm AEST
The purpose of the report: a national conversation, says Joe Hockey
The treasurer wants a national conversation to "lay down a road map for the future".
So the purpose of this IGR in this shape is to begin a conversation with the Australian people. Every town hall, every street corner, over every barbecue, we want Australians to embrace the future. It's a great future. Our nation has a fantastic future but we've got to own it. We need to individually own our destiny and this is a conversation that we know the nation wants to have so we are going to work with the Australian people to develop the policies ahead that are going to make a difference to their quality of life.
block-time published-time 12.36pm AEST
Word of the day: disintermediating. Joe Hockey on what government can do to help:
So how can the government help? Well we need to enable consumers. Consumers are on the march, consumers are changing the world through the use of technology. They are disintermediating every day life and government and regulation, and consumers need to be empowered. They need to be sovereign. We've got to facilitate change rather than restrict change and that is a problem facing governments everywhere in the world.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 12.36pm AEST
block-time published-time 12.24pm AEST
Budget predictions are hard enough to make over the four-year budget cycle but...
Daniel Hurst reports:
The report also sets out some dramatic long-term budget predictions based on various scenarios. Before we delve into them it is worth pointing out that recent experience shows budget predictions are hard enough to make over the four-year budget cycle. This report deals with a 40-year outlook and includes a disclaimer that "all projections are inherently uncertain, particularly over long-time frames".
The projections in this report are very unlikely to unfold over the next 40 years exactly as outlined ... The projections are not intended to be a prediction of the future as it will actually be, rather they are designed to capture some of the fundamental trends that will influence economic and budgetary outcomes should policies remain similar to current settings.
Now, with that word of warning out of the way, here are the long-run budget scenarios:
· The "previous policy" scenario, which assumes the policy settings that were in place before Joe Hockey's first budget last year. Under this scenario, the underlying cash deficit might reach 11.7% of gross domestic product in 2054-55, or $533 billion in today's dollars. Net debt over the same period might rise to 122% of GDP, or about $5.6 trillion in today's dollars. Gross debt might rise to 125% of GDP, or $5.7 billion in today's dollars.
· The "currently legislated" scenario, which takes into account Coalition budget measures that have already passed the Senate. Under this scenario, the underlying cash deficit is projected to be 6% of GDP in 2054-55, or $267 billion in today's dollars. Net debt in 2054-55 would be 60% of GDP, or about $2.6 trillion in today's dollars. Gross debt in that year would be 61.8% of GDP or $2.8 trillion in today's dollars.
·The "proposed policy" scenario, which assumes the implementation of all of the budget measures that were Coalition policy as of the December 2014 mid-year economic and fiscal outlook. Under this scenario, the budget would be in surplus from 2019-20. Net debt would decline from 15.2% of GDP now to zero in the early 2030s. Gross debt would peak at 26.1% of GDP in 2016-17 before declining, but the government would continue to maintain debt of about 13% from the late 2020s.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 12.41pm AEST
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Joe Hockey is doing show-and-tell on the intergenerational report right now.
block-time published-time 12.19pm AEST
Lenore Taylor analysis: IGR not very scary.
Excerpts from Lenore.
Sorry, Joe but I'm still on my chair. This intergenerational report is not very scary.
It shows our living standards, our wealth, will continue to rise over the next 40 years - faster for the next 30 and then a little more slowly. (Growth in gross national income per person is projected to be 0.8% in 2015 and then increase to 1.3% by 2025, 1.5% by 2035 and then fall off to 1.3% again in 2055.)
It shows the population is ageing, which is a big challenge, but that more women and over 65s will be in the workforce, which is a good thing. (By 2055, 70% of women are projected to be in the workforce.) There are 4.5 people aged between 15 and 64 now for every person aged over 65. By 2055 there will be 2.7. But given that by then everyone will be expected to work at least until they are 70, this may not be the most relevant comparison.
And it shows that in some important areas government spending is already being constrained.
And on climate change, no probs.
As for climate change - which could have a significant effect on Australia's economic wellbeing over the next 40 years because of its effects and the costs of doing something about it - the document mentions the "Direct Action" policy in passing, but says this is not really its focus because " government spending on the environment is not directly linked with demographic factors".
That's a pretty big change from the last report - in 2010 - which said "climate change is the largest and most significant challenge to Australia's environment. If climate change is not addressed, the consequences for the economy, water availability and Australia's unique environment will be severe.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 12.21pm AEST
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Intergenerational report 2015 - key points
Journalists have just been released from the two-hour "lock-up" and we can now reveal details of the 2015 Intergenerational Report (including parts that were not leaked to media in advance).
Daniel Hurst reports on some of the key predictions from the report:
The ageing of the population will continue. In 2054-55, one in 1,000 Australians will be aged over 100, compared with one in 10,000 people in 1975.
Life expectancy will improve. In 2054-55, life expectancy at birth is projected to be 95.1 years for men and 96.6 years for women, compared today's figures of 91.5 years for men and 93.6 years for women.
The number of people aged 15 to 64 for every person aged 65 and over will continue to decline. This figure has already fallen from 7.3 in 1975 to 4.5 today and is expected to be 2.7 in 2054-55.
Australia's total population is tipped to grow at 1.3% per year, slightly below the average growth rate of the past 40 years. Such a trend would result in the Australian population increasing from 23.9 million today to 39.7 million in 2054-55.
The participation rate for people aged over 15 years will fall from 64.6% now to 62.4% in 2054-55.
Female employment will continue to increase. The proportion of women aged 15 to 64 with a job has risen from 46% in 1974-75 to 66% now and is projected to rise to about 70% in 2054-55.
Australia's economic growth will be slower than long-term trends. Average annual growth of real gross domestic product is projected to be 2.8% over the next 40 years, down from 3.1% over the past 40 years.
Based on assumptions in the report, the average annual Australian income could increase from $66,400 now to $117,300 in 2054-55.
block-time published-time 12.08pm AEST
Just in case you could not remember, this was the original announcement by Tony Abbott of the pure Cadbury glass-and-a-half milky goodness prior to the 2013 election.
A Coalition government will contribute $16m towards a $66m upgrade of the Cadbury Chocolate factory in Claremont to boost innovation, support growth in local manufacturing jobs and expand tourism.
This commitment will re-establish Cadbury's Hobart plant as a tourist destination that will generate economic and social benefits for Hobart and Tasmania. It will also support the construction of a new visitor centre to accommodate large tour groups and enhance tourist experiences.
Today's announcement is all about my top three priorities for Tasmania - jobs, jobs and jobs.
It will support manufacturing, foster innovation and boost tourism in Tasmania.
It was going to do a lot for Tassie.
The Coalition's commitment will:
create a unique visitor tour offering a chocolate manufacturing experience (suspended in 2008), restoring a famous tourist attraction for Tasmania and the local economy;
help create 200 new direct jobs and 120 indirect jobs by 2017;
help secure 600 existing direct jobs and 340 existing indirect jobs;
be the first step toward producing a 100 per cent Australian-made chocolate bar;
help cause fresh milk supply to increase 83 million litres to 120 million litres, meaning an extra 6,000 cattle in the local dairy industry;
boost the existing $550 million contribution of the operation to the Tasmanian economy;
increase chocolate production to 70,000 tonnes a year, representing a 30 per cent increase and generating a $1 billion contribution to the economy; and
provide a trial to grow cocoa in the Ord River, opening up major new agricultural opportunities and growth in that area.
Not sure what happens to all those jobs and all that milk.
Thanks to one of our dear readers, Amy Feldtmann for the link.
block-time published-time 12.01pm AEST
Coming in minutes, a precise snapshot of the intergenerational from Daniel Hurst, with analysis from Lenore Taylor.
block-time published-time 12.00pm AEST
Cadbury appears to have taken its bat home. It didn't want to build the much vaunted tourist facility anyway. This from ABC reporter:
A media release is expected from @CadburyAU soon, to say that it didn't want to chip in its $50mill to build the visitor centre #politas
- Annah Fromberg (@AnnahFromberg) March 5, 2015
block-time published-time 11.58am AEST
Recognise.
Archie Roach sang for Recognise. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian Bill Shorten takes to the microphone for Recognise. Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian
block-time published-time 11.55am AEST
Recognise, the organisation committed to constitutional recognition for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, was in the house today with a pledge signed by 117 health organisations. They are supporting constitutional recognition as a way of improving health and well being, closing the gap on disadvantage and inequality.
block-time published-time 11.51am AEST
The magic hand of Archie Roach.
Archie Roach at a function in the mural hall of parliament house Canberra to launch Recognise health initiative, Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian
block-time published-time 11.33am AEST
Let me return briefly to the Mhl0.
Tony Abbott detailed some of the statistics around the efforts that went into the search of Mhl0.
In the first few weeks, 28 search aircraft from Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan, Malaysia, South Korea and the United States completed 345 sorties into the southern Indian Ocean.
Ships from Australia, China, Malaysia, the United Kingdom and the United States also joined the search.
As the search from the air and on the surface reached its conclusion, Australia began the largest underwater search ever carried out in an area that had never been mapped before.
To add to the difficulty, the search zone is in the roaring 40s, one of the world's roughest stretches of ocean.
Area covered = more than 26,800 square km = 40% of the priority search area.
block-time published-time 11.21am AEST
There is a build-up to the intergenerational report. The former disability commissioner, who remains irreplaceable because the government will not replace him, has wondered aloud whether people with a disability will get a look-in.
When the inter generational report comes out, will people with disability be the forgotten generation.
- Graeme Innes (@Graemeinnes) March 5, 2015
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 11.34am AEST
block-time published-time 11.14am AEST
In response on Mhl0, Bill Shorten is quoting the poet Shelley - Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats
Winter is come and gone
but grief returns with the revolving year.
Families are sitting in the chamber. More shortly.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 11.34am AEST
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In case you are into your patrol boats, here is the guts of the Kevin Andrews ' announcement.
Today, the government announces the Request for Tender (RFT) for the replacement - Australian-made - Pacific Patrol Boats under the Pacific Maritime Security Program, Project SEA3036 Phase 1.
This project represents a significant investment in Australian defence industry with the Australian-made patrol boats worth $594m in addition to through life sustainment and personnel costs estimated at $1.38bn over 30 years.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 11.34am AEST
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Just to remind you, my colleagues Lenore Taylor and Daniel Hurst are beavering away in the intergenerational report lock-up and are due out at midday.
Liberal senator Simon Birmingham is speaking about the government's efforts on fishing for the Ludwig amendment, which tries to add more scientific assessments of fishing boats to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity amendment (EPBC).
Tony Abbott is moving a motion to mark the loss of Mhl0 in the lower house. That was the Malaysian Airlines plane that disappeared last year.
Every family has a story of loss... you remain in our thoughts and prayers... we are taking every reasonable step to bring your painful search to an end.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 11.35am AEST
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Kevin Andrews is asked about Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran.
He is not going to "prejudge what we do in the future".
block-time published-time 10.50am AEST
Defence minister Kevin Andrews announces patrol boat tender
Kevin Andrews says it's a "week of decision and delivery for defence".
The nub is 21 steel-hulled replacement patrol boats for Pacific neighbours.
The key - after the submarine debacle - is that the boats will be built in Australia.
They will be offered to Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Tonga, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Kiribati, Samoa, Vanuatu, the federated States of Micronesia, Palau, Cook Islands, Timor-Leste.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 11.36am AEST
block-time published-time 10.40am AEST
Following on from Brian Schmidt's comments, top researchers/scientists have written to Tony Abbott to urge his intervention.
Part of their letter reads:
Over 35,000 Australian and international researchers use NCRIS facilities, and the 27 national facilities employ over 1,700 highly skilled scientists, and support and management staff. The facilities underpin much of Australia's $30bn annual spend on science, research and development at an operational cost of just $150m per annum (0.5% of total, and 1.6% of the Australian government science funding).
As with any major public infrastructure, the NCRIS facilities depend on secure funding to enable forward planning and efficient operation. However, with continued uncertainty over the 2015-16 operational funding included in the last budget, many of the NCRIS facilities are preparing to close.
It is signed by heavy hitters:
Dr Ross Smith, President, Science and Technology Australia
Ms Belinda Robinson, Chief Executive, Universities Australia
Professor Doug Hilton, President, Association of Australian Medical Research Institutes (AAMRI)
Dr John Beaton, Executive Director, Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia
Professor Andrew Holmes, President, Australian Academy of Science
Ms Robyn Porter, President, Professional Scientists Australia
Dr Phoebe Phillips, President, Australian Society for Medical Research
Dr Margaret Hartley, Chief Executive, Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering
Dr Caroline Perkins, Executive Director, Regional Universities Network
Elizabeth Foley, CEO and managing Director, Research Australia
Mr Conor King, Executive Director, Innovative Research Universities
Professor John Fitzgerald FAHA, President, Australian Academy of the Humanities
Ms Vicki Thomson, Chief Executive, The Group of Eight
Dr Tony Peacock, Chief Executive, Cooperative Research Centres Association
Ms Renee Hindmarsh, Executive Director, Australian Technology Network
Brian Schmidt is speaking right now in parliament.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 10.44am AEST
block-time published-time 10.31am AEST
Tony Abbott's $16m Cadbury cash handout may be withdrawn
It would appear another captain's call is biting the dust.
@TonyAbbottMHR $16m election cash to Cadbury to be withdrawn, claims Tas ALP Opposition.Premier @WillHodgman says announcment today. #auspol
- Andrew Darby (@looksouth) March 4, 2015
block-time published-time 10.29am AEST
Supertrawler debate in the Senate
Remember the fishing supertrawlers?
Labor's Jo Ludwig has introduced a private bill which would toughen the processes around fishing approvals. The Senate is debating right now.
The former agriculture minister characterised it thus:
This bill will restore tough powers to the environment minister to act where new types of fishing operations seek to work in Australia and where uncertainty exists about their conduct. It provides for a scientific process to occur for up to two years, providing for an expert panel to consider the impacts of the new venture if it is declared. This will provide the community, recreational fishers and business alike with the certainty for these declared activities to operate in Australian waters. This legislation focuses on addressing uncertainty related to so-called 'super trawler' fishing vessels.
Coalition ministers are reminding Ludwig he was responsible for the live cattle export ban. Suffice to say, the government will not support. We are checking on the crossbenchers.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 10.41am AEST
block-time published-time 10.06am AEST
Like I said, dawn was lovely.
Beautiful morning on a sombre day in Canberra. pic.twitter.com/ouyfLTASAE
- Anthony Byrne (@AnthonyByrne_MP) March 4, 2015
block-time published-time 9.56am AEST
Nobel laureate Brian Schmidt: "This is not the way a grown up country behaves".
Brian Schmidt spoke about the $150m research program, launched by Julie Bishop in 2006, which has achieved great kudos and was to have a long term strategy to guarantee funding.
To suddenly put at risk the bridge between the past and the future such that all of that investment, $2bn over the last decade is suddenly put at risk, seems to be unconscionable.
Schmidt said a lot of the research facilities "cannot trade in solvent". Schmidt's said his own organisation, which he chairs, has to go through the process of starting to lay off staff. That will happen over the next few weeks.
Ultimately, this is not the way a grown up country behaves. It's very childish and it's having a profound impact on something that is going to increase the productivity of the nation. We are looking at the intergenerational report today, it's talking about a key aspect - productivity of the future - this is a way you are going to get productivity and in the next couple of weeks we are looking at dropping our productivity of the future. Not raising it.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 10.04am AEST
block-time published-time 9.37am AEST
Nobel laureate Brian Schmidt critical of funding impasse
Nobel laureate Brian Schmidt has described the potential science funding cuts as a "hit to research like I have never seen in the 20 years I have been in Australia". He spoke to Ali Carabine on the ABC.
It really is the foundations of the research we do across the country, across all disciplines so it will have an enormous effect and it is something we cannot let happen.
Schmidt made the point that obviously the funding does not need to be tied to the higher education reforms, given $150m that the program is worth is small "in the scheme of things".
That is the choice that the minister has made. This is money that every country on planet Earth spends and to suddenly think that we are not going to spend it I think is not wishful thinking on the part of the minister, it's hazardous thinking.
Schmidt says the work that he is doing with other countries is being jeopardised and he finds it embarrassing to explain to foreign colleagues that Australia may not be able to take part due to funding.
Already it is becoming embarrassing... they shrug their shoulders and don't believe it's true.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 9.53am AEST
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On the game of chicken between Christopher Pyne and the Senate, here is part of the education minister's statement.
This was an integral part of the higher education reform package announced in the 2014 budget. The funds for NCRIS only exist because of savings elsewhere in the higher education package. As I have made clear on many occasions over many months, if the higher education reforms don't pass, funds do not exist for NCRIS. The jobs of 1,700 people will be at risk. Australian research will suffer. The way for Labor to support NCRIS, which they themselves defunded, is to support the higher education reforms. Labor needs to stop playing politics and enter negotiations with the government because it will be on the heads of Labor, the Greens and the crossbenchers if it closes.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 9.54am AEST
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The intergenerational report is coming up. For a short, sharp analysis, check out Lenore Taylor's piece on the report, which will make the case for long-term savings just as it and its leader may have lost political capital to carry it out.
The new treasury secretary (John Fraser), the previous treasury secretary (Martin Parkinson) and the treasury secretary before that (Ken Henry) have all made the case for structural changes to the budget - reductions in recurrent spending and changes to taxation, and - successive treasurers have agreed with them.
Successive oppositions have opposed even modest changes. The Coalition, in opposition, described Labor's plan to freeze the threshold at which family benefits stopped being paid at $150,000 as "class warfare". In government it proposed to reduce the same threshold to $100,000 in order to "end the age of entitlement" and deal with a "debt and deficit crisis". Labor, as the government repeatedly reminds us, has voted against savings it had itself proposed in government.
Here, from Mike Bowers, a "pic fac" of the beating heart of the IGR.
Treasurer Joe Hockey, finance minister Mathias Cormann, parliamentary secretary Kelly O'Dwyer, small business minister Bruce Billson and assistant treasurer Josh Frydenberg. Photograph: Mike Bowers for Guardian
And here, the infrastructure required to sustain the pic fac.
Treasurer Joe Hockey, finance minister Mathias Cormann, parliamentary secretary Kelly O'Dwyer, small business minister Bruce Billson and assistant treasurer Josh Frydenberg. Photograph: Mike Bowers for Guardian
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 9.55am AEST
block-time published-time 8.50am AEST
Christopher Pyne is playing chicken with the Senate. Standing on the road are 1,700 scientists and researchers, glaring into the high beam. Their funding has been put into the contentious higher education reform bill, which Labor, the Greens and the crossbenchers do not want to pass. By hitching the measures together, Pyne is urging scientists to put the thumbscrews on the crossbenchers.
My colleague Michael Safi has a story, the top of which is:
More than two dozen research facilities are preparing to shut down as administrators warn Australian science is suffering "immense" damage as a result of the federal government's refusal to guarantee critical infrastructure funding.
About $150m in funding for 27 research infrastructure facilities promised in last year's federal budget has been tied to the Abbott government's higher-education changes, which have stalled in the Senate.
The facilities have no guaranteed funding past 30 June and up to 1,700 jobs are at risk if they are forced to shut down.
Among the sites funded by the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Scheme (NCRIS) is the Australian Microscopy and Microanalysis Research Facility, where scientists invented the Nanopatch, a needle-free vaccine delivery patch that could dramatically slow the spread of viruses during a pandemic.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 9.56am AEST
block-time published-time 8.28am AEST
Tony Abbott and Bill Shorten at the vigil. Photograph: Mike Bowers for Guardian Chris Hayes and Philip Ruddock lead a vigil on the forecourt of parliament. Photograph: Mike Bowers for Guardian Julie Bishop and Tanya Plibersek with Greens leader Christine Milne. Photograph: Mike Bowers for Guardian Foreign minister Julie Bishop speaks in the presence of organiser Philip Ruddock. Photograph: Mike Bowers for Guardian
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 9.57am AEST
block-time published-time 8.12am AEST
Good morning,
Under a beautiful dawn sky in the parliamentary forecourt, 40 or so parliamentarians and 60 plus staff and members of the public held candles to show their support for Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan, who spent last night on the execution island of Nusakambangan.
It was organised by a bipartisan group of parliamentarians against the death penalty, led by Liberal MP Philip Ruddock and Labor MP Chris Hayes.
Foreign minister Julie Bishop revealed she has spoken to her counterpart Retno Marsudi to propose a prisoner swap, trading Sukumaran and Chan for Indonesian prisoners held in Australia. Bishop said it could involve a memorandum of understanding given the presidential decree for no pardons.
Marsudi committed to take the proposal to president Joko Widodo and Bishop has not heard back. She will contact Marsudi again today.
Tony Abbott has also put in a request to speak with Widodo. After the vigil, the prime minister said:
It would ennoble Indonesia if they were to extend mercy to these men, as the foreign minister has been pointing out, these men have become crime fighters and they are assets to Indonesia... And when you have an asset you don't destroy it.
Bishop again made the point that there are still legal proceedings continuing and that "it would be unthinkable" to go ahead with the executions at this stage. There are allegations of bribery around the first trial that are being considered by an Indonesian judicial commission.
I understand that that commission is seeking a statement from Mr Sukumaran and Mr Chan. Obviously they will have to be able to provide that statement if that commission is to have a credible hearing.
Sadly, Bishop says she has not seen any "changes of heart" and could not comprehend the show of force of Indonesian police to move the pair yesterday.
I just cannot comprehend it. They are two men described by their own prison governor as model citizens, two gentle men who pose no risk to anyone. So I cannot comprehend the manner or method of their transfer to the so-called execution island.
Bishop said she was deeply concerned over the impact of the executions not only on the Australian Indonesian relationship but at Indonesia's reputation worldwide.
I am deeply concerned about the impact of these executions not just on the Australian relationship with Indonesia but on Indonesia's reputation worldwide. The movement against the death penalty is very strong. The sense of injustice of state-sponsored killings is very real and we have been sending a message to Indonesia that its international standing will be damaged if it continues to execute successive numbers of citizens, particularly those who have rehabilitated in their prison system and as I have said on countless occasions, Indonesia has a story of which it can be proud. Prisoners havebeen rehabilitated in their system, that is the kind of model outcome that countriesa round the world would be proudto own.
Also on this last sitting day of the week, we have the intergenerational report coming up. There is a short lock-up of journalists to allow them to swallow and fully digest the report. I shall bring you the findings after midday. Join us below or on the Twits @gabriellechan and @mpbowers, who has produced some beautiful images of the vigil this morning.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 9.59am AEST
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The Guardian
March 5, 2015 Thursday 5:42 AM GMT
Doubt over climate science is a product with an industry behind it;
With its roots in the tobacco industry, climate science denial talking points can be seen as manufactured doubt
BYLINE: Graham Readfearn
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 1895 words
It's a product that you can find in newspaper columns and TV talk shows and in conversations over drinks, at barbecues, in taxi rides and in political speeches.
You can find this product in bookstores, on sponsored speaking tours, in the letters pages of local newspapers and even at United Nations climate change talks.
This product is doubt - doubt about the causes and impacts of climate change, the impartiality of climate scientists, the world's temperature records, the height of the oceans and basic atmospheric physics.
There's doubt too about the "agenda" of policy makers and government environment agencies and a continued attempt to politicise climate science as "leftist".
There's also doubt over the role renewable energy might play now and in the future.
Yet where it matters most, in the leading scientific journals in the world, any doubt that burning fossil fuels is causing the planet to heat up is almost nowhere to be seen.
In the last couple of weeks, we've been given yet another glimpse into the global climate science denial industry and the machinery that produces all of this doubt.
For those playing catch-up, the story revolves around Dr Willie Soon, who is a long-serving climate science denialist and worker bee for numerous conservative think tanks over the past 15 years.
Documents obtained from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, where Soon has a part-time research position, have raised questions over the rules around conflict of interest and funding disclosures in the journals where Soon has published his work.
As The Chronicle of Higher Education has explained, The Smithsonian doesn't actually pay Soon a wage and he has no association with the world-renowned Harvard University, despite the name of his institution suggesting there might be one.
Soon chases money himself and in the last decade practically all of it has come either from the fossil fuel industry or conservative groups. The Smithsonian is now carrying out a review, after it also emerged that it had agreed to a clause preventing the institution from revealing the identity of at least one donor.
Now three US Senators have asked 100 fossil fuel groups, conservative "free market" think tanks and conservative aligned funding groups for information about climate change research and scientists they might have been involved with.
Soon claims the sun is the main driver of the world's climate, but he also downplays concerns over rising sea levels and the health impacts of mercury from burning coal.
Scientists have long criticised Soon's work as flawed. Dr Gavin Schmidt, the head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has described Soon's work as "singularly poor" and "almost pointless".
The Denial Machine
For more than 15 years Soon has been a key part of the globe-spanning industry producing doubt about the science of climate change.
There are four main cogs that make up the machinery as I see it - conservative "free market" think tanks, public relations groups, fossil fuel organisations and ideologically aligned media.
Occasionally over the years, the hood on the climate denial machine has been lifted to reveal its hidden workings.
As I wrote for The Guardian last week, in 1998 a leaked American Petroleum Institute memo detailed how a dozen fossil fuel lobbyists, think tank associates and PR professionals had come together for a mass scale misinformation project on climate science.
The memo claimed that "victory" would be achieved when "uncertainties" (read: doubt) became part of the conventional wisdom among the public.
As detailed in my piece, many of the same individuals continue to work in the climate science doubt production industry while defending fossil fuels.
But this wasn't the first or the last time that internal documents have shown how the fossil fuel industry and ideologues work together to produce doubt on climate science.
In 1991, for example, a group of coal utilities devised an advertising and public relations campaign that would also recruit scientists to "reposition global warming as theory (not fact)".
In 2000, influential US Republican pollster Frank Luntz produced a memo for the energy industry and anyone else challenging the science of climate change. Luntz wrote:
Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate.
Luntz also proposed that Republicans should stop using the phrase "global warming" and replace it with "climate change" because this was "less frightening".
In 2006, the Intermountain Rural Electric Association - a group that distributes coal-generated electricity - produced a fact sheet for their members to pass around to employees who should then pass them on to their friends and family.
The materials claimed climate change was mainly caused by changes in the output of the sun, changes in the earth's orbit and by plate tectonics.
Despite every major science academy in the world disagreeing with them, the pamphlet claimed the role of carbon dioxide was minor. The fact sheet said:
Trendy global warming theory suffers the great conceit that human activity has a significant impact on climate change.
Another infamous effort was the Oregon petition - a supposed survey of US science graduates claiming 17,000 "scientists" (later building to 33,000) who claimed there was "no convincing evidence" that carbon dioxide was a problem for the world's climate (most of the signatories had graduated in completely unrelated disciplines ).
As I wrote last year, despite the petition being one of the feeblest factoids in the climate science denial songbook, it didn't stop Dick Warburton, a government-appointed reviewer of Australian renewables policy, from citing it as supposed evidence of a split among scientists over the causes of climate change.
The 1998 petition came with an attached manuscript, co-authored by Willie Soon, which claimed that "predictions of harmful climatic effects" from increasing carbon dioxide levels were "in error".
The manuscript was produced in a format almost identical to that used by the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, leading the National Academy of Sciences to issue a statement saying it had nothing to do with the petition, and that the manuscript "was not published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences or in any other peer-reviewed journal."
The actual tobacco playbook
The campaign to sow doubt and discredit science to maintain industry profits was one honed by the tobacco industry during its fight against the science linking its products with cancer.
In the book Merchants of Doubt (released as a film this week) authors Naomi Oreskes (an actual Harvard professor) and Erik Conway explain that some of the same individuals and think tanks who had worked with the tobacco industry had moved on to climate science denial.
Documents obtained by US lawsuits against the tobacco industry in the 1990s and 2000s are now housed in the Legacy Tobacco Documents Library.
Among the many thousands of documents, is Bad Science: A Resource Book- described in Merchants of Doubt as a "how-to handbook for fact fighters".
Produced by the tobacco industry to help any industry fight any legislation that responded to scientific findings, this was a representation of big tobacco's playbook in written form.
The book provided soundbites and ready-made talking points to arm any industry fighting regulation. Among the talking points the book suggested should be pushed home were:
Too often, science is manipulated to fulfil a political agenda. Government agencies, too often, betray the public trust by violating principles of good science in a desire to achieve a political goal. Public policy decisions that are based on bad science impose enormous economic costs on all aspects of society.
Among the newspaper cuttings provided as back up were newspaper columns, several of which took climate science denialists viewpoints, with self-explanatory titles.
There was "Warming Theories need a Warning Label", "Earth Summit Will Shackle the Planet, Not Save It" and "Great Hoax On Asbestos Finally Ends".
Think tanks?
At the time of the Oregon petition, Willie Soon was affiliated to the George C. Marshall Institute, one of the earliest US free market think tanks to take up climate science denial with the help of fossil fuel funding.
This week, another free market think tank, the Heartland Institute, issued a statement on behalf of Soon, who claimed his funding had never influenced his work and that he had always disclosed his financial backers when asked.
Of course, Heartland continues to defend the tobacco industry in it's online " Smoker's Lounge " and claims the public health community's "campaign to demonize smokers" is based on "junk science".
There is a network of these think tanks across the world, and they play a key role in producing doubt as part of what should be seen as a public relations effort that serves the vested interests of the fossil fuel industry
For example, the US has the Competitive Enterprise Institute, The George C. Marshall Institute, the Heartland Institute and the Campaign for A Constructive Tomorrow.
The UK has the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a group that declines to disclose its funders but has been backed by wealthy conservatives.
Australia has its own cogs in the climate science denial machine.
As well as the sympathetic Rupert Murdoch-owned press and the fossil fuel industry, there is the influential free market "think tank" the Institute of Public Affairs.
The IPA is another group to push climate science denial while also defending the tobacco industry (the Sydney Morning Herald reported in 2012 that British American Tobacco was a financial supporter of the institute.)
Last year the IPA encouraged supporters to take advantage of a tax concession to help fund a climate book with chapters written by a familiar line-up of climate science denialists - one of which was Dr Soon.
In February, the IPA ran a short speaking tour promoting its book Climate Change: The Facts (it was suggested to me that moving the semi colon in the book's title one word to the left would better describe the contents).
Doubt is their product
In a famous 1969 tobacco industry memo, one executive wrote:
Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the "body of fact" that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy. Within the business we recognize that a controversy exists. However, with the general public the consensus is that cigarettes are in some way harmful to the health. If we are successful in establishing a controversy at the public level, then there is an opportunity to put across the real facts about smoking and health. Doubt is also the limit of our "product".
What's clear - and has been clear for well over a decade - is that the climate science denial industry is largely an extension of a program developed in the 1960s by big tobacco.
Much of its product, liberally spread, is a public relations exercise. The fact that this is not regularly acknowledged is possibly also a result of the production of doubt.
You'll probably be able to sample some of that product in the comment section of this post. Enjoy.
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The Guardian
March 5, 2015 Thursday 3:14 AM GMT
Intergenerational report: climate change silence in 2015 a stark contrast to 2010;
This year's IGR is mostly silent on the economic effects of climate change, which the 2010 report declared a 'severe' threat to the economy
BYLINE: Lenore Taylor political editor
SECTION: AUSTRALIA NEWS
LENGTH: 769 words
Five years ago the 2010 intergenerational report declared that "climate change is the largest and most significant challenge to Australia's environment. If climate change is not addressed, the consequences for the economy, water availability and Australia's unique environment will be severe."
But the 2015 report has struck a markedly different tone.
Under the headline "climate change", it records the government's emissions reduction target and the $2.55bn emissions reduction fund that it states "will" meet this goal and "avoid achieving such reduction simply by driving domestic production offshore - a process which would cost Australian jobs for no decrease in global emissions".
Related: Intergenerational report: Coalition warns of debt crisis if budget plans stall
It is silent on the economic consequences of climate change, saying only that "the intergenerational report focuses primarily on government expenses that are affected by demographic change. The level of commonwealth government spending on the environment is not directly linked with demographic factors. Commonwealth environment programs do not vary automatically with population changes ... nevertheless, there are costs associated with changes in the environment and climate."
And it says nothing about the costs of meeting the deeper post-2020 reduction targets Australia will have to sign on to later this year. Many observers, including the communications minister, Malcolm Turnbull, have suggested that the costs of using "direct action" to meet deeper long term targets could be prohibitive. The document does mention a "safeguards" mechanism, which could impose limits on industrial emissions, if the safeguards turn out to be tough enough to turn the scheme into what is effectively a baseline and credit emissions trading scheme. It is not at all clear that cabinet will agree to do this.
It does say that some economic effects of climate change "may be beneficial - where regions become warmer or wetter this may allow for increased agricultural output, while others may be harmful." It concedes Australia's climate has warmed by 0.9 degrees since 1910 and the frequency of extreme weather has changed, that extreme fire weather has increased and that rainfall patterns have changed.
In 2010, spruiking the then Labor government's emissions trading scheme, the IGR pointed out that "early action on climate change will allow strong long-term growth by steadily transforming the economy, rather than imposing on future Australians the need for a sharp, more costly shock to make the inevitable change to a sustainable low pollution economy".
Related: Intergenerational report: Everyone remain seated - it's not very scary
The government had to include some mention of climate change in the 2015 document under a deal it signed with the Greens when it persuaded them in late 2013 to agree to abolishing the legislated limit on government debt.
In a letter to the Greens leader, Christine Milne, at the time, Joe Hockey pledged that future IGRs would "retain a dedicated section on the environment, including climate change and the effect of these policies and their impact on the Australian economy and commonwealth budget".
Asked about the treatment of climate change in the document, the said "the thing that I think is going to be transformative in climate change is technology change, it is going to change the nature of the debate over time." He said the government was doing its share of the "heavy lifting" on emissions reductions.
The Greens intend to move in the Senate to ask the independent parliamentary budget office to rewrite the report to restore the credibility of intergenerational reporting. The Greens also want to refer the report to the Senate budget cuts committee to examine its details and assumptions.
"Global warming has been ignored. All that's here is a regurgitation of the government's current and almost non-existent global warming policy. The report supposedly looks forward to 2055, but in 50 years people will look back at this report in the same way we now look at tobacco industry's lies from the 1950s," Milne said.
"You can't have true intergenerational reporting without examining global warming and pollution from fossil fuels."
John Connor, chief executive of The Climate Institute, said "when it comes to climate change, this intergenerational report barely addresses challenges for this generation let alone the next. It contains no projections of policy outcomes, no projections of the costs of climate impacts, and no recognition of the need to achieve a net zero emissions economy by mid-century."
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The Guardian
March 5, 2015 Thursday 1:33 AM GMT
Intergenerational report: Everyone remain seated - it's not very scary;
Joe Hockey's alarmist comments ignore findings which show that living standards will rise for 40 years, more women will find work and spending is being curbed
BYLINE: Lenore Taylor, political editor
SECTION: AUSTRALIA NEWS
LENGTH: 801 words
Sorry, Joe but I'm still on my chair. This intergenerational report is not very scary.
It shows our living standards, our wealth, will continue to rise over the next 40 years - faster for the next 30 and then a little more slowly. (Growth in gross national income per person is projected to be 0.8% in 2015 and then increase to 1.3% by 2025, 1.5% by 2035 and then fall off to 1.3% again in 2055.)
It shows the population is ageing, which is a big challenge, but that more women and over 65s will be in the workforce, which is a good thing. (By 2055, 70% of women are projected to be in the workforce.) There are currently 4.5 people aged between 15 and 64 for every person aged over 65. By 2055 there will be 2.7. But given that by then everyone will be expected to work at least until they are 70, this may not be the most relevant comparison.
And it shows that in some important areas government spending is already being constrained.
Total government payments to individuals (unemployment benefits, disability support pensions child care benefits and parenting payments) are falling under existing policy settings. (from 4.5% of GDP now to 3.4% in 2055). Spending is increasing on health (4.2% of GDP now, 5.7% in 2055) and old age pensions (2.9% now, 3.6% in 2055).
The overall scenario is an obvious public policy challenge - the same public policy challenge the last three treasury secretaries have warned about, but nothing to cause chair-falling injuries. Hockey is right when he says that "doing nothing" is not an option.
The graphs showing the budget situation as policy stands now, as it would be if the senate waved through all of last year's budget and as things would have been under Labor, could possibly be scary until you think about them for five minutes.
The "current legislation" scenario shows deficits all the way out to the 2055 horizon, deteriorating to 6% of GDP by 2055, with net debt growing to 60% of GDP. Looks bad until you consider that it is based on the ridiculous assumption that no government would seek to do anything about the situation or propose new or different savings or revenue measures for the next 40 years.
The "previous (ie Labor) policy" situation looks even scarier (deficit of 11.7% of GDP by 2055, net debt of 112% of GDP). However, this is not only based on the idea that governments would sit on their hands for four decades, but also starts not from the former government's final budget position as revealed by treasury and finance in the pre-election economic forecast, but on the new Coalition government's first mini-budget at the end of 2013. Those decisons made the deficit much worse - it was 1.9% of GDP but grew to 3% of GDP when the new government gave a big cash injection to the Reserve Bank, abandoned some of Labor's proposed savings and took into account the abolition of the carbon and mining taxes.
As for climate change - which could have a significant effect on Australia's economic wellbeing over the next 40 years because of its effects and the costs of doing something about it - the document mentions the "direct action" policy in passing, but says this is not really its focus because "government spending on the environment is not directly linked with demographic factors".
That's a pretty big change from the last report - in 2010 - which said "climate change is the largest and most significant challenge to Australia's environment. If climate change is not addressed, the consequences for the economy, water availability and Australia's unique environment will be severe".
The senate-rolls-over-and-passes everything scenario does show a return to surplus in 2040 and net debt being paid off by 2032. As the document says this could be achieved by those policies not yet legislated "or measures of equivalent value".
Since the government has abandoned some of those measures and others have been firmly rejected by the community, the real message from this intergenerational report is not specific "scary" projections 40 years hence. As it says "the projections in this report are very unlikely to unfold over the next 40 years exactly as outlined... the projections are not intended to be a prediction of the future as it will actually be, rather they are designed to capture some of the fundamental trends that will influence economic and budgetary outcomes should policies remain similar to current settings".
The sensible response to the very real challenges of an ageing population would seem to be for the government, and the parliament, to remain firmly in their chairs and find sensible ways to cut spending or raise revenue for which they can win the support of the Australian people.
The treasurer says that's exactly what he wants to do with it. If that's really the case, this exercise may be not scary, but useful.
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The New York Times
March 5, 2015 Thursday
Late Edition - Final
McConnell Urges States to Defy U.S. Plan to Cut Greenhouse Gas
BYLINE: By CORAL DAVENPORT
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 12
LENGTH: 855 words
WASHINGTON -- Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and majority leader, is urging governors to defy President Obama by refusing to implement the administration's global warming regulations.
In an op-ed article published Wednesday in The Lexington Herald-Leader with the headline, ''States should reject Obama mandate for clean-power regulations,'' Mr. McConnell wrote: ''The Obama administration's so-called 'clean power' regulation seeks to shut down more of America's power generation under the guise of protecting the climate.'' He added, ''Don't be complicit in the administration's attack on the middle class.''
As Mr. Obama pushes an aggressive climate change agenda, the Environmental Protection Agency has proposed regulations to slash greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants, the nation's largest source of planet-warming pollution. The rules, which the E.P.A. expects to be final this summer, would require each state to submit a plan detailing how it would cut coal-fired power plant pollution. Once implemented, the plans could lead to the closing of hundreds of coal plants, in what the administration says will be a transformation of the nation's energy economy away from fossil fuels and toward sources like wind and solar.
States that rely heavily on coal production or coal-fired electricity are wary of the plan, which could ultimately freeze demand for coal. Already, 12 states, including Mr. McConnell's home state, have filed lawsuits opposing the plan and at least a dozen more are expected to file similar suits.
But Mr. McConnell urged governors to fight the regulations by simply refusing to submit their state plans to the federal government.
''Think twice before submitting a state plan -- which could lock you in to federal enforcement and expose you to lawsuits -- when the administration is standing on shaky legal ground and when, without your support, it won't be able to demonstrate the capacity to carry out such political extremism,'' Mr. McConnell wrote.
Since the moment his party regained control of the Senate, Mr. McConnell has made clear that he intends to use all legal, legislative and political means available to fight Mr. Obama's climate agenda. While Republicans called Mr. Obama's climate change policies an example of government overreach that could threaten jobs in the coal industry, Mr. McConnell, whose home state is one of the nations' largest producers and consumers of coal, takes the fight personally.
For now, it appears unlikely that Mr. McConnell will be able to use his role as majority leader to completely block the rules. Even if Republicans could summon the majority required to pass legislation that would delay or weaken the rules, Mr. Obama is almost certain to veto such measures. Republicans are unlikely to have the two-thirds majority necessary to override that action.
Democrats said that Mr. McConnell's call for states not to prepare plans appears unprecedented. Under the terms of the Clean Air Act, the executive branch is required to issue the carbon pollution rules. The Supreme Court has upheld that requirement.
''It's unprecedented that a leader in the Senate would call on states to disobey the law, which has been upheld many times by the Supreme Court,'' said Senator Barbara Boxer of California, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Environment Committee. ''I can't recall a majority leader calling on states to disobey the law -- and I've been here almost 24 years,'' she said.
Gina McCarthy, the administrator of the E.P.A., said that the agency had been working closely with states to develop their individual plans ''since well before we put pen to paper on this rule,'' and that she expected to continue to do so. ''We have dialogue with all the states, including the state of Kentucky,'' she said.
However, Ms. McCarthy's agency is already preparing a one-size-fits-all compliance plan that would be imposed on states that do not create plans.
Jody Freeman, director of Harvard University's environmental law program and a former senior counselor to President Obama, said that option would be worse for states than simply preparing and submitting their own plans.
''It would put states at a huge disadvantage if they choose not to file a plan,'' she said. ''It gives E.P.A. the option of implementing their own plan themselves, but the E.P.A. may not have the best plan for each state. States should be designing these plans themselves.''
Historically, states that have refused to submit compliance plans for E.P.A. rules have been forced to follow standards crafted by the department's officials in Washington. Former Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, a longtime opponent of the department's pollution regulations, for instance, refused to submit state-level plans for compliance to other rules. In the end, Texas businesses were eventually forced to comply with the federally imposed plan.
The Obama administration is anticipating a protracted legal battle over the rules. In its fiscal year 2016 request to Congress, the E.P.A. asked for $3.5 million to hire 20 new lawyers to defend the new regulations.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/05/us/politics/mcconnell-urges-states-to-defy-us-plan-to-cut-greenhouse-gas.html
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The New York Times
March 5, 2015 Thursday
The New York Times on the Web
Delivering Unwelcome Species to the Mediterranean
BYLINE: By KATE GALBRAITH
SECTION: Section ; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; GREEN COLUMN; Pg.
LENGTH: 978 words
The Mediterranean Sea is among the world's great environmental jewels. The sea is highly saline, almost entirely enclosed by land and contains immense biodiversity. Scientists have long worried that its health is imperiled. Swelling coastal populations and ship traffic have brought overfishing and pollution. Climate change threatens to roil the waters still further.
One threat that is now gaining particular attention: the arrival of invasive species. One of the Mediterranean's few outlets is the 146-year-old Suez Canal, which links it to the Red Sea and the ocean beyond. This creates a vital shipping route between Europe and Asia. But scientists fear that an expansion of the canal could bring more invasive species to the Mediterranean's fragile waters.
Last year, Egypt announced plans to quickly build 45 more miles of waterway -- a parallel canal, in part -- so that ships can pass through more quickly than they do now. With the existing canal, they often must wait because the channel is narrow -- about 1,000 feet wide at its slimmest point.
Because of the Suez and its expansion, the Mediterranean Sea's problem with invasive species is becoming ''worse than anywhere else on earth,'' said Bella Galil, a senior scientist with Israel's National Institute of Oceanography.
Among the unpopular arrivals are venomous jellyfish, which have unnerved tourists and sometimes obstructed water intakes belonging to electric-power or desalination plants, in addition to harming the natural ecology. Another worrisome invader is the puffer fish, sometimes known as the silver-cheeked toadfish, which releases a neurotoxin that can harm other fish and humans who consume it.
The existing Suez Canal has already served as a conduit. Invasive species are particularly concentrated in the eastern part of the Mediterranean, in the vicinity of the Suez Canal. The canal is already seen as ''as one of the most significant pathways of marine invasions globally,'' and it has ushered more than 350 nonnative species -- including the puffer fish -- into the Mediterranean, according to a letter sent in December from Julia Marton-Lefèvre, then director general of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, to Karmenu Vella, the European commissioner in charge of the environment, maritime affairs and fisheries.
Dr. Galil said, ''Marine invasions are forever,'' because it is impossible to remove an invasive species from the sea after it has arrived. The sea and its complex food web, she added, are ''teetering.''
Some invasive species hitch rides in the ballast water of ships, an issue that the International Maritime Organization is trying to address through new rules regarding the treatment of ballast water to remove stowaways. Others cling to ship hulls, but many creatures simply swim through the Suez Canal itself.
''The expansion of the Suez Canal (enlarging, deepening) will make the environment within the canal more stable and thus will be easier to new species to cross it and invade potentially the Mediterranean,'' Michel Bariche, an expert on Mediterranean marine issues at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon, said in an email.
Once they arrive, successful invasive species often outcompete natives, he said, because they tend to be more efficient at basic functions like obtaining food or reproducing.
Backers of the canal expansion cite strong economic opportunities. José Herrera, the parliamentary secretary for competitiveness and economic growth for the island nation of Malta, said that he expected the Suez expansion to benefit the Mediterranean region. ''Having more traffic per se does not necessarily mean adverse effects,'' he said. Malta, which lies along the major shipping lane through the sea between Europe and Asia, has been working to expand as a hub for shipping and logistics.
''Economic growth should always be promoted, but in sustainable ways,'' Mr. Herrera said.
Dr. Galil said that the Suez project could learn from a similar expansion that is underway for the Panama Canal, which was built more than a century ago. The Panama Canal, she said, included an environmental impact assessment process that scientists participated in, and measures are in place to help prevent alien species from crossing between the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans.
''From a bio-invasion point of view, the Panama Canal is well run,'' she said, noting that locks help prevent water transfers between the two oceans.
A study last fall in the journal Diversity and Distributions, however, has raised some concerns about increased opportunities for invasive species following the Panama Canal expansion.
But plans for the Suez continue unabated. Egypt is proceeding quickly with the expansion and has said, ambitiously, that it hopes to be done later this year.
The European Union is in touch with the Egyptian government about its plans, and watching closely. The environment, maritime affairs and fisheries arm of the European Commission is aware of the invasive species concerns, and has information suggesting that an environmental impact assessment is being carried out, according to Enrico Brivio, a spokesman.
Solutions to the invasive species problem could include the establishment of a barrier of salty water, in combination with locks, that would discourage some species from swimming through to the Mediterranean.
The invasive species issues come atop other, mounting problems affecting the Mediterranean, such as overfishing and climate change. Because the Mediterranean is enclosed almost entirely by land, climate change especially could be tough on native species.
''It means that species that might change their distribution and move farther north have an upper boundary,'' said Catherine Longo, a project scientist with the Marine Science Institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/05/business/energy-environment/delivering-unwelcome-species-to-the-mediterranean.html
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Late Edition - Final
Senate Fails to Override Veto on Pipeline
BYLINE: By CORAL DAVENPORT
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 17
LENGTH: 505 words
WASHINGTON -- The Senate on Wednesday failed to override President Obama's veto of a bill that would have approved construction of the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline.
A bipartisan majority of senators were unable to reach the two-thirds vote required to undo a presidential veto. The vote was 62 to 37.
The measure's defeat was widely expected, and was the latest twist in the clash over the proposed 1,179-mile pipeline, which would move about 800,000 barrels of carbon-heavy petroleum per day from the oil sands of Alberta, Canada, to ports and refineries on the Gulf Coast.
Republicans used the debate on the vote to attack Mr. Obama for his years of delay in making a decision about the pipeline. The State Department has the authority to approve or deny the project because it crosses an international border, but the ultimate decision on the project is expected to come from the president.
''The president's veto of the bipartisan Keystone bill represents a victory for partisanship and for powerful special interests,'' said the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky. ''The president's veto of the bipartisan Keystone bill represents a defeat for jobs, infrastructure, and the middle class.''
The Senate vote ensures that the first significant veto of Mr. Obama's administration will stand -- and also that his future vetoes are likely to withstand similar efforts. However, Republicans said they intended to continue to find ways to bring the Keystone bill back to the president's desk.
''We will continue working on this important infrastructure project,'' said Senator John Hoeven, Republican of North Dakota, a leading sponsor of the Keystone measure. ''Another option is to attach this legislation to other energy, infrastructure or appropriations legislation that the president won't want to veto. The will of the American people and Congress is clear.''
Mr. Obama indicated that he vetoed the bill not because of the pipeline itself, but rather because the bill would have removed his authority to make the final decision on the project.
In an interview on Monday with Reuters, Mr. Obama said that he could issue a final decision within ''weeks or months'' -- or ''by the end of my administration.''
The pipeline has been under review since TransCanada, the company seeking to build the project, applied in 2008 for a State Department permit to build the cross-border project. It has been subject to multiple environmental impact reviews, which have consistently concluded that construction of the pipeline is unlikely to significantly contribute to climate change.
However, environmental groups and several leading climate change scientists have urged Mr. Obama to reject the pipeline, arguing that its construction makes it easier to move heavily polluting petroleum from the Canadian oil sands. The State Department study concluded that the process of extracting the oil sands petroleum produces about 17 percent more planet-warming carbon pollution than conventional oil.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/05/us/senate-fails-to-override-obamas-keystone-pipeline-veto.html
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Late Edition - Final
McConnell Urges States to Defy U.S. Plan to Cut Greenhouse Gas
BYLINE: By CORAL DAVENPORT
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 12
LENGTH: 855 words
WASHINGTON -- Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and majority leader, is urging governors to defy President Obama by refusing to implement the administration's global warming regulations.
In an op-ed article published Wednesday in The Lexington Herald-Leader with the headline, ''States should reject Obama mandate for clean-power regulations,'' Mr. McConnell wrote: ''The Obama administration's so-called 'clean power' regulation seeks to shut down more of America's power generation under the guise of protecting the climate.'' He added, ''Don't be complicit in the administration's attack on the middle class.''
As Mr. Obama pushes an aggressive climate change agenda, the Environmental Protection Agency has proposed regulations to slash greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants, the nation's largest source of planet-warming pollution. The rules, which the E.P.A. expects to be final this summer, would require each state to submit a plan detailing how it would cut coal-fired power plant pollution. Once implemented, the plans could lead to the closing of hundreds of coal plants, in what the administration says will be a transformation of the nation's energy economy away from fossil fuels and toward sources like wind and solar.
States that rely heavily on coal production or coal-fired electricity are wary of the plan, which could ultimately freeze demand for coal. Already, 12 states, including Mr. McConnell's home state, have filed lawsuits opposing the plan and at least a dozen more are expected to file similar suits.
But Mr. McConnell urged governors to fight the regulations by simply refusing to submit their state plans to the federal government.
''Think twice before submitting a state plan -- which could lock you in to federal enforcement and expose you to lawsuits -- when the administration is standing on shaky legal ground and when, without your support, it won't be able to demonstrate the capacity to carry out such political extremism,'' Mr. McConnell wrote.
Since the moment his party regained control of the Senate, Mr. McConnell has made clear that he intends to use all legal, legislative and political means available to fight Mr. Obama's climate agenda. While Republicans called Mr. Obama's climate change policies an example of government overreach that could threaten jobs in the coal industry, Mr. McConnell, whose home state is one of the nations' largest producers and consumers of coal, takes the fight personally.
For now, it appears unlikely that Mr. McConnell will be able to use his role as majority leader to completely block the rules. Even if Republicans could summon the majority required to pass legislation that would delay or weaken the rules, Mr. Obama is almost certain to veto such measures. Republicans are unlikely to have the two-thirds majority necessary to override that action.
Democrats said that Mr. McConnell's call for states not to prepare plans appears unprecedented. Under the terms of the Clean Air Act, the executive branch is required to issue the carbon pollution rules. The Supreme Court has upheld that requirement.
''It's unprecedented that a leader in the Senate would call on states to disobey the law, which has been upheld many times by the Supreme Court,'' said Senator Barbara Boxer of California, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Environment Committee. ''I can't recall a majority leader calling on states to disobey the law -- and I've been here almost 24 years,'' she said.
Gina McCarthy, the administrator of the E.P.A., said that the agency had been working closely with states to develop their individual plans ''since well before we put pen to paper on this rule,'' and that she expected to continue to do so. ''We have dialogue with all the states, including the state of Kentucky,'' she said.
However, Ms. McCarthy's agency is already preparing a one-size-fits-all compliance plan that would be imposed on states that do not create plans.
Jody Freeman, director of Harvard University's environmental law program and a former senior counselor to President Obama, said that option would be worse for states than simply preparing and submitting their own plans.
''It would put states at a huge disadvantage if they choose not to file a plan,'' she said. ''It gives E.P.A. the option of implementing their own plan themselves, but the E.P.A. may not have the best plan for each state. States should be designing these plans themselves.''
Historically, states that have refused to submit compliance plans for E.P.A. rules have been forced to follow standards crafted by the department's officials in Washington. Former Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, a longtime opponent of the department's pollution regulations, for instance, refused to submit state-level plans for compliance to other rules. In the end, Texas businesses were eventually forced to comply with the federally imposed plan.
The Obama administration is anticipating a protracted legal battle over the rules. In its fiscal year 2016 request to Congress, the E.P.A. asked for $3.5 million to hire 20 new lawyers to defend the new regulations.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/05/us/politics/mcconnell-urges-states-to-defy-us-plan-to-cut-greenhouse-gas.html
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Delivering Unwelcome Species to the Mediterranean
BYLINE: By KATE GALBRAITH
SECTION: Section ; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; GREEN COLUMN; Pg.
LENGTH: 978 words
The Mediterranean Sea is among the world's great environmental jewels. The sea is highly saline, almost entirely enclosed by land and contains immense biodiversity. Scientists have long worried that its health is imperiled. Swelling coastal populations and ship traffic have brought overfishing and pollution. Climate change threatens to roil the waters still further.
One threat that is now gaining particular attention: the arrival of invasive species. One of the Mediterranean's few outlets is the 146-year-old Suez Canal, which links it to the Red Sea and the ocean beyond. This creates a vital shipping route between Europe and Asia. But scientists fear that an expansion of the canal could bring more invasive species to the Mediterranean's fragile waters.
Last year, Egypt announced plans to quickly build 45 more miles of waterway -- a parallel canal, in part -- so that ships can pass through more quickly than they do now. With the existing canal, they often must wait because the channel is narrow -- about 1,000 feet wide at its slimmest point.
Because of the Suez and its expansion, the Mediterranean Sea's problem with invasive species is becoming ''worse than anywhere else on earth,'' said Bella Galil, a senior scientist with Israel's National Institute of Oceanography.
Among the unpopular arrivals are venomous jellyfish, which have unnerved tourists and sometimes obstructed water intakes belonging to electric-power or desalination plants, in addition to harming the natural ecology. Another worrisome invader is the puffer fish, sometimes known as the silver-cheeked toadfish, which releases a neurotoxin that can harm other fish and humans who consume it.
The existing Suez Canal has already served as a conduit. Invasive species are particularly concentrated in the eastern part of the Mediterranean, in the vicinity of the Suez Canal. The canal is already seen as ''as one of the most significant pathways of marine invasions globally,'' and it has ushered more than 350 nonnative species -- including the puffer fish -- into the Mediterranean, according to a letter sent in December from Julia Marton-Lefèvre, then director general of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, to Karmenu Vella, the European commissioner in charge of the environment, maritime affairs and fisheries.
Dr. Galil said, ''Marine invasions are forever,'' because it is impossible to remove an invasive species from the sea after it has arrived. The sea and its complex food web, she added, are ''teetering.''
Some invasive species hitch rides in the ballast water of ships, an issue that the International Maritime Organization is trying to address through new rules regarding the treatment of ballast water to remove stowaways. Others cling to ship hulls, but many creatures simply swim through the Suez Canal itself.
''The expansion of the Suez Canal (enlarging, deepening) will make the environment within the canal more stable and thus will be easier to new species to cross it and invade potentially the Mediterranean,'' Michel Bariche, an expert on Mediterranean marine issues at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon, said in an email.
Once they arrive, successful invasive species often outcompete natives, he said, because they tend to be more efficient at basic functions like obtaining food or reproducing.
Backers of the canal expansion cite strong economic opportunities. José Herrera, the parliamentary secretary for competitiveness and economic growth for the island nation of Malta, said that he expected the Suez expansion to benefit the Mediterranean region. ''Having more traffic per se does not necessarily mean adverse effects,'' he said. Malta, which lies along the major shipping lane through the sea between Europe and Asia, has been working to expand as a hub for shipping and logistics.
''Economic growth should always be promoted, but in sustainable ways,'' Mr. Herrera said.
Dr. Galil said that the Suez project could learn from a similar expansion that is underway for the Panama Canal, which was built more than a century ago. The Panama Canal, she said, included an environmental impact assessment process that scientists participated in, and measures are in place to help prevent alien species from crossing between the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans.
''From a bio-invasion point of view, the Panama Canal is well run,'' she said, noting that locks help prevent water transfers between the two oceans.
A study last fall in the journal Diversity and Distributions, however, has raised some concerns about increased opportunities for invasive species following the Panama Canal expansion.
But plans for the Suez continue unabated. Egypt is proceeding quickly with the expansion and has said, ambitiously, that it hopes to be done later this year.
The European Union is in touch with the Egyptian government about its plans, and watching closely. The environment, maritime affairs and fisheries arm of the European Commission is aware of the invasive species concerns, and has information suggesting that an environmental impact assessment is being carried out, according to Enrico Brivio, a spokesman.
Solutions to the invasive species problem could include the establishment of a barrier of salty water, in combination with locks, that would discourage some species from swimming through to the Mediterranean.
The invasive species issues come atop other, mounting problems affecting the Mediterranean, such as overfishing and climate change. Because the Mediterranean is enclosed almost entirely by land, climate change especially could be tough on native species.
''It means that species that might change their distribution and move farther north have an upper boundary,'' said Catherine Longo, a project scientist with the Marine Science Institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/05/business/energy-environment/delivering-unwelcome-species-to-the-mediterranean.html
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Late Edition - Final
Senate Fails to Override Veto on Pipeline
BYLINE: By CORAL DAVENPORT
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 17
LENGTH: 505 words
WASHINGTON -- The Senate on Wednesday failed to override President Obama's veto of a bill that would have approved construction of the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline.
A bipartisan majority of senators were unable to reach the two-thirds vote required to undo a presidential veto. The vote was 62 to 37.
The measure's defeat was widely expected, and was the latest twist in the clash over the proposed 1,179-mile pipeline, which would move about 800,000 barrels of carbon-heavy petroleum per day from the oil sands of Alberta, Canada, to ports and refineries on the Gulf Coast.
Republicans used the debate on the vote to attack Mr. Obama for his years of delay in making a decision about the pipeline. The State Department has the authority to approve or deny the project because it crosses an international border, but the ultimate decision on the project is expected to come from the president.
''The president's veto of the bipartisan Keystone bill represents a victory for partisanship and for powerful special interests,'' said the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky. ''The president's veto of the bipartisan Keystone bill represents a defeat for jobs, infrastructure, and the middle class.''
The Senate vote ensures that the first significant veto of Mr. Obama's administration will stand -- and also that his future vetoes are likely to withstand similar efforts. However, Republicans said they intended to continue to find ways to bring the Keystone bill back to the president's desk.
''We will continue working on this important infrastructure project,'' said Senator John Hoeven, Republican of North Dakota, a leading sponsor of the Keystone measure. ''Another option is to attach this legislation to other energy, infrastructure or appropriations legislation that the president won't want to veto. The will of the American people and Congress is clear.''
Mr. Obama indicated that he vetoed the bill not because of the pipeline itself, but rather because the bill would have removed his authority to make the final decision on the project.
In an interview on Monday with Reuters, Mr. Obama said that he could issue a final decision within ''weeks or months'' -- or ''by the end of my administration.''
The pipeline has been under review since TransCanada, the company seeking to build the project, applied in 2008 for a State Department permit to build the cross-border project. It has been subject to multiple environmental impact reviews, which have consistently concluded that construction of the pipeline is unlikely to significantly contribute to climate change.
However, environmental groups and several leading climate change scientists have urged Mr. Obama to reject the pipeline, arguing that its construction makes it easier to move heavily polluting petroleum from the Canadian oil sands. The State Department study concluded that the process of extracting the oil sands petroleum produces about 17 percent more planet-warming carbon pollution than conventional oil.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/05/us/senate-fails-to-override-obamas-keystone-pipeline-veto.html
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The Guardian
March 4, 2015 Wednesday 5:39 PM GMT
Lobbyist dubbed Dr Evil behind front groups attacking Obama power rules;
Richard Berman routed funding for at least 16 studies and five front groups attacking Environmental Protection Agency rules on power plant emissions
BYLINE: Suzanne Goldenberg
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 1365 words
To Washington insiders he is Dr Evil: the hidden orchestrator of industry campaigns against the Humane Society, Mothers against Drunk Driving, and other seemingly uncontroversial groups.
Now Richard Berman, a one-time lobbyist turned industry strategist, has zeroed in on another target: Barack Obama's new power plant rules.
Over the last year, Berman has secretly routed funding for at least 16 studies and launched at least five front groups attacking Environmental Protection Agency rules cutting carbon dioxide from power plants, the Guardian has learned.
The rules, the centre-piece of Obama's climate agenda, are due to be finalised in mid-summer. They have come under sustained assault from industry and Republican-controlled Congress - and Berman is right at the heart of it.
The attacks may be gaining traction. The EPA chief, Gina McCarthy, suggested in a speech this week the rules were likely to change in response to public comment.
From the offices of Berman's PR firm in Washington, at least five new front groups have launched attack ads against the EPA, environmental groups, fishermen and sportsmen, and green building organisations. The groups all use Berman's address.
Meanwhile, the Employment Policies Institute, a tax-exempt organisation headed by Berman and operating out of his office according to tax filings, funded a series of reports by an ultra-conservative thinktank, the Beacon Hill Institute.
The reports, claiming the power plant rules would lead to rolling blackouts, send electricity prices skyrocketing, and devastate local economies, are being published in 16 states by a network of pro-corporate and ultra-conservative thinktanks.
All of the reports were funded by EPI, according to Suffolk University, the host institution for Beacon Hill. Suffolk released a list of such grants.
Berman did not respond to requests for comment. However, a spokesman, Jordan Bruneau, confirmed that EPI was funding the analyses of the EPA regulations.
"Currently IPA is working with economists to determine the effects of certain EPA regulations on particular states," he said in an email. He said the research was entirely funded by foundations but refused to identify those funders.
Those familiar with Berman say he is a prime example of a new industry strategy of bypassing traditional lobbying organisations, and using thinktanks, foundations, experts, and social media to shape the public conversation and - ultimately - legislation.
"Richard Berman is very well known for certain front groups and for taking money from anonymous sources to fund aggressive campaigns in the interests of the individuals and the corporations who fund him with the understanding that that funding will be kept secret," said Nick Surgey, research director of the Center for Media and Democracy.
Indeed, Berman claims his ability to hide the funding sources for such campaigns as a particular expertise.
"People always ask me one question all the time: 'How do I know that I won't be found out as a supporter of what you're doing?'" Berman told a conference of energy executives last year. The talk was secretly recorded and leaked to the New York Times.
"We run all of this stuff through non-profit organisations that are insulated from having to disclose donors. There is total anonymity. People don't know who supports us," Berman told the energy executives.
He claimed at the time to have already collected six-figure sums from some of the companies in the room - and solicited $3m more to defeat opponents of fracking.
On such a scale, the funding for an economic study taking down the EPA rules appears relatively economical. Beacon Hill received $41,500 from the Employment Policies Institute for a study of the EPA rules, according to the grants list maintained by Suffolk University.
The funds were allocated to produce reports on the impact of the EPA rules in 16 states including: Iowa, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Tennessee, Wisconsin, South Carolina, Virginia, Louisiana, Rhode Island, Washington Ohio, Alaska and Utah, a spokesman for Suffolk University said.
The university spokesman said in an email that the grants followed university protocol. "Suffolk does not accept research funds from unknown sources," the spokesman said in an email.
Beacon Hill is associated with a network of ultra-conservative groups working with the American Legislative Exchange Council and funded by patrons of anti-government causes such as the Koch brothers and Searle Freedom Trust.
Its director, David Tuerck, appears on the roster of experts at the Heartland Institute, which adopts an extreme-sceptic position on the existence of human-caused climate change. Tuerck has also featured as a keynote speaker at Heartland's climate conferences.
He told the Guardian he had mixed views on climate change. "I am not certain that those emissions are significant enough to offset other factor changing the climate," he said. But he was categorical that efforts to cut emissions were "a waste of time".
"We are just heaping unnecessary costs on the American economy," he said. "It's as obvious as the nose on anybody's face these EPA regulations are inevitably going to drive up electricity rates."
Over the years, BHI has been accused of using discredited economic models to exaggerate the costs and downplay the benefits of government regulations.
"I think what is dangerous about BHI is that on the face of it appears to be an academic institute producing independent reports but when you peel back the first layer of the onion you find that Beacon Hill often skews reports in favour of their funders," Surgey said.
In 2013, Suffolk University publicly repudiated Beacon Hill after the Guardian reported the organisation told prospective funders its studies could undermine a regional climate change initiative. The claim did not follow Suffolk University rules for grant proposals, the university said.
Jay Duffy, a legal fellow at the Clean Air Task Force, said the current BHI analysis of the EPA rules did not meet the usual academic standards. "BHI's interpretation of EPA's analysis just doesn't hold up," he said. "BHI has skewed timelines, underestimated the social cost of carbon, and overestimated the effect on electricity prices. As a result, their study badly inflates the costs and minimises the benefits of EPA's draft rules."
BHI defended the study. "Our costs are within the broad range of costs that the EPA produces," said Paul Bachman, who directly oversaw the study. "It's just that we don't include - we exclude - what they call the co-benefits of the proposal."
Berman's other forays into the environmental arena this year have been hard-hitting.
One prime example was the Environmental Policy Alliance - a mirror image of the government agency - which, according to the website, is "devoted to uncovering the funding and hidden agendas behind environmental activist groups and exploring the intersection between activists and government agencies".
The group oversees four projects aimed at discrediting the government agency and environmental and conservation groups.
In a full page ad in Politico last year, one of the projects, EPA Facts, asked: "What would you call a radical organisation that threatens to shut down 25% of our electrical grid?" The ad crossed off responses including anarchist, terrorist and militia before coming to Obama's EPA.
Another Berman creation Big Green Radicals claims environmental groups are funded by Russian oil interests close to Vladimir Putin, put up billboards on the Pennsylvania turnpike attacking Lady Gaga, Robert Redford and other celebrities who oppose fracking, and sent a poison Valentine to the fossil fuel divestment campaign.
Green Decoys takes on sportsmen and fishermen who support the power plant rules. Leed Exposed opposes green building codes.
The claims, which many think are outrageous, are a key part of the strategy, Berman has claimed. "Berman and Company isn't your average PR firm," his company website said. "We don't just change the debate. If necessary, we start the debate."
· This article was amended on 4 March 2015 to clarify the opening sentence of the final paragraph.
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The Guardian
March 4, 2015 Wednesday 4:41 PM GMT
The coming general election is;
The sustainable development model has long been doomed to failure, but the Green Party is still in denial, argues John Foster
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 1026 words
The coming general election is the least predictable for many years. One reason for this is the "green surge" - the Green party is unprecedentedly polling at around 7%, with recent evidence suggesting that it could affect the outcome in at least 18 seats and thus, in a volatile situation, the overall result.
More people are now members of the Greens than the Liberal Democrats. This is already a major change to the political environment within which business has to operate. Has the green agenda finally arrived in British politics?
...it can't be too late to stop climate change, because if it was, how could we find the energy to go on campaigning?
Perhaps, but not as we know it.
The Greens are arriving just as it is becoming evident that the sustainability paradigm has failed. The issue of climate change illustrates this failure. If we don't keep average atmospheric temperature to less than 2C above pre-industrial levels, we are (as all credible experts now agree) in for dangerous and potentially disastrous climate change.
Unless we are already well embarked on a programme for drastic reductions worldwide, we won't achieve them; as the permanently crossed fingers of the international sustainability establishment testify, we clearly have not .
This example illustrates how impotent the sustainable development model always was. Constraining present needs (or desires) to serve future needs could only offer a toolkit of lead spanners, liable to bend under any real strain. No wonder we still find the nuts and bolts of unsustainable living stubbornly unshiftable.
Greens are perhaps as deep in denial about climate change as those with more standard vested interests. This can be encapsulated in the words of the Green Party member who said: it can't be too late to stop climate change, because if it was, how could we find the energy to go on campaigning?
This logic is now coming under breaking strain. Defending the idea that it can't be too late, from the knowledge that we have barely started, gives rise to techno-fantasy. The Oxford geoengineering programme, for instance, canvasses the introduction of sulphur dioxide particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect away a proportion of incoming sunlight, or adding nutrients to the oceans to increase draw-down of atmospheric carbon.
Related: Business bosses should speak out against 'anti-sustainability rhetoric'
But such projects belong to the realm of science fiction and, as even their proponents tacitly recognise, merely continue the mindset which has brought us to our present plight.
Since that mindset is doomed, we are going to have to learn to live with post-sustainability. This will be bleak. It means accepting that we face what a former UK government chief scientist has called a "perfect storm" of food, water and energy shortages worldwide, with all their consequences in terms of attempted migrations, struggles for resources and associated conflict. The only way to retrieve anything for human hope from this mess will be to re-conceive emerging post-sustainability positively, as 'post- hubris'.
Hubris is overweening confidence in human ability to control our surroundings and what happens to us. The modern project of managing the natural world for human benefit, launched by the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment, now stands revealed as a lethal form of this failing. To have pointed this out is the green movement's real achievement hitherto.
This is now gaining wider recognition with unexpected support for what could become a green-led recovery from hubris. We see this in the contempt for all conventional politicians, who promise betterment but fail to deliver.
Correspondingly, there is a growing sense that our resilience lies in the strength of both national and local culture, which further moves towards multiculturalism can only subvert. A confused form of this awareness can be seen in the UKIP phenomenon.
Closely related is recognition of our need to recover solidarities of community, which neoliberal capitalism under governments of the right and (vaguely) the left has trashed. This explains the haemorrhaging of Labour support to the Greens and nationalists on issues like transport, healthcare and welfare.
Post-hubristic consciousness is clearly still inchoate and embraces many contradictions - Scottish nationalists reject the UK but yearn for the EU, many UKIP supporters resist the realities of climate change. The need to rebuild what viable resilience we can is impossible to ignore.
Also impossible to ignore is that these are all profoundly ecological recognitions, of which the Greens should be natural trustees. Will they rise to that responsibility?
One thing can confidently be predicted about this general election, is it will cost the Greens an heroic expenditure of effort for very minimal results in terms of seats and parliamentary voice. Given excited expectations among a much larger membership, disillusion will be all the more acute. Will it lead to a reappraisal of strategy and realignment with new allies? For the business community, as for the rest of us, much hangs on the answer.
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Sustainability has failed, but will the Green Party save us? The sustainable development model has long been doomed to failure, but the Green Party is still in denial, argues John Foster false theguardian.com true http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2015/3/4/1425466625573/7c147e41-2c12-417b-814f-d37a7254f074-140x84.jpeg 862 true John Foster is a lecturer in Politics, Philosophy and Religion at Lancaster University 455605327 false 54eef019e4b011581586e289 false John Foster 2248490 UK false 2015-03-11T00:00:00+00:00
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The Guardian
March 4, 2015 Wednesday 10:19 AM GMT
Focus on green tech to tackle climate change, says Sir David King;
Top foreign office climate adviser says green technology deserves as much attention as being given to details of negotiations for Paris
BYLINE: Fiona Harvey
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 562 words
Green technology should be as much a focus of tackling climate change as the United Nations negotiations leading up to a crunch conference in Paris this December, the UK's top foreign office adviser on climate said on Tuesday.
Sir David King, former chief scientific adviser to the UK government and now the special representative for climate change, said: "Technology is moving ahead very rapidly. I think we need to focus not only on the details of the negotiations, but also on what the technological revolution is going to bring to us."
He cited as an example new biofuels technology that can turn agricultural waste into ethanol, and uses the methane produced as a byproduct to power the factory in which it is created. If this were "translated" to be used widely in China, for instance, the potential would be "massive... enormous", he said.
As the world's governments gear up for the Paris talks, Sir David said the UK was "leading the world" in climate diplomacy, forming close associations with other governments and among officials as a key focus of the Foreign Office's efforts. He said the foreign secretary had "protected" the budget for this diplomatic push against swingeing cuts that have affected other parts of the department.
At Paris, governments are hoping to forge a new global agreement on the climate that would set national targets for curbs on greenhouse gas emissions after 2020, when current targets run out. Governments are scheduled to produce their targets this month, with Switzerland last week becoming the first nation to submit its proposals to the UN.
The European Union, China and the US have also publicly set out proposals, though these have yet to be formally codified into the UN process. The EU has pledged to cut emissions by 40% relative to 1990 levels by 2030, while China's emissions will peak by 2030 and the US will cut greenhouse gases by 25% to 28% by 2025.
Professor Qi Ye, a leading Chinese adviser on energy policy, added that China's emissions might peak sooner as the hope was for a peak year "around 2030", and that the country was moving ahead rapidly on renewable energy, energy efficiency, nuclear power and reducing coal consumption, which fell by 3% last year partly because of slowing economic growth but also from the effects of policy.
He pointed to recent adverse publicity on air pollution, which is a major problem in Chinese cities and was recently highlighted by Chai Jing in a much-seen internet video, and that this would also provide a strong spur to cleaning up greenhouse gas emissions. This approach, of emphasising the "co-benefits" to health from dealing with climate change as well as air and water pollution, was gaining ground, he said.
Diplomacy is stepping up in the lead-up to the crunch talks later this year. Todd Stern, the US envoy for climate change, told journalists last week it was important not to make snap judgements on the outcome of the Paris talks, the effects of which he said would take several years to be felt. He warned that Paris was a crucial stage for global negotiations on a new climate agreement: "With as much teed up as is teed up now, if the thing really were to not get over the finish line, I think that would be a consequential thing for the UN. But I don't think that's going to happen."
Prof Qi and Sir David were speaking at an IPPR event in central London on Tuesday.
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The Guardian
March 3, 2015 Tuesday 9:11 PM GMT
Energy company could end funding for climate change denier;
Scientist Dr Wei-Hock Soon, who accepted $1.25m in funding from Exxon Mobil and others, defends his record and attacks 'politically motivated groups'
BYLINE: Jessica Glenza in New York
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 451 words
Funders appear to be backing away from a prominent climate change denier who may have failed to disclose that his peer-reviewed articles were funded with grants from petroleum companies.
Related: Work of prominent climate change denier was funded by energy industry
On Monday, the scientist defended accepting the grants through one of the largest climate denial lobbying groups in the United States, even as former donors are discontinuing contracts.
Documents obtained by Greenpeace showed that Dr Wei-Hock "Willie" Soon, who worked at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, accepted $1.25m in funding from companies such as Exxon Mobil and the industry group American Petroleum Institute.
On Monday, Soon defended his record through the Heartland Institute, a group that lobbies against climate change initiatives and one of the scientist's most avid supporters.
"In recent weeks I have been the target of attacks in the press by various radical environmental and politically motivated groups," said Soon in a statement released on Monday on Heartland's website.
"This effort should be seen for what it is: a shameless attempt to silence my scientific research and writings, and to make an example out of me as a warning to any other researcher who may dare question in the slightest their fervently held orthodoxy of anthropogenic global warming."
The Heartland Institute has framed the debate as a partisan issue, blaming the American left for attempting to discredit a scientist who questions accepted science. Heartland's president, Joseph L Bast, has gone so far as to call critics "ethically challenged and mental midgets".
This logic will probably ring hollow for scientists who, for years, have worked to build evidence of climate change while denial groups and conservative politicians attempted to discredit them.
Soon's statement on Monday came as clean energy advocates questioned whether one company, electric utility Southern Company, had any business funding research when it could have used the cash to reduce ratepayers' bills. Southern granted Soon $409,000, according to the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.
Southern Company said on Tuesday that it "funds a broad range of research on a matter of topics that have potentially significant public policy implications for our business".
"While the scientific and political discussions on climate change continue, Southern Company is focused on researching, developing and deploying innovative energy technologies to deliver clean, safe, reliable and affordable electricity to customers."
· This story was amended on 3 March to correctly reflect Southern Company's position on funding energy research.
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The Guardian
March 3, 2015 Tuesday 8:44 PM GMT
The real story of US coal: inside the world's biggest coalmine;
Despite Obama's pledge to cut carbon emissions, production at North Antelope Rochelle mine in Wyoming is booming - and climate change is off the agenda. Suzanne Goldenberg gets a rare look inside the biggest coalmine in the world· Interactive: how the world uses coal
BYLINE: Report by Suzanne Goldenberg and video by Mae Ryan in North Antelope Rochelle Mine, Wyoming
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 1872 words
In the world's biggest coalmine, even a 400 tonne truck looks like a toy. Everything about the scale of Peabody Energy's operations in the Powder River Basin of Wyoming is big and the mines are only going to get bigger - despite new warnings from the United Nations on the dangerous burning of fossil fuels, despite Barack Obama's promises to fight climate change, and despite reports that coal is in its death throes.
At the east pit of Peabody's North Antelope Rochelle mine, the layer of coal takes up 60ft of a 250ft trough in the earth, and runs in an uninterrupted black stripe for 50 miles.
With those vast, easy-to-reach deposits, Powder River has overtaken West Virginia and Kentucky as the big coalmining territory. The pro-coal Republicans' takeover of Congress in the mid-term elections also favours Powder River.
"You're looking at the world's largest mine," said Scott Durgin, senior vice-president for Peabody's operations in the Powder River Basin, watching the giant machinery at work. "This is one of the biggest seams you will ever see. This particular shovel is one of the largest shovels you can buy, and that is the largest truck you can buy."
By Durgin's rough estimate, the mine occupies 100 square miles of high treeless prairie, about the same size as Washington DC. It contains an estimated three billion tonnes of coal reserves. It would take Peabody 25 or 30 years to mine it all.
But it's still not big enough.
On the conference room wall, a map of North Antelope Rochelle shows two big shaded areas containing an estimated one billion tonnes of coal. Peabody is preparing to acquire leasing rights when they come up in about 2022 or 2024. "You've got to think way ahead," said Durgin.
In the fossil fuel jackpot that is Wyoming, it can be hard to see a future beyond coal. One of the few who can is LJ Turner, whose grandfather and father homesteaded on the high treeless plains nearly a century ago.
Turner, who raises sheep and cattle, said his business had suffered in the 30 years of the mines' explosive growth. Dust from the mines was aggravating pneumonia among his Red Angus calves. One year, he lost 25 calves, he said.
"We are making a national sacrifice out of this region," he said. "Peabody coal and other coal companies want to keep on mining, and mine this country out and leave it as a sacrifice and they want to do it for their bottom line. It's not for the United States. They want to sell it overseas, and I want to see that stopped."
As do some of the most powerful people on the planet. About 120 world leaders met at the United Nations (UN) in September to commit to fighting climate change - many noting that the evidence of warming was occurring in real time. Obama last year proposed new rules that will make it almost impossible to build new coal power plants.
Last week, an exhaustive UN report from the world's top scientists warned of "severe, widespread and irreversible impacts" without dramatic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.
Coal is also facing competition from cheap natural gas. Peabody had a very bad year in 2013, losing $525m (£328m) as global demand for coal flatlined.
But despite the promises from Obama and other world leaders the use of coal for energy rose again last year in America, Europe and in Asia - and so did the emissions that cause climate change.
Peabody continued to post losses this year. But extraction and revenue from the Powder River Basin mines went up - and company officials say they could ship out even more coal if they could just get the trains to run on time.
On an average day, 21 long freight trains full of coal leave North Antelope Rochelle bound for 100 power plants across the country. But the company says that's still not enough. As for climate change - that's hardly Peabody's concern.
The company is deeply reluctant to even mention the words. Durgin, who refuses to appear on camera, introduced himself an "active environmentalist, not an environmental activist".
Chris Curran, a Peabody spokesman, refused to talk about climate change or the effects of Obama's efforts to cut carbon emissions on the company's profits. "They are only proposed regulations right now. Nothing is going on," he said.
It takes a call to the senior vice-president of corporate communications, Vic Svec, at the head office in St Louis before the company will discuss climate change. As it turns out, the company's official position is that there is no such thing as human-caused climate change. "We do not question the climate changing. It has been changing for as long as man has recorded history," Svec said. Climate change was a "modelled crisis", he went on.
"What we would say is that there is still far more understanding that is required for any type of impacts of C02 on carbon concerns." Asked whether he saw climate change as a threat, Svec said: "Climate concerns are a threat to the extent that they lead to policies that hurt people."
Peabody's official position on climate science is divorced from scientific reality. But their grasp of the politics of coal clearly is not.
America gets about 40% of its electricity from coal - and by far the biggest share of that coal comes from Powder River. According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), its use of coal for energy rose 4.8% last year, in part because of the Arctic blasts of the polar vortex. Carbon dioxide emissions from energy registered one of their steepest rises in the last quarter century.
Australia, where Peabody has three mines and which has the world's second largest reserves of coal, has ramped up production 37% since 2000, helped by up to $3.5bn in government subsidies to the entire fossil fuel industry, a forthcoming report from the Overseas Development Institute and Oil Change International will say.
China has doubled its use of coal over the last decade. India is preparing to open its large coal reserves to foreign mining companies to meet a promise to hook up the 400 million without electricity on to the grid in the next five years.
Coal use in Germany rose last year for the third year in a row, even as the country met its ambitious targets to transition to wind and solar power. Poland has been promoting its coal as an alternative to Russian natural gas.
Overall global coal use rose 3% last year, faster than any other fossil fuel, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy.
That's a disaster in the making, scientists and energy experts say. The International Energy Agency has concluded that two-thirds of all fossil fuels will have to stay in the ground if the world is going to avoid crossing the 2C threshold into dangerous climate change.
Obama agrees. Burning all of those fossil fuels would trigger "dire consequences" for the planet, he told an interviewer last June. "We're not going to be able to burn it all."
But the reality is that Obama has spent the last six years expanding coal, oil and gas production under his "all of the above" energy strategy.
"We quadrupled the number of operating rigs to a record high. We've added enough new oil and gas pipeline to encircle the earth and then some," Obama told a rally during his 2012 re-election campaign.
Coal exports have risen on Obama's watch, with mining companies shipping some 100m tonnes a year for each of the last three years. Mining companies are actively pursuing plans to expand coal ports and ship more coal overseas, as a back-up market should the incoming Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules on carbon pollution make it harder to burn coal for electricity.
Meanwhile, the federal government, under Obama, gave away $26m last year in tax breaks to the coal industry, according to the Overseas Development Industry report.
Even if the president wants to do more to curb coal, the Democrats' heavy defeat in the mid-term elections means there will be no pull in that direction from Congress. Mitch McConnell, the Republicans' leader in the Senate ran on a slogan of "Guns, Freedom and Coal".
But even before the mid-terms, campaigners say the rise in coal use under Obama undermines his climate agenda and could wipe out efforts by other countries to fight climate change. Last July, a judge in Colorado agreed, throwing out a mining permit granted by the Bureau of Land Management on the grounds that it would worsen climate change.
What's especially frustrating, campaigners say, is that Powder River Basin coal is on public lands, which means that Obama could intervene to limit future mines.
"This whole notion that you can just address the smoke stack is wishful thinking at the end of the day. Why wouldn't you address the problem from cradle to grave? Why wouldn't you trace it all the way back to where it is being produced rather than just look at the stack?" said Jeremy Nichols, climate and energy director from Wild Earth Guardians.
Campaigners say they see little evidence Obama has tried to curb coal use. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which oversees extraction on public lands, shows little sign of incorporating Obama's climate change directive into future planning.
The agency came in for scathing criticism from government auditors earlier this year who said the BLM gave up too much control to the mining companies, and sold coal too cheaply, to the detriment of US taxpayers.
Those low prices are crucial to Peabody's business model. "It's a high volume, lower priced product and we can still ship literally across the country and compete," Durgin said. In 2012, the company acquired the rights to mine an additional billion tonnes of coal, paying just $1.11 a tonne. Peabody also pays 12.5% royalties to the US federal government, once the coal is mined.
Campaigners say such prices represent a giveaway that allows mining companies like Peabody to keep the prices for Powder River Basin coal artificially low.
Campaigners also argue low coal prices make it harder to ramp up production from renewable energy sources like wind and solar.
"We have never seen leases of more than a billion tonnes and we are starting to see that under the Obama Administration," Nichols said.
The Department of Interior, which has final authority over public lands, refused to respond to multiple requests for comment on its efforts to implement Obama's climate policies.
Instead, a stock email attributed to Jessica Kershaw, the interior spokeswoman, confirmed that Obama was committed to mining more coal.
"As part of the Obama Administration's all-of-the-above energy strategy, the Department of the Interior and specifically the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is committed to the safe and responsible development of both traditional and renewable energy resources on public lands," the email read.
"The BLM also recognizes that coal is a key component of America's comprehensive energy portfolio and the nation's economy. "
The email did not mention climate change.
For Peabody though, the aim is expansion. The company produced 134m tonnes of coal from its combined Powder River Basin mines last year, and was on track to increase production this year, Durgin said.
"I've been asked when is the end of the mine," said Durgin. "I don't know. Economics will tell us that." So long as Obama pursues policies that keep coal cheap, that end is unlikely to come soon.
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The Guardian
March 3, 2015 Tuesday 3:19 PM GMT
Europe shouldn't be afraid of leading the world on environmental regulation;
Nowhere else on the planet have 28 countries agreed to binding legislation on areas including hazardous chemicals, water quality, waste management and greenhouse gases, argues Hans BruyninckxAir pollution will kill thousands in Europe, EEA warns
BYLINE: Hans Bruyninckx
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 974 words
Over the past 40 years Europe has developed the most comprehensive, ambitious and binding environmental legislation existing anywhere today. And with good reason: these standards should be seen as a unique economic advantage.
They have improved the environment and quality of life, as well as driving innovation, job creation and growth. This is one of the main messages to come out of the latest edition of The European environment - state and outlook (SOER2015) report published by the European Environment Agency (EEA) today.
Coming at a time when Europe is still growing out of the economic crisis, and debating where to spend scarce resources to stimulate the economy, the report illustrates that investing in strong environmental standards is the right choice.
In many parts of Europe, the local environment is arguably in as good a state today as it has been since the start of industrialisation. We breathe cleaner air and enjoy cleaner water. Almost a fifth of Europe's land is now protected. Industrial pollution has decreased, we use material resources and energy more efficiently, and recycling rates are up. Since 1990, we have cut Europe's greenhouse gas emissions by about 20%, while the economy grew by more than 45%.
Related: Most people are neither 'alarmist' nor 'in denial' about climate change
Apart from a better environment, there is also a solid economic case for strong environmental standards. The European environmental goods and services sector grew by more than 50% in size between 2000 and 2011. It has also been one of the few economic sectors that has flourished since the 2008 financial crisis, adding about 1.3m jobs, generating export earnings and contributing to improved competitiveness.
There are also clear indirect economic benefits. Just last month a study from Defra calculated that for every pound invested in environmental regulation, including the costs to business of complying with the law, society reaps benefits approximately three pounds worth of benefits (pdf), from savings in the healthcare system and more productive ecosystems. Of course there is a cost to business, but as environmental regulation often emphasises energy and resource efficiency, such standards may help to insulate businesses from two of the vulnerabilities of European industries and economies: large natural resource and energy dependencies, which represent a significant portion of the average production cost.
There are other strong reasons why businesses should be moving fast to reduce environmental impacts. The most recent World Economic Forum report on global risks to business also emphasises that the top risks for the next decade are less economic and more environmental, related especially to climate change impacts, water crises, the quality of biodiversity and ecosystems, and human-made environmental catastrophes. While many of these risks are global, Europe can have a strong negotiating position on these issues through its already credible and effective policy frameworks and processes.
Related: It's wrong to say oil companies and their employees don't have morals
Europe's niche
The EU has given a strong signal that environmental protection will guide its economic development and prosperity over this century in its 7th Environment Action Programme (2013), Living well within the limits of our planet. In little more than a generation, this means a fundamental decarbonisation of the economy, stepping away from our linear mine-produce-use-throw-away model of production and consumption, protecting natural systems, and taking environmental health issues more seriously when decisions are made.
This will require fundamental changes in the systems of production and consumption that are the root cause of environmental problems - energy, food, transport, buildings and so on.
Such changes will mean that we will have to overcome the way we are locked in to unsustainable systems, for example with infrastructure that dictates the way we travel or produce and distribute food and energy.
To grasp the challenge of 2050, our report shows that public and private investments will need to be better focused towards a low carbon and circular economy. This will also require serious rethinking of systems which directly or indirectly influence the choices made: finance and investment systems, tax and subsidy systems, R&D choices, and education. Of course, these changes will have big implications and create opportunities for business.
Based on our report, we think Europe should feel confident about the future. Nowhere else on the planet have 28 countries agreed to such ambitious binding legislation, in areas ranging from hazardous chemicals to water quality, from greenhouse gases to waste management. And as environmental issues become more pressing around the world, this is one area where Europe can lead.
The ambition of a low carbon and circular economy which improves people's wellbeing is creating real opportunities. Europe's place in the world is of course changing, with less than 10% of the global population and major economic players rising in other parts of the world. But environmental innovation can become Europe's niche, much like the ICT revolution has Silicon Valley.
The leadership hub is funded by Xyntéo. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled "brought to you by". Find out more here .
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The Guardian
March 3, 2015 Tuesday 8:15 AM GMT
Global warming contributed to Syria's 2011 uprising, scientists claim;
US study claims regime's unsustainable agricultural policies meant drought led to collapse of farming in north-eastern region and triggered mass migration to cities and added to feelings of discontent
BYLINE: Ian Sample, science editor
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 766 words
The prolonged and devastating drought that sparked the mass migration of rural workers into Syrian cities before the 2011 uprising was probably made worse by greenhouse gas emissions, US scientists say.
The study is one of the first to implicate global warming from human activities as one of the factors that played into the Syrian conflict which is estimated to have claimed more than 190,000 lives.
The severity of the 2006 to 2010 drought, and more importantly the failure of Bashar al-Assad's regime to prepare, or respond to it effectively, exacerbated other tensions, from unemployment to corruption and inequality, which erupted in the wake of the Arab spring revolutions, the scientists say.
"We're not arguing that the drought, or even human-induced climate change, caused the uprising," said Colin Kelley at the University of California in Santa Barbara. "What we are saying is that the long term trend, of less rainfall and warmer temperatures in the region, was a contributing factor, because it made the drought so much more severe."
From 2006, the Fertile Crescent, where farming was born 12,000 years ago, faced the worst three year drought in the instrumental record. Unsustainable agricultural policies meant that the drought led to the broad collapse of farming in northeastern Syria. Their livelihoods gone, an estimated one to 1.5 million people surged into the cities.
The arrival of so many rural families came on the heels of a million Iraqi refugees who arrived after 2006, causing what Kelley refers to as a "huge population shock" in Syria's most affected urban centres. Many of the displaced settled on the edges of cities, where already tough living conditions were made more challenging by poor access to water and electricity.
Writing in the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Kelley describes how the unsustainable farming practices in Syria led to a massive depletion of groundwater which was crucial for irrigating land beyond the reaches of the rivers.
But the dwindling groundwater was accompanied by a long term decline in rainfall in the region that affected farms watered from rivers. According to records Kelley studied, the Fertile Crescent, including Syria, witnessed a 13% drop in its winter rainfall since 1931. Another trend saw summer temperatures rising, which dried out much of the remaining moisture in the soils.
To explore the causes of the drought, the US scientists turned to climate change models. They found that the models predicted the drier and warmer trend for Syria, but only when they included human greenhouse gas emissions. The trend made such a severe drought in Syria more than twice as likely, they report.
"There's a strong argument to be made that the long term trend contributed to this drought and was the reason it was the most severe drought they have ever had," Kelley said.
The theory has not convinced everyone though. Francesca de Châtel at Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, points out that rural communities had been left disenfranchised and disaffected from 50 years of policies that exploited and mismanaged Syrian resources.
In the journal Middle Eastern Studies last year, she wrote that the government's failure to respond to the drought crisis was only one of the triggers of the protests that started in March 2011, along with a host of other political, economic and social grievances.
"The uprising has more to do with the government's failure to respond to the drought, and with broader feelings of discontent in rural areas, and the growing gap between rich and poor, and urban and rural areas during the 2000s, than with the drought itself," she told the Guardian.
"I don't think the uprising would have started in Syria if other countries in the region hadn't set the example," she added. "I also don't think the movement would have persisted without input and support from organised groups in Syria who had been planning for this moment for years and certainly since before 2006 or the start of the drought."
The US researchers agree that civil unrest never has a simple or unique cause, and that the civil war in Syria is no exception. But they warn that global warming is predicted to bring more severe climate events, and that some could hit countries where they could spark unrest. Kelley's latest work suggests that Yemen could face its own problems with reduced rainfall in coming years.
"This is an example of the emergence of climate change beginning to influence countries in a negative way. And if it continues, we'll see more examples of that in the future," he said.
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The Guardian
March 3, 2015 Tuesday 7:00 AM GMT
Would a Labour or Tory government be better for the environment?;
We look at how the two big parties compare on green issues, from climate change and clean energy to fracking and animal welfare
BYLINE: Karl Mathiesen
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 1983 words
After five years of a government that aspired to being the greenest ever, what can we expect from the next parliament?
Here's how the two big parties stand on some of the key upcoming environmental issues, from crunch UN climate negotiations and how and whether the UK should frack, to what to do about the country's energy inefficient homes and whether the government should keep killing badgers.
Climate change
David Cameron, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg have signed a cross-party pledge on climate action, but the issue is still approached differently by the parties.
Labour leader Miliband has been forthright in placing climate change on the party's agenda. In an op-ed in the Observer last week, he said climate change was a key economic issue for the UK and attacked Tory MPs who he said "flirt with climate change denial".
Miliband's shadow energy and climate change minister Jonathan Reynolds told an audience in London last week: "I look at the Conservative party front bench and I do not see anyone coming through who takes this agenda seriously, who wants to develop ideas on it... To me, the Conservative party, having had that phase where it looked like it was going to embrace this agenda, has fundamentally moved away from it and that is a great shame indeed."
But Greg Barker, Cameron's climate envoy who was also on the panel, disagreed: "There are lots of green Tories."
When pressed for names Barker was able to cite just one example - Matt Hancock a minister for business, enterprise and energy - before saying:
"The most important green Tory is David Cameron and he has consistently been my greatest ally in government."
But Cameron's rhetoric on climate change has been undermined by his elevation of prominent climate sceptics to influential positions within the government's environmental departments. The nadir was the much-lambasted and summarily-ended tenure of Owen Paterson as environment secretary, who has called climate science " consistently and widely exaggerated ". Michael Fallon who was a minister for climate change has also questioned climate science. These appointments represent an undercurrent of scepticism in the Conservative party. Last year a poll found just 30% of Tory MPs accepted it was "now an established scientific fact that climate change is largely man-made".
The election will also decide who represents the UK at the defining climate conference in Paris this December. Labour has employed former deputy PM John Prescott, who led the UK's delegation on the Kyoto protocol, and it can be expected that he would take a lead role in any negotiations. Liberal Democrat secretary of energy and climate change Ed Davey, who has been the UK's lead in climate talks, will need a hung parliament and a new coalition deal to see the job through to Paris. Should the Tories win government outright, Barker, may retain an active role despite his imminent retirement from politics.
Carbon budgets
More contentious than the need for action, will be the question of how Britain achieves decarbonisation. In order to chart a way to its goal of 80% emissions reductions from 1990 levels by 2050, the UK has defined how much carbon it can burn in five yearly periods from 2008 until 2028. These are known as the carbon budgets.
In December 2015, the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) will advise on Britain's emissions reductions between 2028 and 2032 - the fifth carbon budget. Under the law, the sitting government must accept this advice and implement policies to achieve the reductions.
All parties agree unabated coal power must be eradicated and have committed to phasing it out - although any new parliament will not have to do much to make this happen as anti-pollution laws and carbon pricing will see all stations closed by 2027.
Chairman of the CCC John Gummer says, with coal heading for oblivion by the time its term begins, the fifth carbon budget will be the toughest to legislate. "Whoever is in power, there will be tough discussion about how we do that because the fifth carbon budget is going to be very difficult indeed in the sense that we'll have picked off a lot of the low hanging fruit."
Clean energy: onshore wind and nuclear
Labour and the Conservatives largely agree that Britain's low-carbon future involves a broad suite of energy sources, including renewable technologies, nuclear and potentially domestic shale gas. But how much of each and their enthusiasm for certain technologies varies significantly.
"No doubt there is greater appetite for the nuclear component and a lesser appetite for onshore wind among Conservatives and a smaller appetite for the nuclear component in the Labour party," says Gummer.
The Tories are openly hostile to onshore wind and various MPs have fanned the flames of public nimbyism by calling it a "blight" on landscapes and consistently rejecting planning applications. If it wins in May, the party has committed to cutting subsidies to the sector - Britain's largest source of renewable energy - a move renewables groups say would "kill the industry dead". This is despite onshore wind's increasing affordability, reflected in the prices offered in Thursday's government auction for new project contracts.
Jim Watson, research director of the UK Energy Research Centre, says the Tories' opposition to certain forms of renewables runs counter to the interests of taxpayers. "If we want to reduce the costs of meeting our climate targets we ought to be enabling the lower cost technologies to come through and be built to save people money. It seems odd to me that a politician of whatever party would want to stand in the way of a technology that lowers the cost of meeting our climate targets for consumers."
Financial support for the £25bn nuclear behemoth at Hinkley Point C, which was born of a pro-nuclear policy under the last Labour government, was announced by the current administration in 2013. This is a key plank of the Conservative's decarbonisation plan and the defining infrastructure announcement of Davey's term as energy and climate change secretary. But it looks likely to be delayed by shareholder setbacks and legal challenges to its generous subsidy regime.
Labour has offered its support for the Hinkley project.
"It will be interesting how much [Labour] pursue a pro-renewables versus a pro-all-of-the-above strategy," says Green Alliance's head of politics Alastair Harper.
Miliband has expressed tentative support for onshore wind. But Harper says the issue could be politically divisive.
"Are they going to go all out and say onshore wind has a real future in the UK if you vote for us? They haven't quite done that yet and it'd be an interesting binary moment for them to go for."
By the time the fifth carbon budget is announced in December, says Gummer, whichever party (or parties) is in government may have had the argument settled for them. "The price of renewables is falling much more sharply than even the most optimistic would have said and the situation of nuclear is of course still not certain with the delay on the next stage of Hinkley [Point C nuclear power station] ".
Fracking
The issue of shale gas exploration, or fracking, will be another key decision during the planning of the fifth carbon budget, says Watson.
"How much gas we can burn in the context of our targets and what is the role of shale gas within that will certainly come up, for whatever government is in power," he says.
Both the Conservatives and Labour have expressed enthusiasm for fracking and claim credit for creating a safe, attractive legal platform for the industry - although there is a distinct difference in their approach. The Tories have aggressively pursued an agenda that removes regulatory hurdles. Some of which Labour has opposed, including fracking beneath national parks and beside aquifers.
"You're really talking about difference of emphasis," says Watson. "But there really isn't a clear difference of one party is really for it and one party is really against it. I just detect a more cautious approach from Labour. There isn't the same sort of rhetoric that there is from some government ministers."
Watson says some less-straightforward electoral outcomes could influence the politics of fracking during the next term. Scotland has implemented a moratorium on fracking. Watson raises the possibility that a Labour-Scottish National party coalition (a possibility being hawked by the Tories ) may have a more adversarial attitude towards shale gas.
The Welsh government is investigating its legal options to implement such a ban. The national Labour party has committed to devolving powers to Wales to allow them to ban fracking.
Animal welfare
Badgers and foxes are perhaps the only environmental issues where daylight exists between the Tories and Labour. Should the Conservatives win in May, they will allow a free vote on repealing the Hunting Act, which bans hunting with dogs. They will also continue and expand the badger cull. Labour stands opposed to both these policies.
There is massive public opposition to both the badger cull (42% against, 36% for) and fox hunting (80% against). So why are the Tories swimming against the flow? These debates hark back to the days before the UK's politics became a bland amble to the centre. They are based on ancient rivalries between the country and the city, a small group of landowning toffs versus the renting class.
But most importantly, they are politically irrelevant. "It's very easy for the parties to hold those different positions because they speak to different audiences that don't really cross over... It's very easy to get off the fence both ways," says Harper. Few people will decide their vote on animal welfare issues. The Tories might grab a few votes from Ukip in rural areas and Labour from the Greens, but the floating centre has more pressing concerns.
Energy efficiency
The coalition government's flagship energy efficiency scheme, the green deal, has become a traumatic experience for its architects. Despite recent successes in some aspects of the grants-for-home-improvements scheme, the overall take-up has been disappointing. This has left the UK's desperately needed drive for household energy efficiency languishing.
The Conservatives are yet to outline exactly how they will approach this tainted issue in the next parliament. Harper suggests it is a case of once bitten, twice shy.
"I think the Tories feel burnt by the green deal and they haven't really come up with how they'd deal with it. I'd be interested to see what's in the manifesto on that. At the moment it just feels like they are still amazed that it didn't work," he says.
Labour on the other hand, smelling electoral blood in the water, has pre-emptively announced an interest-free loan scheme that will replace the green deal grants. As part of a five-part efficiency strategy, Labour says the loans will improve up to one million homes during the next parliament. But the Green Building Council has warned that Labour may have to further sweeten the deal in order to motivate homeowners.
Nature
Nature is the thorn in the free market's side, that pesky "externality" that the UK's major parties don't really know what to do about. So on the whole, they ignore it.
"The thing that is absent from the narrative of both parties right now is a real vision for what they are going to do about nature. And how we're going to stop the losing battle of our habitats and our local environment getting worse and worse with every passing year and for the last 50 years," says Harper.
"That conversation, that ambition hasn't really been owned by either of the main parties. Their manifestos will have to address it in some way and I think what you'll see is a lot of the big natural environment organisations, like the RSPB and the Wildlife Trusts and so on, will be pushing for... clear legislative plans to restore nature at a national level."
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The New York Times
March 3, 2015 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final
Researchers Link Syrian Conflict to a Drought Made Worse by Climate Change
BYLINE: By HENRY FOUNTAIN
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Foreign Desk; Pg. 13
LENGTH: 813 words
Drawing one of the strongest links yet between global warming and human conflict, researchers said Monday that an extreme drought in Syria between 2006 and 2009 was most likely due to climate change, and that the drought was a factor in the violent uprising that began there in 2011.
The drought was the worst in the country in modern times, and in a study published Monday in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the scientists laid the blame for it on a century-long trend toward warmer and drier conditions in the Eastern Mediterranean, rather than on natural climate variability.
The researchers said this trend matched computer simulations of how the region responds to increases in greenhouse-gas emissions, and appeared to be due to two factors: a weakening of winds that bring moisture-laden air from the Mediterranean and hotter temperatures that cause more evaporation.
Colin P. Kelley, the lead author of the study, said he and his colleagues found that while Syria and the rest of the region known as the Fertile Crescent were normally subject to periodic dry periods, ''a drought this severe was two to three times more likely'' because of the increasing aridity in the region.
Dr. Kelley, who did the research while at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and is now at the University of California at Santa Barbara, said there was no apparent natural cause for the warming and drying trend, which developed over the last 100 years, when humans' effect on climate has been greatest.
Martin P. Hoerling, a meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration whose earlier work showed a link between climate change and aridity in the Eastern Mediterranean, said the researchers' study was ''quite compelling.''
''The paper makes a strong case for the first link in their causal chain,'' Dr. Hoerling said in an email, ''namely the human interference with the climate so as to increase drought likelihood in Syria.''
Some social scientists, policy makers and others have previously suggested that the drought played a role in the Syrian unrest, and the researchers addressed this as well, saying the drought ''had a catalytic effect.'' They cited studies that showed that the extreme dryness, combined with other factors, including misguided agricultural and water-use policies of the Syrian government, caused crop failures that led to the migration of as many as 1.5 million people from rural to urban areas. This in turn added to social stresses that eventually resulted in the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad in March 2011.
What began as civil war has since escalated into a multifaceted conflict, with at least 200,000 deaths. The United Nations estimates that half of the country's 22 million people have been affected, with more than six million having been internally displaced.
The researchers said that there were many factors that contributed to the chaos, including the influx of 1.5 million refugees from Iraq, and that it was impossible to quantify the effect of any one event like a drought.
Francesco Femia, founder and director of the Center for Climate and Security, a research group in Washington that has long argued that the Syrian drought had a climate-change component, said the new study ''builds on previous work looking at the impact of drought on agricultural and pastoral livelihoods.''
''There's no question that the drought had a role to play in the mass displacement of people,'' he said.
The link between climate change and conflict has been debated for years. A working group of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change wrote in 2014 that there was ''justifiable common concern'' that climate change increased the risk of armed conflict in certain circumstances, but said it was unclear how strong the effect was.
The United States military has described climate change as a ''threat multiplier'' that may lead to greater instability in parts of the world.
Earlier studies trying to show a link between climate change and conflict have been rebutted by some scientists, and it is not clear how far this new study will go toward settling the issue.
Thomas Bernauer, a professor of political science at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich who has been critical of some earlier studies, said he was skeptical about this one as well. ''The evidence for the claim that this drought contributed to the outbreak of civil war in Syria is very speculative and not backed up by robust scientific evidence,'' he wrote in an email.
Mark A. Cane, an author of the study and a scientist at Lamont-Doherty, which is part of Columbia University, defended the work. ''I think there's a really good case here,'' he said. ''But I think we've tried to explain that the connection from an extraordinary climate event to conflict is complex and certainly involves other factors.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/science/earth/study-links-syria-conflict-to-drought-caused-by-climate-change.html
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The New York Times
March 3, 2015 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final
Climate Researcher Offers a Defense of His Practices
BYLINE: By JUSTIN GILLIS
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 19
LENGTH: 540 words
The scientist at the center of a controversy over fossil-fuel funding for climate research denounced his critics on Monday and said that he would be ''happy to comply'' with possible additional disclosure requirements from scientific journals publishing his papers.
In his first detailed public statement since the controversy erupted more than a week ago, the scientist, Wei-Hock Soon, a researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, complained that he had been the subject of unfair attacks in the press. He ascribed them to ''various radical environmental and politically motivated groups.''
Dr. Soon, who is known as Willie, added, ''This effort should be seen for what it is: a shameless attempt to silence my scientific research and writings, and to make an example out of me as a warning to any other researcher who may dare question in the slightest their fervently held orthodoxy'' on global warming.
Monday's statement was not released by Dr. Soon's employer, the Smithsonian Institution, which has responded to the controversy by starting an inquiry into his activities and a review of its disclosure and ethics policies for scientific research.
Instead, the statement was released by the Heartland Institute of Chicago, which supports and publicizes the work of scientists like Dr. Soon who deny the scientific consensus on climate change. Jim Lakely, a spokesman for the Heartland Institute, said Dr. Soon would not answer further questions.
Based on documents the Smithsonian released at the request of Greenpeace, the environmental group, several news organizations reported recently that Dr. Soon had failed, in a string of scientific papers, to disclose his funding from a coal-burning utility and other fossil-fuel interests, from which he has received at least $1.2 million over the past decade. Dr. Soon said in his statement that he had ''always complied with what I understood to be disclosure practices in my field generally.''
A majority of the journals in which Dr. Soon published in recent years require disclosure of any funding that could represent a conflict of interest. Several of those journals have said in recent days that they are reviewing Dr. Soon's papers in light of the lack of disclosure revealed by the Greenpeace documents.
''If a journal that has peer-reviewed and published my work concludes that additional disclosures are appropriate, I am happy to comply,'' Dr. Soon said in his statement. ''I would ask only that other authors -- on all sides of the debate -- are also required to make similar disclosures.''
Democrats on Capitol Hill responded to the initial revelations by demanding information about funding from a handful of other scientists and scores of energy companies. But that drew a backlash from mainstream climate scientists, who for years have had to endure critics' poring over their emails and other internal documents using public records laws.
The Heartland Institute portrayed Dr. Soon as a martyr.
''He's a brilliant and courageous scientist devoted entirely to pursuing scientific knowledge,'' the organization's president, Joseph Bast, said this week in a statement. ''His critics are all ethically challenged and mental midgets by comparison.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/science/climate-change-researcher-wei-hock-soon-offers-a-defense-of-his-practices.html
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The New York Times
March 3, 2015 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final
Europe Unlikely to Meet Climate Goal, Study Finds
BYLINE: By MELISSA EDDY
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Foreign Desk; Pg. 10
LENGTH: 1089 words
BERLIN -- The European Union will fail to meet an ambitious goal of significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 unless it takes more aggressive measures to limit the use of fossil fuels and adopts new environmental policies, according to a report scheduled for release on Tuesday.
Although European countries are on track to meet, and even surpass, the goal of reducing 1990-level greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2020, existing policies are not robust enough to ensure that the 2050 targets are met, the report said. Those targets, scientists have said, are critical to forestalling the most catastrophic effects of climate change, which are linked to carbon emissions caused by human activity.
''The level of ambition of environmental policies currently in place to reduce environmental pressures may not enable Europe to achieve long-term environmental goals, such as the 2050 target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80-95 percent,'' the report said.
The report also noted that transportation continues to account for a quarter of all carbon emissions within the European Union, and reducing those by 60 percent by 2050 will require ''significant additional measures.''
The report, which will formally be released on Tuesday, was compiled by the European Environment Agency, based in Copenhagen, and is produced every five years to assess how the Union is progressing toward its environmental goals and to inform European policy. It will be presented to the European Commission and debated in the European Parliament later this month.
The findings are significant because Europeans have taken a lead role in seeking to avert the worst effects of climate change, in some cases putting aside their own economic prospects and political pressures to enact policies that could also serve as models for other countries and regions. The European Union's failure to achieve its goals could discourage efforts by more reluctant nations, like China and India, and could loom large later this year as nations gather in Paris to discuss a global climate treaty.
Hans Bruyninckx, the executive director of the European Environment Agency, characterized the report as an alarming call that provides the 28 European Union member states with a fresh opportunity to set a global example.
''Although we have colored the outlook red, it doesn't have to be red,'' Mr. Bruyninckx said. He named increased energy efficiency, ecological innovation and improvements to transportation systems as potential areas in which Europeans could adjust their policies to meet their long-term goals.
''Although we have all of these very different countries with very different energy profiles, in the long run, the commitment to these targets is there, the level of ambition to reach the 80 percent is high on the political agenda,'' Mr. Bruyninckx said.
Setting global emissions targets, however, has proved elusive for years, and the latest assessment of Europe's progress illustrates that once targets are reached, significant difficulties remain in holding countries to their agreed-to goals.
Even a country like Germany, where support for the environment borders on a religion, has faced unforeseen challenges as it aims to revamp its energy sector from reliance on traditional sources of energy, such as nuclear and fossil fuels, to renewable sources, including wind, solar and biofuels.
The race to shutter the country's nuclear reactors by 2022, for example, has resulted in many power providers using brown coal, or lignite, the cheapest and dirtiest of all fossil fuels to keep the power flowing to customers. This, in turn, has led to an increase in carbon emissions.
According to the report, Germany, whose economy is the best in Europe, was the only country with a significant rise in both its emissions reductions and energy consumption last year. Along with Belgium, it is one of only two countries not on track to meet its 2020 targets in either category. According to the German Association of Energy and Water Industries, the country increased its carbon omissions by 20 million tons from 2012 to 2013, instead of reducing them.
In order to meet its goals, Germany must reduce emissions annually by 3.5 percent over the next six years, a feat that will result in substantial increases in energy costs, and generate political pressure to block measures that could hurt the economy.
Harro van Asselt, a researcher at the Stockholm Environment Institute's Oxford Centre, said Germany saw a drop in emissions after many polluting industrial sites in the former East Germany were shuttered between the late 1990s and early 2000s. The closings occurred just as Europe began tackling climate change, which assisted the European Union in meeting its 2020 targets, he said.
''The question is not why they might stumble now; the main question is why did they reach their targets before,'' Mr. van Asselt said.
Now the hard part begins, he said, as the European Union faces the need to undertake more difficult and costly measures in areas like transportation and agriculture to ensure that emissions targets remain on track.
''As long as the European Commission doesn't undertake more measures in these sectors, they are going to have difficulties in even reaching their goals for 2030,'' Mr. van Asselt said.
Globally, the environmental news is not all bleak. The United States failed to adopt the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, in part because Congress feared it would hurt the country economically. But last year President Obama and President Xi Jinping of China reached an agreement that set new goals for those countries to curb their carbon emissions within the next 15 years. The deal was seen as a breakthrough, helping to resolve some of the differences between two of the world's biggest polluters, whose dispute was partly the reason a climate agreement was not reached in Copenhagen in 2009.
European leaders are counting on recent international efforts to help reach a global agreement in Paris. The most recent report issued by the United Nations last year warned that failure to reduce emissions could alter the climate so drastically that it could endanger life as we know it. The Europeans hope this added pressure, coupled with the moral example they tried to set decades ago, will contribute to a lasting global agreement on emissions reductions.
''I think the role of Europe is essential and we have demonstrated that we can make solid multinational agreements that can work,'' Mr. Bruyninckx said.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/03/world/europe-unlikely-to-meet-climate-goal-study-finds.html
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GRAPHIC: PHOTO: A coal-fired power station in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. Many energy providers there use brown coal, a cheap and dirty fossil fuel. (PHOTOGRAPH BY MARTIN MEISSNER/ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The Guardian
March 2, 2015 Monday 3:40 PM GMT
Fossil fuel industry caught taking a page out of the tobacco playbook;
Fossil fuel funded Willie Soon is just a pawn in the game of delaying climate action
BYLINE: Dana Nuccitelli
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 1065 words
Last week, Willie Soon was caught failing to disclose conflicts of interest in his climate research and congressional testimony after having received over $1.2 million in funding from fossil fuel companies. This revelation raised alarms in Congress, with Rep. Grijalva sending letters to the universities of seven other scientists who have provided climate-related testimony, and Senators Markey, Boxer, and Whitehouse sending inquiries to 100 fossil fuel companies, trade groups, and NGOs. Senator Markey wrote,
For years we've known that fossil fuel interests have sought to block action on climate change and have denied the science. This investigation will help to determine who is funding these denial-for-hire operations and whether those who are funded by these fossil fuel interests are keeping their funders' identities secret from the public and legislators
Soon's funding and failure to disclose conflicts of interest raises red flags, and upon further investigation, the underlying problem is clear. Willie Soon does really bad science, and yet is treated as a climate expert and used by members of Congress to justify opposition to climate policies.
In a paper published last year with our colleagues, John Abraham and I discussed the disproportionate attention that poor-quality climate contrarian papers have received. And as I detailed in my just-published book, climate contrarians like Soon simply aren't held accountable for their bad science and failed climate predictions. This lack of accountability and disproportionate attention are serious problems.
The reason Soon can be treated as an expert is that he's been able to publish climate-related research in peer-reviewed journals. To get bad science published in peer-reviewed journals, Soon has followed the same strategies as other climate contrarians with flawed research. He has submitted papers to relatively obscure, non-climate science journals, and he's exploited "pal review" with friendly journal editors.
For example, Climate Research editor Chris de Freitas published 14 separate papers from a group of climate contrarians that included Willie Soon during 1997-2003. The practice finally ended in 2003 after the journal published a particularly bad paper by Soon and his colleague Sallie Baliunas.
That paper concluded that current global temperatures are not anomalous compared the past 1,000 years. However, it contained numerous major fundamental flaws, such as equating dryness with hotness, and was subsequently refuted by an article in the American Geophysical Union journal Eos written by a number of prominent climate scientists. The publication of this badly flawed paper, and Climate Research 's refusal to revise or retract it, led to the resignation of five of the journal's editors. Michael Mann documents the episode in detail in The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars.
After publishing this paper, Soon was invited by Senator James Inhofe to testify before US Congress, and the Soon and Baliunas paper was used by Congressional Republicans to justify opposition to climate legislation. During that testimony, Soon claimed not to have knowingly received funding from organizations that oppose climate legislation. In reality, he had received such funding. Twelve years later, US Congress still has yet to pass climate legislation.
Make no mistake, Soon and other contrarian scientists are simply used as pawns - excuses for members of Congress to oppose climate legislation. However, most Americans, including a majority of Republicans, support taking action to slow global warming. So why do most Republican policymakers oppose such steps, and how have they been able to oppose the will of a majority of Americans on this issue while recently gaining seats in Congress?
The answer lies with the Merchants of Doubt. As documented in the so-named book and new documentary film, the fossil fuel industry has used the same tactics as the tobacco industry, which successfully prevented Congress from regulating its dangerous and harmful product for many decades.
In essence, both industries funded their own scientists, like Willie Soon, who would produce research to cast doubt on the prevailing scientific consensus. Members of Congress then cite this shoddy research to claim the science isn't settled, and to justify delaying legislative action. Industry-funded scientists like Willie Soon, and science in general, are just pawns in this effort, as Senator James Inhofe made clear with his absurd snowball stunt on the Senate floor last week.
Increasingly, that funding has been channeled through secretive organizations like Donors Trust. As Robert Brulle found in a 2013 study, Donors Trust " now accounts for 25 percent of all traceable foundation funding used by organizations promoting the systematic denial of climate change ... In all, 140 foundations funneled $558 million to almost 100 climate denial organizations from 2003 to 2010." In 2010, Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund alone channeled nearly $30 million to conservative organizations opposing climate action or science. That accounted for 46% of all their grants to conservative causes.
The oil and gas industry has easily topped the campaign contributions the aforementioned Senator Inhofe has received over the past 25 years, with Koch Industries and Murray Energy being his top contributors. Meanwhile, the Koch brothers' political network plans to spend $889 million on the 2016 US presidential election.
Willie Soon's shoddy research and fossil fuel funding are just a symptom of the underlying problem: the high level of fossil fuel industry influence in the US government. Soon and his cohorts are merely tools used by members of Congress to manufacture doubt, thereby justifying inaction on climate change, and creating enough confusion that the public doesn't consider the issue a high priority.
It's the exact same strategy that the tobacco industry successfully implemented to their success, and to the detriment of public health and well-being. Thanks to the efforts of Greenpeace and the Climate Investigations Center to reveal Soon's fossil fuel funding and conflicts of interest, perhaps this time the scandalous industry misinformation efforts will be brought to an end before it's too late to avoid serious harm to public health.
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The Guardian
March 2, 2015 Monday 3:12 PM GMT
13 steps towards ending poverty and climate change;
With the sustainable development goals and a climate deal coming up this year our panel say how to make the most of this once-in-a-generation opportunity
BYLINE: Eliza Anyangwe
SECTION: GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT PROFESSIONALS NETWORK
LENGTH: 1383 words
Start by asking the tough questions: This year sees several important negotiations processes coming to a head - the post-2015 process on the SDGs, the UNFCCC process on climate change, the UN's third Financing for Development conference in July. These processes are still being progressed as separate streams, so how we are going to bring them closer together? When we get down to the tangible elements like finance, how can we improve coherence between different funding streams, and better connect finance with countries' sustainable development priorities? Aaron Atteridge, research fellow, Stockholm Environment Institute, Stockholm. @SEIresearch
See climate change and poverty as two sides of the same coin: Eradicating poverty alongside building resilience and restructuring the global economy to hold global temperatures below 2C are mutually reinforcing goals that, acted on together, can provide prosperity and security for this and future generations. Nelson Muffuh, head of outreach, United Nations post-2015 development planning team, New York. @nmuffuh
Fight gender inequality: Women, if included in the economy, would add productivity. And many of the forces that propel poverty into the future - adolescent fertility, infant mortality, sexual violence, disease transmission, and hostility, to name a few - are best addressed by working to improve the economic autonomy of women. Linda Scott, chair for entrepreneurship and innovation, Oxford University, Oxford. @ProfLindaScott
Recognise the conflict between economic development and the environment: Growth of a particular country is directly proportional to the amount of emissions it spews in the atmosphere. This is the reason why rich countries are reluctant to agree to some elements of a climate change deal which they see as denying them competitive advantage in development. But sacrifices have to be made; rich countries who have caused the damage should honour their commitment under the climate change convention, while growing economies should recognise the impact of their actions on present and future generations. Mithika Mwenda, secretary general, Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance, Nairobi. @mithika_mwenda
Don't get distracted by geopolitics: The real danger is the talks [at the UN general assembly in September] either get bogged down in power games between different blocs of countries or that the escalating global security issues - Syria, Ukraine, extremism - push the talks down the agenda and we end up with warm words on paper and no follow-on action. We need to stay focused. Linda McAvan, member of the European Parliament, Brussels. @LindaMcAvanMEP
Accept that this is a moral fight: The 17 proposed goals comprise big words but are we merely setting goals that we will never reach? Is it all wishful thinking? The three fundamental issues in the world are avarice, arrogance and apathy, and to tackle them we need more than technical solutions or political quick-fixes. We need a moral force that can help us build a new world. Yeb Sano, climate commissioner for the Philippines, Manila. @yebsano
Find the funding to make change a reality: The first thing we need is for developed countries to recommit to their 0.7% [aid targets]. The European commission has suggested the EU as a whole commit should 0.7%. Then we must focus on improving domestic resource mobilisation - measures to support tax collection and tackle tax evasion and avoidance are crucial. Without a solid domestic tax base, no country can sustainably promote development for all its people and eradicate poverty. Finally, we need to get more private sector investment. We must work with emerging and middle-income countries, who are increasingly involved as donors, to develop a genuine UN framework so that the international aid system is better coordinated and not fragmented. Linda McAvan
Look beyond 2015: It's tempting to focus all our energies on securing the deals in September (SDGs) and December (climate talks) this year, but our success in changing the course of sustainable development will be judged not just on what is declared this year but what's delivered by 2030. So we need the public pressure, the political buy-in, and engagement far beyond the New York negotiating spaces if we are to see these deals defining sustainable development for the coming decades. Helen Morton, post-2015 lead, Save the Children, New York. @SavetheChildren
Learn from the MDGs: Why do we need new goals when a number of millennium development goals haven't been met? Should we abandon those goals and simply set new ones? No. What we need to do is figure out why they weren't achieved and change the methodologies used. [An important lessons we must learn is that] we shouldn't try to force universal solutions as the environmental settings, needs and challenges of countries differ. Given Edward, head of research and information, Tanzania Youth Vision Association, Dar es Salaam. @givenality
Put trade reform on the agenda: The SDGs and climate change negotiations often appear quite disconnected from other global regimes - such as trade and financial markets - which have a major impact on people's livelihoods and their vulnerability. One might argue that trade issues are bound up within quite a number of the goals as they are now, but there could certainly be value in putting trade issues and the impact of trade more specifically on the SDG agenda. Aaron Atteridge
Focus on the root causes: We must set in motion profound changes in how we organise our economies and societies. Without these changes development cannot be truly sustainable. This means tackling the systems and structures that keep people poor within and beyond countries. Justice, rule of law and accountability are key to ensuring that people access opportunities, co-exist peacefully, and above all meaningfully contribute as agents of their own development. Nelson Muffuh
Beware of the dominance of the private sector: My fear is that the same interests which have derailed [previous climate talks] have returned to haunt this important process. Voices of people continue to be drowned by corporate interests, whose sole aim is profit. Phasing in a community-controlled renewable energy future, in place of fossil-fuel, should be our objective. Evidence of such successes abound: Christian Aid has done a study which demonstrates that such a future is possible. Mithika Mwenda
Let citizens lead: The post-2015 development agenda will ultimately take form in the villages, towns and cities - the places where people actually live [and not in the UN headquarters in New York where the new goals will be decided]. To be effective new targets and indicators should also be tailored to the needs at the sub-national, local and community level, through participatory and multi-stakeholder processes led by local authorities, in both cities and rural areas. Nelson Muffuh
Invest in the technology that will deliver the goals: There's, rightly, lots of discussion around the "data revolution". If we want to live in a world in 2030, where "no one is left behind", and crucially, where "no target is considered met unless met for all" then we need to ensure that countries have the capacity and capability to monitor and make accessible data that's disaggregated across all social and economic groups. This may sound technical but it's truly transformative and would change development as we know it. Imagine us living in a world where inequality isn't an inevitable outcome of development progress. Helen Morton
Read the full Q&A here.
Is there anything that we've left out? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
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The Guardian
March 2, 2015 Monday 10:55 AM GMT
Monday's best TV;
Fergal Keane explores voters' basic ambitions and desires in Panorama, Rick Stein cooks up wallaby down under, Martin Clunes takes on Conan Doyle and a trio of mathematicians try to get to the root of climate change
BYLINE: Andrew Mueller, Hannah Verdier, Jack Seale, Jonathan Wright, Graeme Virtue, Ben Arnold and Rachel Aroesti
SECTION: TELEVISION & RADIO
LENGTH: 718 words
Panorama - What Britain Wants 8.30pm, BBC1
First of a four-part series-within-a-series presented by Fergal Keane. As the general election looms, Keane takes the cue to wonder whether there is anything politicians are doing - or could do - to enable more people to realise what have long been thought the most basic of ambitions: owning their home; doing work they enjoy; feeling as if they belong where they live; and maintaining confidence that things will improve in the future. A useful reality check for voters and office-seekers alike. Andrew Mueller
A Cook Abroad: Rick Stein's Australia 9pm, BBC2
Delicious food, gorgeous scenery and sunshine are guaranteed as Rick takes a journey from his Aussie house, where he's serving up treats and fizz, to Tasmania, "the foodie frontier". On the way, there's time for a stop-off at a roadside driver-reviver to try a meat pie, as well as a trip to Sydney's fish market. Once he reaches Tassie, Rick is understandably evangelical about its beauty. Killing a wallaby isn't the most palatable thing to watch, but seeing it roasted in salt and pepper is. Hannah Verdier
Arthur & George 9pm, ITV
Sherlock by proxy, in a well-crafted dramatisation of the Julian Barnes novel. Based on a true story, it sees Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - guiltily mourning a wife he didn't love and unsure if Holmes is a blessing or a curse - doing real detective work. Is convicted horse-maimer George Edalji (Arsher Ali) the victim of a racist set-up? With Martin Clunes playing Doyle as a wily, spunky thinker who nevertheless feels inferior to his own creation, this first episode has charm to go with the misty period intrigue. Jack Seale
Climate Change By Numbers 9pm, BBC4
According to surveys, as the evidence for climate change mounts, we grow less certain about whether we understand what's happening. Information overload doesn't help, so this doc finds three mathematicians - Hannah Fry, Norman Fenton and David Spiegelhalter - who focus on three figures: 0.85C (degrees of warming since 1880); 95% (the degree of certainty that at least half of recent warming is man-made); and 1tn tonnes (the total amount of carbon we can ever burn while avoiding dangerous levels of climate change). Jonathan Wright
Mom 9pm, ITV2
Season two of the Chuck Lorre-created sitcom that isn't Two and a Half Men or The Big Bang Theory. Recovering addict and single parent Christy Plunkett (Anna Faris) should be celebrating a year sober, despite the pressures of living with her free-spirited mother and a wayward teenage daughter. By the end of this opening double bill, the Plunkett clan are adjusting to a precarious new status quo. My Name Is Earl's Jaime Pressly guest stars, while 3rd Rock from the Sun veteran French Stewart lurks in the background. Graeme Virtue
Storyville: The $1.7 Billion Dollar Fraud: Full Exposure 10.15pm, BBC4
When the Japanese tech giant Olympus appointed British executive Michael Woodford - a gaijin (foreigner) - as president and CEO, it set in motion an extraordinary turn of events after he blew the whistle on a staggering $1.7bn fraud being conducted behind the scenes. While retelling the events of 2011, just months after Woodford took up the post, director Hyoe Yamamoto weaves a compelling tale of honour, complicity and deception spanning decades. Ben Arnold
Moone Boy 9pm, Sky 1
Judging by the opener of this 1991-set third series, Chris O'Dowd's generally endearing sitcom seems to be leaning heavily on its retrospective premise for its jokes. As young Martin visits his uncle in Dublin, where he sells encyclopedias with a hefty dose of dramatic irony ("the greatest information resource the world will ever see"), parents Debra and Liam go away to celebrate their anniversary, only to bump into the latter's youth-obsessed old flame. Cue confusion over newfangled things such as yoga and raving. Rachel Aroesti
Today's best live sport
·?Premier League U-21 football: Liverpool v Chelsea Check out the stars of the future (6.45pm, Sky Sports 1).
· World Seniors Championship snooker From Blackpool, with Jimmy White in action tonight (7pm, Sky Sports 3).
·?Serie A football: Roma v Juventus Action from the Stadio Olimpico in Rome (7.30pm, BT Sport 1).
· World Cup cricket: Ireland v South Africa The South Africans face the dangerous Irish (3am, Sky Sports World Cup).
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The Guardian
March 2, 2015 Monday 8:00 AM GMT
Storm-weary New York City needs to adapt faster to climate change;
After batterings from Irene and Sandy, New Yorkers can't afford to wait much longer for flood protection on - and under - their streetsHow a children's playground protects Rotterdam from floodingVancouver versus the rising sea: how the city is adapting to climate change
BYLINE: Jim Hall
SECTION: PUBLIC LEADERS NETWORK
LENGTH: 775 words
New York City is the beating heart of corporate America. Its streets and avenues parade across western popular culture and its imposing skyline is testament to humanity's manifest ambition and modern civilisation.
Yet it is a city of high stakes and has much to lose from climate change. Some 400,000 New Yorkers live on the city's 100-year floodplain. While this is only 5% of NYC's population, it represents a greater proportion - and a greater density - than any other city in the US.
NYC's battering from the tropical storm Irene in 2011 humbled the city's infrastructure, with the Hudson River, which flanks the west side of Manhattan Island, breaking its banks and almost spilling into the subway network. Fast forward a year to superstorm Sandy - a hurricane that killed 43 people and caused an estimated $19bn (£12.3bn) in damage. The storm flooded the city's roads and subway stations, paralysing vital transport networks, and affected electrical facilities and power supply. It exposed the interdependent nature of our infrastructure networks - often the failure of one system affects the operation of another.
Despite this significant damage to both life and property, the city's authorities had learned hard lessons from Irene and were better prepared for Sandy. The New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) informed the public three days in advance of an evacuation plan affecting 375,000 people and that public transport would be shut down. The MTA also moved rolling stock to less flood-prone areas, covered subway entrances, cleared drains and ensured recovery crews and equipment were in place before the storm struck.
Due to these preparations, there was a relatively speedy recovery of transport services: the first subway lines ran three days after Sandy, with 80% of the system in use after five days.
In 2007 the city embarked on a programme to address changing climate, population growth and ageing infrastructure, as well as improve residents' quality of life. It covers investment in green infrastructure, including energy, transport and housing, up to 2030.
New York City has also been working to tackle the realities of flooding and offer solutions that keep the city moving in spite of its storms. After flooding in 2007 a weakness was identified with the subway network in Queens and other low-lying areas. Storm water had repeatedly gushed through street-level ventilation grates into the subway network below, flooding numerous stations throughout the borough and paralysing portions of the city's transport network. Responding, the MTA raised the subway grates up off the ground and double-purposing them as street benches and other outdoor furniture. Not only does this enhance resilience to flooding, but enables residents to go about their lives even during heavy storms.
Related: How prepared is New York City for future superstorms? The question is far from settled
In response to Sandy and its devastation to the north east of the US, the federal government awarded $335m last year to the City of New York to build the first stage of what is being called "The Big U" project. Essentially a large storm protection berm around lower Manhattan, it will extend for 10 miles, and aims to protect an incredibly dense, vibrant and low-lying urban area. The proposed system will not only shield the city against floods and storm water, but also aims to provide social and environmental benefits to the community..
New York City's approach to climate change adaptation was one of the first in the US that not only considered how one policy area affects another, but also how agencies can work together effectively.
However, despite its plans, our research at the Institution of Civil Engineers suggests that the city itself has built comparatively few resilience projects. It is important to get decisions right, so time spent on analysis and design is time well spent. But impending sea level rise, hurricanes and storms warrant action sooner rather than to later.
Jim Hall is a fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers and an author of Availability Infrastructure: Resilient Cities
Read more:
How a children's playground protects Rotterdam from flooding
Vancouver versus the rising sea: how the city is adapting to climate change
Sign up for your free weekly Guardian Public Leaders newsletter with news and analysis sent direct to you every Thursday. Follow us on Twitter via @Guardianpublic
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The Guardian
March 2, 2015 Monday 6:01 AM GMT
Members of (EURO)32bn Danish pension funds to vote on fossil fuel divestment;
Series of resolutions asks six of Denmark's pension funds to drop their 'black money' investments in coal, oil and gas projects that cause climate change
BYLINE: Damian Carrington
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 538 words
Hundreds of thousands of academics, engineers and lawyers in Denmark are set to vote on divesting their (EURO)32bn (£23bn) pension funds from the fossil fuels that drive climate change.
The first of a series of resolutions will be filed on Monday asking six funds to dump their coal investments by 2018 and exclude high-risk oil and gas projects such as tar sands extraction and Arctic drilling.
Campaigners are hopeful of success after resolutions demanding divestment from all fossil fuels were only narrowly defeated in 2014. The pension funds, which Danish professionals are obliged to join, cover almost 5% of the nation's workforce.
"The Danish energy sector is obviously more green than elsewhere in the world, but even in Denmark we have a responsibility to do our absolute best to drive the [green energy] transition and part of that is moving out of black money," said Prof Thomas Meinert Larsen, at Copenhagen University and part of the Danish Fossil Free Campaign. "I care about the future for the coming generations."
The Danish move is part of a fast-growing climate change campaign that has already persuaded 180 institutions, worth $50bn (£33bn) and including local authorities, universities and churches, to sell off their investments in coal, oil and gas.
A series of analyses have shown that there are already three times more fossil fuels in proven reserves than can be burned if catastrophic global warming is to be avoided, as world leaders have pledged. The campaigners argue that the trillions of dollars companies are still spending on exploration for even more fossil fuels is a danger to both the climate and investors' capital.
The six funds being targeted provide pensions for academics (MP Pension), engineers (DIP and ISP), lawyers and economists (JØP), architects (AP) and veterinarians (PJD), over 200,000 people in total.
The resolution filed to each fund will ask the board to "exclude investments in the 100 largest coal companies as soon as possible, but at the latest before the end of 2018, and to engage in, and annually document, a dialogue with owned oil and gas companies to exclude their investments in high-risk extraction projects, eg tar sands, deepwater drilling and drilling in Arctic." The votes will take place in April.
In 2014, resolutions urging divestment from the top 100 coal and top 100 oil and gas companies by 2020 were filed at three of the funds received and received significant support: MP pension (49% in favour), DIP (46%) and JØP (38%).
"I think that probably for these three pension funds, we will have a majority this year," said Meinert Larsen. "We have the impression the pension boards are moving."
Other major financial institutions in Scandinavia have already divested from fossil fuel stocks, with the region's biggest fund manager Nordea and Norway's sovereign wealth fund (the world's biggest) both blacklisting coal companies, while Denmark's largest pension fund, PFA, is excluding tar sands companies.
The fossil fuel divestment campaign has been backed by the anti-apartheid campaigner Archbishop Desmond Tutu, while the heads of the Bank of England and the World Bank have both warned that action to cut carbon emissions would devalue fossil fuel investments.
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The New York Times
March 2, 2015 Monday
Late Edition - Final
British Fail to Block German-Russian Energy Deal
BYLINE: By STANLEY REED
SECTION: Section B; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 2
LENGTH: 605 words
LONDON -- The German utility RWE and a Russian-controlled investment company signaled on Sunday that they expected to complete a deal for the oil and gas subsidiary RWE Dea on Monday, despite objections from the British government.
L1 Energy, based in London and owned by the Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman and partners, agreed last year to buy RWE Dea for 5 billion euros, or about $5.6 billion. Among RWE Dea's prime holdings are a large North Sea natural gas field called Breagh and other British assets.
The British government has declined to bless the sale out of concern that Mr. Fridman or his company might become the target of expanded sanctions on the Russian energy industry stemming from the Ukraine conflict. Any additional sanctions might force the shutdown of those fields, creating safety and environmental risks, according to the government.
Britain's Department of Energy and Climate Change, which regulates the oil industry, strongly reiterated these concerns over the weekend. The department said in a statement Saturday that Edward Davey, the energy minister, was ''minded'' to require L1 to sell the British assets to a more suitable operator if the deal did go through.
RWE indicated on Sunday that Britain's concerns would not be enough to stop the deal and that the country's decision ''does not affect the completion of the transaction'' on Monday, the company said in a statement.
L1 Energy also confirmed Sunday that it planned to close the transaction using a legal structure it had previously proposed in an unsuccessful attempt to reassure the British government.
L1 said that the British assets would be kept separate from the rest of RWE Dea for a number of years and ''monitored'' by a Dutch foundation, or stichting, to ''ensure that the business is held separate from the remaining Dea business and supervise that it is being operated fully in line with the license agreements.'' In the event of added sanctions, L1 said, the foundation ''will assume full control over'' the British assets, presumably shielding them from sanctions. RWE had also said that it would buy back the British assets if L1 or its owners were hit with sanctions from the United States or the European Union within a year of the deal closing.
The British government said over the weekend that these measures were not enough to alleviate its concerns.
In a statement, L1 complained that the British government was in danger of barring a major investor when the British North Sea is losing favor. Dea ''had intended to invest $450 million over the next three years in a province from which many companies are disinvesting,'' the company said.
The standoff with Britain could create headwinds for Mr. Fridman's ambitions to build an international oil and gas company using the billions of dollars he received from selling his share of TNK-BP, the Russian affiliate of BP, to the state-controlled oil company Rosneft. Underscoring those ambitions, L1 Energy is expected on Monday to announce the appointment of John Browne, a former BP chief executive known for making deals, as executive chairman.
If the sale goes through on Monday, Mr. Fridman and his partners might find themselves under pressure to sell valuable oil and gas assets when many such properties are on the market. The Department of Energy and Climate Change acknowledged in a statement on Sunday that it ''cannot block the deal, only require a further change of control.''
In a possible softening of its position, the department also said that Mr. Davey, the energy minister, would be willing to consider new proposals to alleviate his concerns.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/02/business/german-energy-firm-pushes-ahead-on-russian-deal-despite-british-objections.html
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GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Mikhail Fridman, a Russian billionaire, and partners own L1 Energy, which agreed to buy RWE Dea, a subsidiary of RWE. (PHOTOGRAPH BY NATALIA KOLESNIKOVA/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE -- GETTY IMAGES)
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The Guardian
March 1, 2015 Sunday 9:00 PM GMT
Academics urge University of Edinburgh to end fossil fuel investment;
Staff back student and global calls for fossil fuel and arms trade divestment in open letter to vice-chancellor before crucial funding deadline
BYLINE: Libby Brooks, Scotland correspondent
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 462 words
Fifty academics from Edinburgh University have signed an open letter calling for the institution to divest its £230m endowment fund from fossil fuels and the arms trade.
The letter, to Edinburgh vice-chancellor Prof Sir Timothy O'Shea, is published in advance of a meeting on Monday of the university committee responsible for recommending options for fossil fuel divestment. It is convening for the last time before the university's central management group makes its decision on divestment in April.
The letter states: "Our continued investment in fossil fuels and arms, combined with the futility of shareholder engagement, constitutes inaction on climate change and human conflict across the globe. It is time that we stop thinking in terms of the risk of divestment and lead the way in creating a sustainable and secure future."
Dr Aaron Thierry, who studies the impact of climate change in the Arctic at Edinburgh's School of Geosciences, said that the letter showed there was strong feeling amongst staff as well as students. "It's important that academic staff show their support for this campaign. Investment in fossil fuels is not in line with the values of this institution and we should be leading by example."
This marks the culmination of a three year campaign by students, who successfully pushed the university to divest from military drone manufacturer Ultra Electronics in 2013.
It comes after Glasgow University became the first academic institution in Europe to divest from the fossil fuel industry last October, voting to begin divesting £18m from the fossil fuel industry and freeze new investments across its entire endowment of £128m.
At the time, American environmentalist Bill McKibben described the Glasgow result as "a dramatic beachhead for the divestment movement", saying that it sent a powerful signal that Europe would be "just as powerful in this fight as Australia and North America". The University of Edinburgh's endowment fund is the third largest in the UK.
Founded in 2011 across just half a dozen US college campuses, the student-led global divestment movement has gained remarkable traction over a relatively short period of time. A study by Oxford University last autumn found that it had grown faster than any previous divestment campaign, including those relating to apartheid, armaments and tobacco.
Ric Lander, finance campaigner for Friends of the Earth Scotland, welcomed the academics' letter. "Our academics are right to urge universities to stop investing in dirty fossil fuels: centres of learning exist to tackle global challenges, not profit from global destruction," he said. " The environmental rationale for divestment is crystal clear and the economic case for taking your money out of fossil fuels is growing by the day."
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The New York Times
March 1, 2015 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
Britain, Wary of Sanctions, Adds Pressure to Keep Russian From Buying Energy Unit
BYLINE: By STANLEY REED
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Foreign Desk; Pg. 12
LENGTH: 717 words
LONDON -- The British government on Saturday hardened its resistance to the Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman's attempt to buy the energy subsidiary of the German utility RWE.
Mr. Fridman's company, L1 Energy, agreed to a 5 billion euro deal with RWE last year, but its completion has been slowed by regulators' concerns, especially in Britain, that Mr. Fridman or his company might become the target of expanded sanctions on the Russian energy industry stemming from the Ukraine conflict.
Among the prime holdings of the energy subsidiary, DEA, is a British natural gas field in the North Sea called Breagh. The British government is worried that if Mr. Fridman or his company were sanctioned, the field and other North Sea assets belonging to DEA might need to be shut down, creating serious safety and environmental risks.
Mr. Fridman and RWE made concessions to try to push the deal through, but the British Department of Energy and Climate Change said in a statement on Saturday that these steps did not ''adequately and surely alleviate'' the concerns of the energy minister, Edward Davey, about the effect that possible future sanctions might have on the operations of the British fields. It said that if the deal went through, Mr. Davey was ''minded to require the companies to arrange'' for the British fields to be sold to a more suitable operator.
The government announcement came just after it emerged that Mr. Fridman was about to hire as the head of L1 Energy John Browne, a former chief of the British oil giant BP who orchestrated a flurry of groundbreaking mergers while there.
Mr. Browne, 67, is expected to be named executive chairman of L1 Energy on Monday, according to a person close to the company who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the appointment had not yet been formally announced.
The appointment, which The Financial Times first reported, could signal an effort by Mr. Fridman to take advantage of the current low price of petroleum to acquire stakes in oil and gas businesses around the globe.
But Britain's resistance to the sale could suggest that Mr. Browne will face difficulties in working for Russian investors at a tense time between Moscow and the West. L1 planned to use DEA, which has a global range of assets in places like Germany, Norway and Egypt, and a staff of geologists and other experts, as the platform on which to build a bigger company.
In an effort to overcome British concerns, the companies said in January that the British assets of DEA would be kept separate for a number of years. They also said that for a year after the completion of the deal, RWE would be obliged to buy back the British assets if sanctions were imposed on LetterOne, Mr. Fridman's holding company, or its owners.
Now, a new price may need to be negotiated, and the sale itself may be at risk. Neither Mr. Browne nor a representative for LetterOne could be reached for comment.
Mr. Browne and Mr. Fridman have had business dealings, at times contentious, dating to the early 2000s, when BP acquired a 50 percent stake in the oil operations of Mr. Fridman and his partners, forming a company called TNK-BP. Mr. Fridman set up L1 Energy in 2013 with the aim of investing the proceeds he and his partners made from selling their share of TNK-BP to the Russian state-controlled energy company Rosneft. L1 Energy is a unit of LetterOne.
At that time, they hired Mr. Browne as a paid adviser, along with Andrew Gould, a former chief of the oil services company Schlumberger, and James Hackett, a former chief of Anadarko Petroleum, an American independent energy company.
Mr. Browne, who left BP in 2007, is known for the deals he led as its chief, beginning with its takeover of Amoco in 1998. Despite building BP into one of the oil industry's biggest companies, he was among the first oil executives to acknowledge that burning fossil fuels was probably linked to global climate change.
L1 Energy might offer Mr. Browne ample financial firepower at a time when a sharp drop in energy prices has put a wide range of oil and gas assets up for sale. According to LetterOne's website, it has $29.5 billion under management, with $13.5 billion in telecommunications assets and $15.6 billion in financial instruments that could be used for acquisitions.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/01/business/energy-environment/britain-wary-of-sanctions-adds-pressure-to-keep-russian-from-buying-energy-unit.html
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The New York Times
March 1, 2015 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
Is the Environment a Moral Cause?
BYLINE: By ROBB WILLER.
Robb Willer is an associate professor of sociology, psychology and organizational behavior at Stanford.
SECTION: Section SR; Column 0; Sunday Review Desk; GRAY MATTER; Pg. 10
LENGTH: 882 words
PALO ALTO, Calif. -- ACCORDING to a recent poll, a large majority of Americans, and roughly half of Republicans, say they support governmental action to address global warming. The poll, conducted by The New York Times, Stanford and the research organization Resources for the Future, stands in stark contrast to the vast partisan gulf in political efforts to address climate change. How could it be that so many Republicans view global warming as a problem, but so few on the right are pressuring the government to take action to address it?
A paper that Matthew Feinberg, a psychologist at the University of Toronto, and I published in the journal Psychological Science in 2013 suggests one answer to this puzzle: While the number of Republicans who say global warming is a serious problem has reached high levels, there remains a very large gap in moral engagement with the issue. We found that conservatives were less likely than liberals to describe pro-environmental efforts in moral terms, or to pass moral judgment on someone who behaved in an environmentally unfriendly way, for example by not recycling. Where liberals view environmental issues as matters of right and wrong, conservatives generally do not.
But why does this moral gap matter if most people now believe that global warming is a real threat? Other research has shown that people are generally reluctant to undertake costly political actions, even for a cause they think will be beneficial. After all, there are so many worthy causes competing for our time, effort and resources, and we can't contribute to every one.
People think quite differently, however, when they are morally engaged with an issue. In such cases people are more likely to eschew a sober cost-benefit analysis, opting instead to take action because it is the right thing to do. Put simply, we're more likely to contribute to a cause when we feel ethically compelled to.
Still, why do liberals moralize environmental issues, while conservatives do not? The answer is complex, owing in part to the specific history of the American environmental movement. A quick review of that history reveals that, while the environment has been politically polarizing since the 1960s, there is nothing inevitably liberal about environmental concern. After all, it was a Republican president, Richard M. Nixon, who founded the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970.
Our research points to a different factor in the moralization gap: the terms in which these issues are commonly discussed in the media. We enlisted a team of research assistants to code the moral content of 51 environmental public service announcements and 402 opinion articles appearing in major American newspapers. The arguments found in these messages most often discussed environmental issues like climate change in terms of the need to protect people and ecosystems from harm and destruction. Protection from harm is a moral concern that, past research finds, resonates significantly more with American liberals than conservatives. By contrast, moral concerns more unique to conservatives like patriotism, respect for authority, sanctity or purity rarely appeared in the environmental appeals we studied.
It is unclear if moral rhetoric around the environment takes the form it does because it's an intuitive fit (even the relatively conservative Mr. Nixon called it the Environmental Protection Agency), or because it is liberals who most often fashion environmental appeals. Regardless, we should not be surprised to find underlying moral polarization on issues discussed primarily in liberal moral terms.
But this research also suggests an intriguing possibility: that pro-environmental messages specifically targeting conservative values could close the moral gap and persuade conservatives to join the environmental cause.
To assess this, we conducted a final study in which we constructed a pro-environmental message based in moral purity. This message emphasized the need to protect natural habitats from ''desecration'' so that our children can experience the ''uncontaminated purity and value of nature.'' We presented one group of self-identified conservatives with this message, another group with a more conventional message emphasizing the need to protect ecosystems from harm, and a third group with a neutral essay that didn't mention the environment. The conservatives presented with the purity message reported significantly greater support for pro-environmental legislation than the other two groups -- indeed, they were as supportive as a group of liberals we also surveyed. Conservatives who read the moral purity message even reported greater belief in global warming, though the message itself didn't mention global warming, only environmental issues in general.
To win over more of the public, environmentalists must look beyond the arguments that they themselves have found convincing. The next wave of moral arguments for environmental reform will need to look very different from the last, if they are to be maximally effective. Such efforts to understand others' moral perspectives might not only bring both sides in line on this important issue, but also foster the sort of sincerity and respect necessary to sustain a large-scale collective effort.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/01/opinion/sunday/is-the-environment-a-moral-cause.html
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The Guardian
February 28, 2015 Saturday 9:43 PM GMT
Guardian Hack Day February 2015 - liveblog;
It's that time again - the Guardian's Digital Development team is having its quarterly Hack Day. Follow along to see what gets built (and how much coffee gets drunk)
BYLINE: Matt Andrews
SECTION: INFO
LENGTH: 4037 words
block-time published-time 6.05pm GMT
The results are in!
Dominic Kendrick takes the award for most amusing hack with his cautionary environmental tale Choose Wisely.
The Graham Tackley memorial award for most valuable hack controversially goes to Do you come here often?
Congratulations to Chris Clarke, John Duffell, Chris Austin and Steve Vadocz as Graham entrusts his trophy to them for the next year.
Less controversially the Stephan Fowler award for best hack goes to... Stephen Fowler and Amy Hughes for Live Newsdesk. Balance is restored. And so, to the bar and the post-hack day conversations. Updates may now be limited.
block-time published-time 5.18pm GMT
And that's it! Now its time for the voting.
block-time published-time 5.16pm GMT
Last hack! Applause for these two waiting to go until the very end of the day.
Zofia Korcz and Justin Pinner have been working on making the Guardian 404 pages more useful. Justin kicks off by pointing out this is not the most helpful page (at all). Short and sweet they demo their far more thoughtfully crafted page with clear onward journeys.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 5.17pm GMT
block-time published-time 5.15pm GMT
Happy birthday Zofia!
Another round of singing for another birthday. Hurrah!
block-time published-time 5.13pm GMT
Some light trolling of Cantlin Ashrowan in Seb and Lindsey's talk. I look forward to that article exposing ageing hipsters.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 5.14pm GMT
block-time published-time 5.12pm GMT
Hangu by Seb Cevey and Lindsey Dew is about making editorial lives easier, integrating a hangout with content production inside the tool itself.
It's like a chat channel inside the tools that builds on our internal user presence indicators. You can chat with individuals or have a "room" around the content. It also integrates with Google Chat so chats are integrated with Gmail (the primary channel for chat inside the Guardian offices).
block-time published-time 5.08pm GMT
They have created an additional option for the app that allows an editor to open Ophan directly from the app (we use browser extensions for these kind of tools on the web).
The website has a heatmap overlay that records where clicks on the page are happening. Again as an option you can see how many clicks the native front components are getting in near realtime.
block-time published-time 5.04pm GMT
I've left a bunch of accents off Frederic's name, sorry.
block-time published-time 5.03pm GMT
Ophan is our internal analytics tool and Frederic, Jesus and Diego from the native apps team are going to talk about how they can create an app experience for it.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 5.03pm GMT
block-time published-time 5.03pm GMT
Team M.A.R.I.O. (Making All Readers Involved in the Observer) up now by Frank Hulley-Jones, Rob Phillips and of course Mario Andrade.
The Guardian has gorgeous supplements in the paper on the weekend but they are nowhere to be found on the website. This team has created beautiful pages for the web designed to make you feel like having a nice long read over a cup of coffee.
Creating bespoke sites for @guardianweekend sections #guhackday15pic.twitter.com/Fp8dyvjCf2
- Nabeelah (@lahnabee) February 27, 2015
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 5.04pm GMT
block-time published-time 5.01pm GMT
Another single-person hack, Nick Satterly has created On this day. A Guardian digest for a particular day. Nick is nostalgic for our old frontend and I suspect some of you reading are too, one thing it did was a summary of a day, however that was based on the newspaper and Nick's is based on what the audience were discussing on a given day.
You can see Nick's hack for yourself. This is the coverage the day after the attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 8.57pm GMT
block-time published-time 4.56pm GMT
Come here often? Here's hoping.
Chris Clarke, John Duffell, Chris Austin and Steve Vadocz are targeting the large percentage of visitors who only visit the Guardian once and leave. They are tailoring the experience based on where you have come from. Facebook users should get more scrolling whereas Google referrals probably know exactly what they want, so keep it short and sweet.
For example for Facebook referrals the page could include an overview of the Guardian and a Facebook 'Like Us' button. Nice!
block-time published-time 4.54pm GMT
There are going to be just under forty hacks to vote on and only three prizes. It is going to be hard to remember all the hacks let alone vote on them!
block-time published-time 4.51pm GMT
Snapchat content is about "brand awareness". The average Guardian reader is aged about 37, there isn't really any content on the site aimed at them.
It's not really clear what the app is about but I think the idea is to create a dedicated app with a less conservative design aesthetic.
Targeting a younger audience for the Guardian, nice work by @mattpointblank and co #guhackday15pic.twitter.com/GBiQLkC9dv
- Helene Sears (@MateerS) February 27, 2015
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 5.06pm GMT
block-time published-time 4.48pm GMT
The Power is YOURS! Hot tips to save the planet is on by Steve Vadocz, Mario Andrade and Michael McNamara.
Michael explains this is about recruiting our users as a force for change. Everyone is worried about the environment but most are not sure how to help.
They have created "Eat seasonally and locally" as an easy way for people to make a difference. Featuring on article pages it has simple facts and tips on ways to make a difference.
block-time published-time 4.48pm GMT
Lexy Topping has just made the point that there is only one under-25 woman in the audience. However even Amy isn't using Snapchat either.
Our app doesn't require a Dig Dev soft porn session
block-time published-time 4.46pm GMT
Apologies to Jenny whose surname I mis-spelled earlier: Sivapalan, just one l. Also Wendy is disgruntled that I thought her hack name was sinister, but it is so she's just going to have to be unhappy (or rename it) to "Cuddly hug links".
block-time published-time 4.42pm GMT
The Guardian has a lot of community products: comments, Witness, Professional Networks and indeed the Opinion section where external contributors are encouraged to provide their personal view.
It's demo time yo!
Thanks Adam.
Inspired by Medium's response articles the team want to open our internal tools for the audience (you!) to write a response to our content. Interesting idea, we already do this a bit with blog networks.
block-time published-time 4.38pm GMT
We're opening with some call and response, Adam's always the showman. Luke is now going to talk some sense.
block-time published-time 4.35pm GMT
Luke Taylor and Adam Fisher are going to talk about Guardian Responses next.
block-time published-time 4.35pm GMT
Live Newsdesk is up by Stephan Fowler, Amy Hughes, Richard Nguyen, Chris Pearson and Celine Bijleveld.
The Guardian now has a Live desk and this hack adds a column to the homepage pulling in all of the great new content which will make the page feel far more lively and increase discoverability.
Stephan Fowler demos the all new live column on the Guardian homepage Photograph: Helene Sears
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 4.37pm GMT
block-time published-time 4.34pm GMT
The next hack by the same team (Sam, Ivor and Wendy) is about changing the related content in videos to relate to what you are currently watching. You can explore topics deeply as you continue to watch the current video. There is also a personal playlist that you can add videos to so that you can create a little backlog of videos you want to watch later. Its called Down the rabbit hole, watch video endlessly!
block-time published-time 4.29pm GMT
The next hack is called Where do you think you're going? Seems a little sinister for a personalisation hack... This is an attempt to link the link the sponsored content we run in things like the Travel section to news about the areas, making it easy to visit if you want to.
block-time published-time 4.27pm GMT
Podcast player by Richard Nguyen is up now. He is showing off a spiffy visualiser with accompanying playlist for the series so you don't have to leave the page to get to the next podcast.
block-time published-time 4.25pm GMT
Team Weather Oracle are here to illustrate the impact of climate change via the weather widget. It provides a future macro forecast with a fact about what climate change means for your area. A lightweight illustration of what the change in average global temperature means to you.
A simple but powerful addition to our existing functionality.
block-time published-time 4.23pm GMT
Now we have Guardian Communication Head Quarters which is a simple notification system and offline reading for theguardian.com
We need to create deeper, longer lasting relationships with out users.
Patrick Hamann
Introducing GCHQ, an web notification that is being demoed with great success. But it does not end here, if you missed one of the notifications it is available even offline!
block-time published-time 4.19pm GMT
Next is Listen with Alan, save your articles for later on the app , then get the app to read them back to you while running. The voice synthesis is good but still a little bit creepy.
One of the features is that you can have the comments read to you while you read the article. Save your time by using all your senses!
block-time published-time 4.16pm GMT
Up next is NightVision 2.0 by Gwyn Lockett. He points out reading a screen at night affects your health, not least if it wakes up your partner sleeping next to you. Some nice animations where you can see the app and website with different visual styles.
Nightvision 2.0 Photograph: Helene Sears
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 4.25pm GMT
block-time published-time 4.15pm GMT
Halfway...
We're about halfway through the presentations now.
block-time published-time 4.14pm GMT
The next team features the newest Guardian developer Akash Askoolum who started today. Welcome Akash!
The team have been doing sentiment analysis on both content and their associated discussions. On film reviews, they are looking between the feelings of the critics and the commentors. Commentors like Will Smith a lot more than Pete Bradshaw does according to their analysis.
They have also analysed the post for the launch of the new website ! Unsurprisingly the Guardian was very positive and the comments were very negative.
However the analysis does pick out themes like Windows 8 where there were problems at launch so this could be really useful for separating the light from the fury. This will be particularly useful for our moderation team for identifying big themes that emerging in the discussion thread.
block-time published-time 4.07pm GMT
The live blog is dead, long-live the live article
What do you get when you cross a Live Blog with an Article (both of which are Guardian content types)... Living Article!
Josh and Sam think that there are events where the detailed live blog format doesn't serve the minute by minute format (like this blog you're reading).
Looks like there are live panels within an article that can be updated independently of the main article. The example they use is of Apple product launches where you want to group things by the product but update and refine the information within the sub-heading.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 4.08pm GMT
block-time published-time 4.03pm GMT
Exciting name for the next the hack: Flow Rider!
On big topics like climate change it's hard to know where to start, which is where this hack comes in. It asks the user what they know on a particular topic at the bottom of an article and provides relevant next steps.
Flow Rider presentation Photograph: Helene Sears
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 4.09pm GMT
block-time published-time 4.02pm GMT
Swells tames AWS
Stephen Wells (aka Swells) jokes that the environmental theme is really about configuring your environment. Therefore he's built a tool to configure your environment with Cloud Formation.
He's created a web app that uses your AWS account to create Cloud Formation scripts simply by answering questions about what you want to setup and how you want your existing resources to interact with the new stack.
After answering all the questions the app spits out the JSON you'll need to build your stack. Brilliant (who wants to write their own Cloud Formation)!
Everyone laughed and clapped at this one but I didn't get it #environmenthack#guhackday15pic.twitter.com/urt3gCfhlH
- Nabeelah (@lahnabee) February 27, 2015
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 4.11pm GMT
block-time published-time 3.55pm GMT
NoMFoMo is up next, it gives people the chance to get involved with the big conversations, some lovely sketches here by Laura Doward.
Working on a concept to help people keep up to date with news when they have little time: NOFOMO #guhackday15pic.twitter.com/YBnRfrhqJ2
- Laura Doward (@saltieseadog) February 26, 2015
Using a data visualisation you can see what stories are big right now to get up to speed on the latest news.
Catch up on big stories Photograph: Helene Sears
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 5.09pm GMT
block-time published-time 3.52pm GMT
Tracer up now. Trying to tie polluters to those are politically or fiscally accountable to regular people.
They've used real data in Neo4J to trace the relationships between companies and their owners. They also use the data to identify the largest carbon emitting countries.
In addition they have dumped expense data into the store so they can aggregate expenses by party.
They can visualise the links between politicians, parties and companies. The Conservative party and Shell seem to have several connections.
block-time published-time 3.46pm GMT
Up first is Guardian Publishing Frequency which visualises when content gets published over the course of the day. Next is Guardian of Things...a web of everything, ever. This links tags with metadeta. Finally he is simplifying taleo, the complex HR tool for appraisals.
A very productive day at the office for Rob!
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 3.46pm GMT
block-time published-time 3.40pm GMT
Now Robert Rees is going to present three hacks...three!
block-time published-time 3.40pm GMT
The next team want to try to talk about mobile phone battery usage and trying to show users how much energy they use when reading the news.
block-time published-time 3.38pm GMT
Choose Wisely (or burn in climate change hell)
Dominic Kendrick is now going to present Choose Wisely, a hack on the climate change theme.
If we don't make the right choices now then we're going to burn in a fiery hell of climate change!
It's an isometric choose your own adventure game. If you deny climate change the world gets progressively darker while remaining very much like an early Final Fantasy game.
Dominic Kendrick's climate change hack Photograph: Dominic Kendrick
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 4.07pm GMT
block-time published-time 3.35pm GMT
Jenny Sivapalan, Robert Kenny and Celine Bijleveld have been investigating getting better, faster results out on election night.
The current system uses AP journalists and the FTP cloud of delay. The new system will use Guardian journalists and volunteers, Swarmize and the ability to embed the results directly into our content editor Composer.
Creating this system would make sure we having input from readers outside of London and make sure we have truly national coverage.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 4.11pm GMT
block-time published-time 3.31pm GMT
It's Jenny's birthday tomorrow...
Happy birthday to Jenny Sivapalan and a spontaneous round of Happy Birthday echoes through Shoreditch Town Hall.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 4.07pm GMT
block-time published-time 3.30pm GMT
Currently the reporting dashboards are generated by hand from a variety of data sources. This hack is using dashboard as a service software to generate metrics. Includes a funnel of user engagement.
block-time published-time 3.28pm GMT
Solo product management team now with Piers Jones taking about dashboards.
block-time published-time 3.28pm GMT
The team have built an app that implements the idea, we're going to be shouting out the answers.
We get the first one wrong but Gideon gets the second one right, with the total number of people immigrating into the UK.
Having a dedicated quiz app makes a lot of sense.
block-time published-time 3.25pm GMT
Never switch laptops during the presentations!
block-time published-time 3.25pm GMT
Quizitorial is a team project that attempts to gamify news catchups. Quizzes improve recall compared to just reading.
block-time published-time 3.23pm GMT
Gulu is today's Guardian content with up voting to create a kind of Hacker News view onto the Guardian. Nic's ambition is to solve the aggregation problem by allowing the Guardian readership to curate content and that means not just content from the Guardian but anything that is relevant.
block-time published-time 3.21pm GMT
It's fast and furious on stage, next its Nic Long with Gulu
block-time published-time 3.21pm GMT
Now it's Fabio Crisci with "No Fluff" which can read articles and do word analysis, complete with nice clean stats
block-time published-time 3.19pm GMT
John Duffell is talking about the issue of people rediscovering old content and sharing it on social with no context. So the simple answer is to add a banner.
block-time published-time 3.17pm GMT
Subtitled videos offer the chance of connecting with a global audience
Gideon Goldberg is now explaining how he's hacked subtitles into the Guardian's video page. The subtitles to come from Youtube and are the crowd-translated into different languages. Not sure how they get into the player though.
Subtitles aren't just about accessibility they also open up video to global audiences via translation
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 3.53pm GMT
block-time published-time 3.15pm GMT
It is possible to search the data and find out what both the Guardian and the Telegraph pay MPs for their contributors.
block-time published-time 3.14pm GMT
The member's register is pretty much free text in a HTML page. They've scraped the pages and attempted to create a structured data format from the text of the page.
We found the money by looking for pound signs followed by numbers
Well played Phil.
block-time published-time 3.10pm GMT
Graham Tackley and Phil Wills are going to be talking about interesting MPs, and what they've discovered from ingesting the register of MPs interests.
block-time published-time 3.06pm GMT
Okay folks we're about to go into the presentations... the first speaker is on the podium...
block-time published-time 2.24pm GMT
It would be amiss to ignore our coffee team for this hack day: the brilliant team from Noble Espresso - powering the Guardian's hack day since yesterday morning.
The kind coffee chaps from Noble Espresso Photograph: Matt Andrews/Guardian
block-time published-time 1.53pm GMT
Here's a hack group planning something - world domination, possibly, but more likely their demo presentation for this afternoon.
Guardian developers planning something Photograph: Matt Andrews/Guardian
block-time published-time 11.22am GMT
Our UX architect Helene is giving a class for our team in giving strong presentations. For better or worse, the end result of these 24 hours of hacking lives or dies on the strength of the three minute presentation later today. Hopefully all these people will go on and nail their presentations thanks to Helene.
Helene Sears leading a masterclass on presentation skills Photograph: Matt Andrews/Guardian
block-time published-time 10.55am GMT
Here's what they're all playing for today: one of the three trophies up for grabs.
The three hack day trophies Photograph: Matt Andrews/Guardian
block-time published-time 10.05am GMT
Day Two
We're into the second day of our Guardian hack event and spirits are high. People are arriving, coffee is being avidly consumed and more than one team are reconsidering their ideas from yesterday in the cold light of day. More soon.
block-time published-time 5.56pm GMT
That's it for the day - lots of happy (and tired) hackers. More tomorrow...
block-time published-time 5.55pm GMT
Finally, here's a few folks who are tired of the deskbound life.
A few of our team relaxing Photograph: Matt Andrews/Guardian
block-time published-time 5.51pm GMT
More diagrams: here's Jenny Sivapalan demonstrating how her team's election-themed hack project might work.
Jenny demonstrating her hack plan (with a cheeky Will "haircut" Franklin in the background) Photograph: Matt Andrews/Guardian
block-time published-time 5.48pm GMT
Here's a complex technical architecture diagram from renowned funster Will "hipster" Franklin:
A software architecture diagram, yesterday Photograph: Matt Andrews/Guardian
block-time published-time 5.18pm GMT
Things are starting to wrap up here for Day One of our hack day. The coffee folks of the fantastic Noble Espresso have packed up and left and our caffeine levels mean some Guardian staff are beginning to flag.
block-time published-time 2.53pm GMT
A creative way to attract potential hackers to work on your project Photograph: Matt Andrews/Guardian
block-time published-time 1.45pm GMT
We've also had a suggestion from Twitter of a possible hack, from a perhaps disgruntled non-Londoner...
an edition of the guardian which removes all articles relating to "london"
- tom martin (@deplorableword) February 26, 2015
block-time published-time 1.45pm GMT
Hacking is in full flow: here's what some of our journalists are working on:
@LauraOliver@subhajitb working on quizzes at the hackday! #guhackday15pic.twitter.com/1FLkMeccRP
- Helene Sears (@MateerS) February 26, 2015
block-time published-time 1.06pm GMT
One of our editorial colleagues, Lexy Topping, is hacking along with us today. She's just posted this Vine clip showing a hint of the action here at Shoreditch Town Hall:
It's all going on at #guhackday15. https://t.co/PU921r3drt
- Alexandra Topping (@LexyTopping) February 26, 2015
block-time published-time 1.05pm GMT
Food!
Lunchtime is wrapping up here as hacking begins in earnest. We're being fed Korrito who have delivered us a huge array of delicious Korean food:
Just a few of the bags of Korrito's Korean food before the hungry Guardian staff wolfed it all down Photograph: Matt Andrews/Guardian
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 3.54pm GMT
block-time published-time 11.59am GMT
Here's another shot of a team in action working on a hack idea around climate change:
The climate change hack team @Guardian#guhackday15pic.twitter.com/YbFO6TadKc
- Nabeelah (@lahnabee) February 26, 2015
block-time published-time 11.57am GMT
Here's a lovely photo of our brilliant venue before our team arrived and filled it full of discarded coffee cups and laptops:
Stunning hack space for the first Guardian hack days of 2015 #guhackday15pic.twitter.com/iykSQfaMlD
- Jon H-W (@JonHW87) February 26, 2015
block-time published-time 11.53am GMT
We've also had a clue from our developer Patrick Hamann about his plans for the day - sounds like there's something around offline reading happening in at least one team.
Today I will mostly be hacking around with ServiceWorker and the Push API at the @gdndevelopers hack day #guhackday13
- Patrick Hamann (@patrickhamann) February 26, 2015
block-time published-time 11.53am GMT
We've just finished pitching back the initial ideas and heard some fascinating things, including quizzes, mobile analytics, "save-for-later" across all your devices and something mysterious about "sliders". Watch this space.
block-time published-time 11.23am GMT
Guardian staff members discussing ideas for their hack projects Photograph: Matt Andrews/Guardian
block-time published-time 11.17am GMT
We're being hosted in the beautiful surroundings of Shoreditch Town Hall, a Grade II listed building. Right now, our hundred-strong team are engaged in an ideas session, brainstorming concepts and ideas about what the Guardian can do digitally to continue to innovate and experiment on the web. And probably some stuff with robots, too.
block-time published-time 11.13am GMT
We are off for Guardian Hack Day February 2015! Now to launch this blog...
LOAD-DATE: February 28, 2015
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS
Copyright 2015 The Guardian, a division of Transcontinental Media Group Inc.
All Rights Reserved
185 of 500 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
February 28, 2015 Saturday
Late Edition - Final
Bloomberg Sees a Way on Keystone
BYLINE: By JOE NOCERA
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Editorial Desk; OP-ED COLUMNIST; Pg. 17
LENGTH: 852 words
No one can question Michael Bloomberg's climate change bona fides. As mayor of New York, he declared that cities had to lead the way in reducing the threat of climate change, and he strove to make New York greener. He has donated millions of dollars to the effort to shut down coal-fired power plants. He endorsed President Obama for re-election in 2012 primarily because the president, he said, ''has taken major steps to reduce our carbon consumption.'' Most recently, he was named the United Nations secretary general's special envoy for cities and climate change, a position he appears to be taking quite seriously.
Bloomberg is also a supremely pragmatic man, who prides himself on not letting ideology get in the way of finding practical solutions to difficult problems. Thus it was that earlier this week -- after Obama vetoed a bill passed by Congress that would have forced him to approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline -- Bloomberg wrote an article for Bloomberg View, his media company's opinion publication, proposing an idea for breaking the logjam over the pipeline, which would transport oil from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, to refineries in the Gulf of Mexico.
His idea is that the Obama administration should negotiate directly with the Canadian government, and come up with a climate pact that would more than offset the emissions that would be generated -- indeed, are already being generated -- by mining the oil from the sands. Though it is unlikely to satisfy the partisans on both sides, it is a wonderfully sensible solution.
''Keystone has become irrationally significant,'' Bloomberg told me when I spoke to him about his idea. ''Environmentalists overstate the danger of the pipeline to the environment,'' he continued, ''while those who say the economics would be significant are overstating as well.'' Bloomberg believes we would all be better off if we stripped the pipeline of its symbolism and dealt with it more realistically.
Many in the environmental movement have taken the position that building Keystone -- and thus allowing for increased production of tar sands oil -- would be ruinous for the planet. Not only would it further the world's dependence on fossil fuels, but, if it enabled the full exploitation of the tar sands, it would emit so much carbon that it would be ''game over'' for the planet, in the memorable words of James Hansen, an anti-Keystone scientist. As I've written before, these claims are wildly overstated; indeed, the Canadian government likes to note that, in 2012, eight states, starting with Texas, had higher emissions from their coal-fired power plants than Canada did from its oil sands. And transporting oil by train, as is currently being done, is far more dangerous than sending it through a state-of-the-art pipeline.
At the same time, the Republicans who want to use Obama's veto as a symbol that he is willing to forego good jobs to please his environmental supporters are equally wrongheaded. Most of the American jobs related to Keystone would involve building the pipeline. Once it was up and running, the number of new jobs it would create would be minimal.
There is a third entity for whom Keystone has become a symbol: the conservative government of Stephen Harper, the Canadian prime minister, which has pushed for approval of the pipeline by the United States with an urgency that has sometimes felt a little desperate. In 2011, Harper said that approval of the pipeline should be a ''no brainer'' for the U.S. Canadian officials have threatened that if the U.S. doesn't approve the pipeline, the oil would likely go to China instead. And it has treated Obama's reluctance to make a decision on the pipeline as a reflection of American-Canadian relations, rather than what it is: an issue of American politics. There are many Canadians who believe that the Harper government has badly mishandled the Keystone issue.
At the same time, Harper's government has not exactly been leading the climate change charge. His administration pulled Canada out of the Kyoto Protocols, the landmark 1997 agreement that committed countries that signed on to mandatory emissions reductions. ''We are known around the world as being climate change obstructionists,'' said Peter McKenna, a political scientist at the University of Prince Edward Island. ''Harper always equates getting serious about climate change as having a negative effect on the Canadian economy.''
It is this state of affairs that Bloomberg seeks to exploit. Late last year, the Obama administration announced a climate change agreement with China, which commits both parties to lowering their greenhouse gas emissions. Because Harper so badly wants the Keystone pipeline to be approved, the U.S. government has tremendous leverage, says Bloomberg, to cut the same kind of deal with Canada. After which, the president could approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline with a clear conscience, knowing that he had mitigated the worst of its effects on the planet.
Pragmatism, for a change, would upend ideology, and we could finally stop talking about this fractious pipeline.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/28/opinion/joe-nocera-bloomberg-sees-a-way-on-keystone.html
LOAD-DATE: February 28, 2015
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Op-Ed
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2015 The New York Times Company
186 of 500 DOCUMENTS
The Guardian
February 27, 2015 Friday 2:27 PM GMT
The critical flaw in the EU's climate plan;
A successful EU climate pledge must look beyond emissions within Europe and include collaborative proposals to reduce pollution in developing nations as well
BYLINE: Bruce Babbitt and Nigel Purvis
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 914 words
Today the EU will unveil its latest commitment to fighting climate change - a pledge to cut internal emissions by at least 40% by 2030. The new target represents a good step forward, a hard-fought political compromise at a time of considerable economic difficulty.
The EU hopes to leverage this pledge at December's climate talks in Paris, when Europe will press other nations to forge a new agreement to reduce global climate pollution 60% by 2050. Yet, the EU's climate plan has a critical flaw: it is incomplete. The EU's regulations would only reduce emissions within Europe, whereas success on climate depends on Europe also taking steps to cut pollution outside of Europe as well.
To have any chance of reaching the 60% goal, EU must negotiate and finance partnerships to cut pollution in the developing world too.
The EU hopes that by leading at home it will inspire other nations to do the same. That strategy may work to a point. But unfortunately the domestic-only climate policy cannot succeed - the numbers won't add up.
The domestic emissions cuts that the EU and other major economies are expected to pledge unilaterally by Paris, even if fully implemented, would deliver at most half of the pollution reduction needed through 2030 to keep global warming to 2C - the level nations and scientists have agreed is necessary to avoid unmanageable risks of climate catastrophe. Unilateral pledges in the Paris agreement alone would not create an emissions trajectory in line with a 60% global reduction by 2050.
One simple fix would be for all major economies to do more at home - but this is politically unrealistic in the near-term. China and the US, the two largest climate polluters, have already set their domestic carbon pledges and are not likely to change them this year. Even the EU may lack the political will to do more internally right now.
Fortunately, there's an affordable solution that does not depend on additional domestic action in these nations. Many developing nations - from Colombia to India and Indonesia - have an abundance of low-cost opportunities to cut climate pollution. Since 2005, for example, Brazil alone has cut more carbon pollution than the entire EU, simply by reducing deforestation in the Amazon. Massive forest conservation and restoration on a global scale holds great promise to help meet the 60% goal, as does building low-carbon cities, factories and power plants across the developing world.
While all nations should take climate action, one cannot expect developing nations to do more than their fair share: after all, they have done less to cause the problem and have fewer resources to stop it. A system that depends solely on unilateral, self-financed pollution targets by all nations is bound to fall short, with developing nations cutting emissions far less than the optimal amount.
If the world could find a way to truly work together, the potential for progress would become enormous. A new breed of international climate partnerships that supplement, rather than replace, unilateral climate action could accomplish great things. They could virtually eliminate tropical deforestation and phase-down climate super-pollutants known as HFCs, while also doubling down on progress in emerging economies on energy efficiency and renewable energy.
Europe must lead the way towards this collaborative approach before Paris. In addition to internal EU pollution cuts, Europe should pledge to enter into bilateral and multilateral partnerships to reduce at least one billion tonnes of CO2 per year outside the EU, starting no later than 2020.
Helping poor and emerging economies pursue climate-smart development would cost a fraction of large additional carbon cuts within the EU. Accelerating climate action in these emerging nations would not only deliver tremendous local development benefits, but would also create jobs in Europe by expanding markets for EU companies.
The EU should challenge the US, Japan and other developed countries to make comparable international carbon pledges. As host of the G7, chancellor Angela Merkel is in a unique position to put this proposal to her peers at a leaders' summit in Germany this June. Negotiating pollution reduction partnerships with developing nations is the type of action that president Obama could pursue using his foreign policy powers and other existing legal authorities, without the recalcitrant Congress. Japan's prime minister Shinzo Abe is looking for new ways to lead on climate change internationally following the Fukushima nuclear disaster, which has made reducing Japan's emissions more difficult.
Last year the EU took a half step toward this type of collaborative climate policy. In September 2014, at the UN climate summit, the EU endorsed the New York Declaration on Forests, which committed the EU and other developed countries to put in place large-scale economic incentives to eliminate natural forest loss globally by 2030.
Making good on that promise and spreading it to other economic sectors this year would remove the two largest obstacles to forging a strong global climate pact in Paris. Currently, vulnerable African and island nations are ambivalent about the emerging Paris agreement because it may not do enough to reduce climate pollution or spur economic investment in those nations.
Strong pledges from the EU and other developed nations to reduce climate pollution outside their borders would address those concerns and seal an ambitious climate deal in Paris.
LOAD-DATE: February 27, 2015
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
JOURNAL-CODE: WEBGNS
Copyright 2015 The Guardian, a division of Transcontinental Media Group Inc.
All Rights Reserved
187 of 500 DOCUMENTS
The Guardian
February 27, 2015 Friday 12:50 PM GMT
What happened to the lobbyists who tried to reshape the US view of climate change?;
In 1998 major fossil fuel companies put $2m behind a plan that would effectively fuel the fires of climate science scepticism among the American public. We reveal where the 12 people behind that plan are now
BYLINE: Graham Readfearn
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 2457 words
In early 1998, some of the biggest fossil fuel companies in the world were hatching a plan to hijack the science of human-caused global warming.
Representatives from major fossil fuel corporations and industry groups had joined forces with operatives from major conservative think tanks and public relations experts to draft what they called their Global Climate Science Communications (GCSC) plan.
In a memo the plan boldly declared its goal would be to convince "a majority of the American public" that "significant uncertainties exist in climate science".
Earlier this week it was revealed that major US coal utility Southern Company had paid scientist Dr Willie Soon, an aerospace engineer based at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, more than $400,000 in recent years for science research.
Related: Work of prominent climate change denier was funded by energy industry
In total, Soon had received more than a million dollars from Southern Company, Exxon and the American Petroleum Institute in the last 14 years. These three key funders of Soon's work were also involved in formulating the GCSC plan.
Soon is a popular and oft-cited scientist within climate science denialist circles and claims the sun is the key driver of climate change with fossil fuels playing a minimal role.
But climate scientists have repeatedly dismissed his views, which are at odds with science academies around the world. Soon has previously stated that his fossil fuel funding does not influence his scientific work.
One of Soon's contacts at Southern Company was the now retired Robert Gehri, one of the original dozen people behind the plan.
The plan was developed during the early months of 1998, which went on to be declared the hottest on record by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
A study has found that in the scientific literature published in 1998 there were 96 papers on global warming that agreed that humans were the main cause, versus only three that disagreed.
The goals of the fossil fuel industry's plan were clear, ambitious and well articulated. Gehri told the Guardian the plan was "never implemented" but analysis for this report suggests many of the suggested tactics were rolled out in subsequent years.
With an overall budget of $2m (£1.3m) the plan would look to reshape the view of climate change science among the public and policy makers in a way that would favour the industries that stood to lose the most from regulations limiting greenhouse gas emissions.
The investigation published here, with support from DeSmogBlog and the Climate Investigations Center (CIC), finds many of those involved are still trying to convince politicians, legislators and the public that the science is faulty or can be largely ignored.
Kert Davies, a former Greenpeace researcher and founder of CIC, said: "We now have evidence through the Willie Soon documents that ExxonMobil, Southern Company and the American Petroleum Institute, who were in the room in 1998, carried on with elements of the plan, even after it was leaked and on the front page of the New York Times.
"The 1998 plan is very detailed and talks about moving money to support this campaign through free-market anti-regulation NGOs like the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec). It names multiple front groups and organisations which we know ExxonMobil and the Koch Foundations supported and still support.
"Impacting the voice of elected officials was a key target under the 'Victory will be achieved' section of the memo. Now in the US, about half our elected officials are climate deniers or are scared to even talk about the subject, so the impact of this 1998 campaign and subsequent misinformation campaigns around climate science is still clearly holding us back from climate policy solutions."
So what of the 12 members of the team who wanted to reshape the world's perception of the risks of human-caused climate change?
Robert Gehri
Then: Gehri was a research specialist at Southern Company, a major US coal electricity utility company. In November 1998, Gehri was listed as an observer at the UN climate change negotiations in Buenos Aires on the delegation of the Climate Council, a group fronted by the late Don Pearlman, once described as " the high priest of the carbon club " for his alliances with oil-producing countries at climate change negotiations.
Now: Gehri took on a new role at Southern Company as a "climate change issues manager" after 1998. Gehri was listed as an attendee at UN climate change negotiations in 2005 in Montreal, 2006 in Germany, 2007 in Indonesia, 2008 in Poland, and 2009 in Germany and his attendance was always as part of a delegation from the Edison Electric Institute, an association representing US investor-owned electricity utility companies.
Documents released from the Smithsonian Astrophysical Laboratory show that in 2008 Gehri was the Southern Company director responsible for negotiating a $60,000 grant to the laboratory to pay for research by climate sceptic scientist Dr Willie Soon.
Gehri told The Guardian: "I vaguely remember the story but the plan was never implemented and I believe most everyone associated with that has long since retired. I retired six years ago and really have no opinion on that story anymore. I'm retired and I don't comment on that stuff - it was 20 years ago and there's really no point."
David Rothbard
Then: Rothbard was co-founder and president of the climate denial group Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (Cfact).
Now: Rothbard is still Cfact's president. In June 2014, he wrote that president Barack Obama's regulations calling for cuts to emissions from power plants to help slow climate change were based on "nothing but assumptions, faulty computer models and outright falsifications". Cfact continues its campaign of climate science denial to this day, most recently giving a presentation at the 2014 Alec annual meeting with handouts titled "Climate Change Talking Points 2014" (Alec is also named in the 1998 memo as a "potential fund allocator".)
Emails to Cfact and Rothbard went unanswered.
Myron Ebell
Then: Ebell was a policy director at Frontiers of Freedom working on property rights, the Endangered Species Act, federal lands policies and global warming.
Now: Ebell is the director of energy and global warming policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and continues to be a prominent global warming sceptic, appearing as a pundit on US television networks and writing media columns. In December 2014 Ebell reportedly claimed delegates from poorer nations were motivated to attend UN climate talks for the daily payments and the chance to take their wives to nice locations.
Emails to Ebell and the CEI went unanswered.
John Adams
Then: Former journalist John Adams was the founder of John Adams Associates, a Washington-based public relations firm. In the early 1970s, Adams was public affairs director in president Richard Nixon's price commission. According to his archived company profile, Adams also worked as a documentary writer and news producer at CBC and ABC and had worked with legendary broadcaster Walter Cronkite. In 2008, Adams' firm merged with Kellen Company.
John Adams died in December 2012.
Jeffrey Salmon
Then: Salmon was executive director at the George C Marshall Institute think tank, serving there between 1991 and 2001. Before joining the institute, Salmon had been a senior speechwriter for Dick Cheney during his tenure as defense secretary.
Now: Three years after being part of the GCSC team, Salmon joined the US Department of Energy. He is currently d eputy director of resource management in the department.
Emails to the department for the attention of Salmon went unanswered.
Lee Garrigan
Then: Garrigan was affiliated with the Environmental Issues Council. The now defunct EIC was formed in 1993 by a number of trade associations "who saw the need to explore common sense solutions to widely-debated environmental problems".
Those associations included the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, American Pulpwood Association and the Independent Petroleum Association of America.
Now: Garrigan went on to work at the Environmental Council of the States, a "non-partisan association of state and territorial environmental agency leaders". Ms Garrigan no longer works at ECOS.
The Guardian contacted Garrigan but she declined to comment on the record. The Guardian understands her role in the plan was minimal.
Joseph L Walker
Then: Joe Walker was a public relations consultant working on behalf of the American Petroleum Institute. Walker had a co-ordinating role with the group.
Now: Walker went on to establish his own public relations consultancy, with clients from the chemical and plastics industries. These included the American Chemistry Council, the Chlorine Institute and the Formaldehyde Council. A blog post written by Walker in November 2014 suggests he continues to work in public relations.
Emails to Walker asking about his role in the GCSC plan went unanswered.
Sharon Kneiss
Then: Kneiss was federal relations manager for oil and gas company Chevron Corp. In 1999, Kneiss represented Chevron at a Washington business meeting to discuss the United Nations Clean Development Mechanism, where she was discussing how Chevron was hopeful that a West African gas pipeline project may qualify for carbon reduction credits. Kneiss also represented Chevron at that year's major UN climate conference in Bonn, Germany.
Now: Kneiss is now the President and CEO of the National Waste and Recycling Association (NWRA), after stints at the American Chemistry Council, American Forest and Paper Association and American Petroleum Institute.
The NWRA's climate change web page says there has been "a significant increase in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases" in the last two decades, and that: "Scientific consensus is clear: these emissions are making the earth warmer in an unusually fast time period."
Kneiss told The Guardian: "At the time, I worked for Chevron and we took a constructive approach to the climate issue. While the debate on climate continued, we looked at viable opportunities to mitigate any impacts."
She said Chevron had worked with developing country representatives and sponsored workshops to discuss carbon reduction schemes.
She added: "I attended the first meeting that Joe Walker called concerning the development of his plan. We chose not to participate with that effort."
Steve Milloy
Then: A year earlier in March 1997, Milloy became the executive director of the tobacco-industry front group The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition.
Now: Milloy has continued to describe the science linking fossil fuel emissions and climate change as "junk". Milloy is now the director of external policy and strategy at Murray Energy Corporation, the largest privately-held coal company in the US. In a speech last year, Milloy said US energy policies to cut greenhouse gas emissions from power stations were based on "eco myths and junk science".
Emails to Milloy and Murray Energy went unanswered. The Guardian received a response to the email addressed to Mr Milloy from Lord Christopher Monckton, a prominent climate science sceptic, who said it was "untrue" and "statistically meaningless" to claim the 15 hottest years on record had occurred from 1998 onwards.
Lynn Bouchey
Then: Bouchey, also known as L Francis Bouchey, was the director of a project known as Citizens for Sound Science and the Environment, based at the think tank Frontiers of Freedom. The think tank was founded by former Republican senator Malcolm Wallop. At the time the project was attacking the UN Kyoto climate treaty and casting doubt on the risks of human-caused climate change.
Now: In 2001, Sourcewatch reports that Bouchey, Wallop and Frontiers of Freedom ran an " eco-terrorism" propaganda campaign against Rainforest Action Network (RAN), Greenpeace and other groups, eventually petitioning the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to revoke RAN's non-profit tax status.
In 2004 Bouchey joined oil company Shell where, according to his LinkedIn profile, he worked in "government relations and community relations". US government lobby registers show Bouchey listed as a lobbyist for Shell between 2005 and 2007. Bouchey's online profile says he is retired.
The Guardian was unable to locate contact details for Bouchey.
Peter Cleary
Then: Cleary was the communications manager at Americans for Tax Reform, a think tank founded by influential conservative Grover Norquist.
Now: In October 2000 Cleary j oined the trade group Grocery Manufacturers of America (now renamed the Grocery Manufacturers Association) as manager, public policy communications.
In 2003 Cleary was named deputy director of the American Conservative Union with a role to organise the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) conference. The Guardian was unable to find further information about Mr Cleary or make contact with him.
Randy Randol
Then: Randol was the senior environmental advisor for Exxon Corporation, based in Washington DC. Randol, also known as Arthur G Randol III, had worked for the corporation since 1979.
Now: Randol is now listed as the president of the American Energy Freedom Center.
In 2001, Randol lobbied the Bush administration to pressure the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to replace its chair Robert Watson, who Randol said had a "personal agenda". Randol also recommended the Bush administration replace "Clinton/Gore carry-overs" who had "aggressive agendas" with sceptical scientists Richard Lindzen and John Christy. Randol retired from Exxon in 2003. He still works as an advisor in the energy industry.
He has contributed to reports on energy policy for the National Coal Council and Business Roundtable. He represents Peabody Energy on the Southern States Energy Board and is an advisor to oil and gas developer Green Century Resources. In January 2015, Randol was reportedly acting as a consultant for the Virginia Tea Party Patriots Federation speaking against a president Obama plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power stations.
Emails to Randol went unanswered.
· There was a 13th person identified in the pages of the leaked memo, but they later said they had been incorrectly identified.
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The Guardian
February 27, 2015 Friday 10:15 AM GMT
World should not rush to judge Paris climate deal, says top US negotiator;
Todd Stern says failure to produce a significant deal at UN climate change summit would be damaging but 'I don't think that's going to happen'
BYLINE: Fiona Harvey
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 600 words
The world should not rush to judgment on the outcome of the Paris talks on climate change later this year, president Obama's chief climate change official has warned, as it would take a few years for the effects to become apparent.
Declaring the talks a success or failure too soon would be a distortion, said Todd Stern, US envoy for climate change and the country's lead negotiator in the UN talks. "We will not know in 2015," he said. "The rush to judgment, that this [agreement] does not do enough [for example], is not the way to think about this."
He said that the process from Paris would not be a "one-off" agreement, but the first in a series of deals that would carry on after 2020, with countries "ratcheting up" their commitments to cut emissions in subsequent years, as the effects of the first targets became apparent.
Governments will meet in Paris in December to thrash out a new global agreement on greenhouse gas emissions, to take effect from 2020, when current international commitments on carbon run out.
Though he did not explicitly make the comparison, Stern's warning recalled the outcome of the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009, when some groups and much of the media following them immediately branded the meeting a failure.
That label stuck and has deeply affected public perception of the negotiation process, even though Copenhagen in fact produced a historic deal by which developed and developing countries for the first time jointly agreed to cuts or curbs on their emissions.
Stern said "solid progress" had been made already in the lead-up to this year's crunch negotiations. The US jointly announced with China last November its targets for beyond 2020. China will cause its emissions to peak by 2030 at the latest, while the US will cut emissions by 25% to 28%, relative to 2005 levels, by 2025.
The EU has also set its post-2020 target, of cutting emissions by 40% relative to 1990 levels by 2030. Other major economies are expected to come forward with targets, to cut emissions in the case of developed countries and to curb their growth in the case of many developing nations, this April. After that, they will be scrutinised by the UN and other countries to ensure they are adequate and fair, before the Paris talks begin in December.
Alongside the vital issue of emissions targets, the Paris talks will focus on how to provide financial assistance to poorer countries, to help them tackle emissions and to cope with the effects of climate change. Stern was upbeat on this. At Copenhagen, developed countries promised that by 2020 at least $100bn a year would be flowing to developing countries for these aims.
To date, about $35bn to $45bn a year is flowing in this way from public origins, Stern said. This includes money from development banks, such as the World Bank, which are ultimately funded by the industrialised world, and other publicly-funded financial institutions. But that figure does not include money from the private sector which has been matched, mobilised or leveraged by public funds, so if these sources are included the number is likely to be much greater.
Stern agreed that if the talks failed to produce a significant deal, it would be damaging for the UN process. "With as much teed up as is teed up now, if the thing really were to not get over the finish line, I think that would be a consequential thing for the UN. But I don't think that's going to happen."
His opinion echoed that of Connie Hedegaard, the outgoing EU climate chief, when she told the Guardian last year that failure in Paris would effectively be the end of the UN process.
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The Guardian
February 27, 2015 Friday 6:37 AM GMT
State and federal governments agree to crack down on air pollution;
Tougher standards on emissions and a national clean air agreement could help reduce healthcare costs by billions of dollars
BYLINE: Oliver Milman
SECTION: AUSTRALIA NEWS
LENGTH: 772 words
The federal and state governments have agreed to work together to improve air quality standards and help Australia adapt to the effects of climate change.
After a meeting on Thursday, environment ministers released a discussion paper for a national clean air agreement proposing stronger air quality standards for sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and ozone, tackling the release of mercury into the environment and curbing shipping emissions.
While the paper stressed that Australia's air quality is "very good" compared with the rest of the world, the health costs of air pollution cost the country up to $24.3bn a year. Around 2.2% of hospital emissions for children aged under 14 with respiratory problems are due to PM10, a type of particulate released by burning fuels.
There will also be a review of fuel quality standards and measures to control emissions from wood heaters and non-road spark ignition engines. The exact level of these standards has yet to be thrashed out by the governments.
A climate change adaption working group has been established, to be chaired by Lisa Neville, Victoria's environment minister. The group, which will involve all the states, will work on issues such as water management and renewable energy opportunities.
The inclusion of sulphur dioxide (SO2) in the review has been welcomed by some residents in the Victorian town of Anglesea, who have fought a lengthy campaign against the Alcoa coal mine and power plant, which sits just 1km from a primary school.
Surf Coast Air Action, a community environment group, claims that residents are at risk from the 39,000 tonnes of SO2 pumped out by the plant, citing evidence that it worsens asthma and contributes to heart and lung diseases.
"It's good news that slowly but surely it's being recognised that current standards do not protect human health," said Dr Jacinta Morahan, of the air action group. Morahan removed her own children from the school that sits next to the mine.
" I think [federal environment minister] Greg Hunt is to be commended for including SO2. It's a real risk to people and there is community concern here about its impact, as well as the coal dust. At the moment, Alcoa can just say they are meeting the standards so nothing changes."
Federal Liberal MP Sarah Henderson, whose electorate includes Anglesea, told Guardian Australia she had lobbied Hunt to include the review of SO2.
"My job is to be a strong advocate for the communities I represent and there's no doubt there's strong concern about Alcoa's power plant," said Henderson, who describes herself as a "strong environmentalist."
"I've been very disappointed that Alcoa haven't invested in sulphur dioxide scrubbers.
"If we had our time again, the Anglesea coal fired power station would not be built where it is. Developing a coal mine in a pristine part of the world is not a decision governments would make these days."
Neville said there was "room for improvement" in air quality measures but that there needed to be a national agreement rather than the states going it alone.
"We need a nationally consistent approach to provide certainty to everyone," she told Guardian Australia.
Neville said while many of the states disagreed with the federal government on its climate change policies, the election of a new Labor government in Queensland provides "whole new options on what we can be doing together to tackle climate change."
Other matters discussed include the phasing out of microplastics that harm the marine environment and also the banning of non-biodegradable plastic bags.
New South Wales has already committed to reducing microplastics use as well as to establish a deposit scheme by July 2017 for the recycling of beer bottles and other containers.
"The banning of only lightweight bags may not be effective in reducing the total volume of plastic bags washing into our oceans, rivers and waterways," said NSW environment minister Rob Stokes.
"An effective approach must also be to reduce heavy plastic bags. It must not drive up consumption of so-called degradable bags, that instead break down into small pieces and become micro-plastics in the food chain rather than completely degrading."
Hunt said there had been "remarkable cooperation" between the federal government and the states and territories to implement the national clean air agreement by July 2016.
"Australian cities have very good air quality by world standards but it could be better, and over the coming decades as population grows, we need to make sure that our air quality improves, that we reduce particulates, reduce sulphur dioxide," he said.
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The Guardian
February 27, 2015 Friday 6:30 AM GMT
The EU's plan for an energy union would call Vladimir Putin's bluff;
A pan-European energy alliance would help deal with Russia, strengthen Europe strategically, and allow us to tackle climate change
BYLINE: Natalie Nougayrède
SECTION: COMMENT IS FREE
LENGTH: 1057 words
How many of us, as European citizens, turn on the gas to cook something and reflect that we are part of an enormous geopolitical and environmental picture? But we are. Europe's energy dilemmas go back to the 1970s and 80s, when decisions were made to build huge gas infrastructure networks connecting the west of the continent to the Soviet Union's gas fields. At the time, US presidents Jimmy Carter and then Ronald Reagan expressed worries that such plans would place European allies under Moscow's sway. Fast forward to 2015 and the Ukrainian crisis: the latest message on Europe's need to find smart ways to use energy and wean itself off its dependency on Russia's Gazprom has just come from the European commission, with a new policy paper outlining ambitions for a European energy union.
One of the reasons Europe has been so ineffective in dealing with Vladimir Putin is that it never quite anticipated to what degree he would use the energy card to further Russia's nationalist goals. The question is: can Europe get it right now?
It's easy to understand why the proponents of an EU energy union would use slightly grandiose language to sell their ideas. They have cast this plan as the "most ambitious European energy project since the Coal and Steel Community" of the 1950s. After all, energy solidarity is what Europe was all about at the start. Having France and Germany share their coal and steel was seen, in the words of Robert Schuman, one of the founders of the European project, as the best way to "make war not only unthinkable but materially impossible". Peace and prosperity were to flow from regional integration.
Last year, war broke out in the country (Ukraine) through which most of Russia's energy exports transit on their way to many of our homes. A key feature of Putin's Ukraine strategy has been to make sure this country of transit would never quite escape Moscow's domination - and that Gazprom would never lose the possibility of directly controlling Ukraine's gas pipelines to Europe.
The Brussels commission is right to push for a new union. Energy should be, along with freedom of movement for people, goods and services, a key dimension of the EU. It would help in dealing with Russia's behaviour as well as in tackling climate change. It is of huge strategic importance. Yet it has not happened - so far - because it is so difficult to build politically, and it will be expensive.
Energy is run nationally - not at EU level - at present. Key countries, especially the UK, France and Germany, have their own views on how energy policy should be run, and they are all different. The UK has a deregulated market, many private players, and no dependency on Gazprom. France is highly centralised, with a handful of , state-controlled big players and 75% of electricity generated by nuclear power (which is anathema to the Germans). Germany dislikes nuclear energy and wants to get rid of it, preferring to burn coal if they run out of gas or renewables. And they have had historically good relations with Gazprom. Poland burns a lot of coal (it prefers that to Russian gas), but Poles also want to look for shale gas. They don't worry that much about greenhouse gases. The list goes on.
There is a disorderly patchwork of energy policies across Europe. But questions that have been important for years need to be re-addressed. It is too late to settle scores over who wrecked Europe's previous chances of setting up a common energy policy. But Germany does have a special responsibility here. Its large and powerful energy companies, E.ON and RWE, were the first in the early 2000s to carve out long-term contracts with Gazprom without much consultation with European partners. Later, Germany unilaterally signed up to Russia's North Stream pipeline which the Baltic states and Poland could only perceive as an attempt to pressure them geopolitically.
The new EU plan doesn't aim to dismantle such realities but is pragmatic enough to try to deal with some of Europe's obvious weaknesses. Because energy has been mostly a domestic issue there are very few, interconnecting pipelines and grids. The plan is to build more. This would allow compensation for energy cut offs - such as the ones that Russia created in 2006 and 2009, causing thousands of eastern European homes to be left without heating for weeks.
Another idea is to diversify energy supplies by working on a southern gas corridor linking Europe to Turkey and Central Asia, or by setting up liquified natural gas hubs in northern Europe that could act as back-up in case of another gas crisis with Russia.
The complexities are numerous. Some energy business insiders point out that negotiating with a Central Asian country such as Turkmenistan is like landing on another planet. One told me about a meeting with 30 Turkmen government officials sitting immobile behind long tables in the Hall of the Peoples of Turkmenistan's capital, who didn't say a word but just stared. Turkmenistan is a big gas producer whose operatives have been known to sell the same quantity of gas several times over to various buyers (Russians, Chinese, etc).
The story that gets less attention than Ukraine's military plight - or how Russia is yet again trying to strong arm it over gas payments - is that Gazprom is now clearly viewed as a security threat by just about everyone in Europe, including the Germans. For a few years now Gazprom has been getting a hard time from the EU, with antitrust proceedings on contracts and pricing clauses, dawn raids on their European offices and permits for some of their projects refused. A special anti-Gazprom clause was even included in a 2009 EU regulatory package that requires "unbundling" for the electricity and natural gas industry.
Gazprom, say some experts (perhaps optimistically), has few friends left in Europe - except maybe in Viktor Orban's Hungary, but they won't count much in the big picture.
If it negotiates as one bloc, Europe will not only be strategically stronger, but also in a better position to set an example on fulfilling its climate goals. The best way, for example, to encourage Poland to cut down on its use of coal is to ensure that its gas needs will not be subjected to external blackmailing. After all the criticism that has been aimed at EU institutions, the latest plan from Brussels deserves support.
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The Guardian
February 27, 2015 Friday 1:09 AM GMT
Investors ask oil companies to disclose refineries' risks from climate change;
Shareholders ask the five largest US oil companies - Valero, Exxon Mobil, Marathon Petroleum, Phillips 66 and Chevron - to disclose the risks their operations and facilities face from rising sea levels and storm surges
BYLINE: Siri Srinivas
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 1264 words
Investors and nonprofits on Thursday asked the five largest US oil companies to disclose risks to their facilities from climate change.
In letters signed by Calvert Investments, Pax World Management, Walden Asset Management and other investors, as well as nonprofit advocates Ceres and the Union of Concerned Scientists, the groups express concern about "the lack of public disclosure of physical risks due to climate change", such as from storms and flooding.
The letters are tied to a report, released by scientific advocacy group the Union of Concerned Scientists on Wednesday, that concluded that coastal refineries owned by each of the companies - Valero, Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Marathon Petroleum and Phillips 66 - are in danger of potentially costly disruptions due to rising sea levels and storms.
"To be clear, oil companies are going to suffer from climate change too, and they're not doing enough to disclose that to investors," said UCS's Gretchen Goldman, lead analyst at the Center for Science and Democracy and the author of the report.
'Really in the end, the industry is damned if it does and damned if it doesn't when it comes to climate change.'
Andrew Logan, director of Ceres' carbon asset risk program
"Refineries have low profit margins and are situated on vulnerable coastal locations. Any disruptions in refining operations could have material impact on companies' cash flows."
The US has 120 oil and gas facilities within 10 ft of the high-tide line, Goldman said.
According to the report, which used storm surge modeling and geospatial data to map risks of flooding at coastal refineries in low-lying areas, Valero's Meraux refinery in Louisiana faces the starkest physical risk among the refineries studied.
With forecasts that sea levels in the Gulf of Mexico could rise 3-4 ft (about 1 meter) by the end of the century, parts of the refinery are likely to be inundated by 2050, Goldman said.
That's not even including the risk from storms. Storm surges from hurricanes already have reached as high as 28 ft (8.5 meters). "Even today, a category 3 storm could put the facility under water," Goldman said.
The Meraux refinery, previously owned by Murphy Oil, suffered $330m in damages due to hurricane Katrina, noted Gabriel Thoumi, a senior sustainability analyst at Calvert Investments, which signed the letter to oil companies.
"For context, this is roughly the same amount of income Murphy reported a couple weeks ago for [the fourth quarter of 2014]," he said. "So if Murphy Oil, has a possible risk on its balanced sheet thats equivalent to its net income, we would like that risk to be disclosed. I think that's fair."
Oil companies have a plan
Companies had little to say in response to the report.
Related: As the single-cup coffee war heats up, a small rival hacks Keurig's machine
A Valero spokesperson told the Guardian that each of Valero's Gulf coast refineries "has a detailed hurricane response plan that goes into effect in June of each year and progresses as storms approach. Valero's refineries have excellent safety and reliability records."
A Chevron spokesperson said that the company recognized concerns related to climate change: "We disclose information about our efforts to address climate change risks and incorporate these risks into our business planning activities."
The other companies didn't respond to requests for comment by press time.
Oil companies may well be thinking about these risks, but - in their SEC filings anyway - they aren't talking about them with their shareholders, Goldman said.
"If they are thinking about it and they are acting on it, why not tell your shareholders and your investors that they are protecting these assets?" she said.
Of course, it's difficult to discuss protecting assets from climate change without talking about climate change. And even though public rhetoric has changed, oil companies have funded climate-change denial for decades: news came out last week that a prominent climate denier received $1.25m from oil companies over 14 years.
Climate change's bottom line
This isn't the first time NGOs and activist investors have tried to put a dollar amount on oil companies' climate change risks.
Related: A new study urges leaving fossil fuels in the ground. How will it affect business?
Economists, researchers and others have warned that oil companies' assets may end up being overvalued, if global climate talks limit emissions, which could put investors at significant financial risk. (A study published in the Nature journal in January concluded, along with previous research, that some 80% of fossil fuel reserves must be left in the ground if global temperature rise is to be kept under the agreed-upon goal of 2C.)
Under pressure from investors, Exxon Mobil in March agreed to report on the risks of its assets being "stranded", or unburnable, because of potential climate regulations. But in its report in April, the company wrote that it doesn't expect any of its fossil fuel reserves will be stranded. Meanwhile, in a shareholder letter in May, Shell said it doesn't believe any of its proven reserves will become stranded either.
Rising shareholder interest in assessing the impact of climate change on business has attracted the attention of corporate boards: the BP board earlier this month endorsed a shareholder proposal asking for more disclosure about climate risk, after the Shell board endorsed a similar proposal in January.
But the latest initiative is different because it asks companies to evaluate the potential financial impact of physical risks from climate change, such as flood damage to their refineries, instead of the political risks.
'We could incur increased expenses'
The moves comes after the US Securities and Exchange Commission in 2010 issued guidance suggesting that companies disclose climate change-related risks that might affect their bottom lines. But oil companies have largely ignored this guidance, which isn't legally required.
Of the companies studied in the report, only Phillips 66 has disclosed any physical climate risks in SEC filings, according to the report, which calls the Texas-based company's disclosures "poor".
In its 2014 filing, Phillips 66 stated: "To the extent there are significant changes in the Earth's climate, such as more severe or frequent weather conditions in the markets we serve or the areas where our assets reside, we could incur increased expenses, our operations could be materially impacted and demand for our products could fall."
And in its most recent earnings statement, filed last week, the company said climate change posed a serious potential risk to its business.
Will companies act?
None of the companies provided information on how they will prepare for these risks.
Related: Al Gore: oil companies 'use our atmosphere as an open sewer'
"Really in the end, the industry is damned if it does and damned if it doesn't when it comes to climate change," says Andrew Logan, director of sustainability advocate nonprofit Ceres' carbon asset risk program. "If oil companies continue along the business-as-usual path, they'll either be hit by demand risk and the rise of clean energy, or by the massive physical impact of climate change, or perhaps both."
Goldman's report recommends that the SEC push companies to follow its guidelines for disclosing climate change risks.
An SEC spokesperson said the guidelines aren't mandatory and aren't actively enforced by the SEC: "companies can use the guidance to assess their own facts and circumstances on this issue and provide disclosure to the extent material to investors".
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The New York Times Blogs
(First Draft)
February 27, 2015 Friday
Today in Politics
BYLINE: THE NEW YORK TIMES
SECTION: US; politics
LENGTH: 1543 words
HIGHLIGHT: Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Newt Gingrich and other big names on the right make their way to the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday.
Raucous Caucus: Day 1 at CPAC
Good Friday morning from Washington, where Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Newt Gingrich and other big names on the right make their way to the Conservative Political Action Conference, the Senate Judiciary Committee approves the nomination of Loretta E. Lynch as attorney general, the deadline to finance the Department of Homeland Security comes down to the wire and the administration has proposed banning the manufacture and sale of popular bullets used in AR-15 semiautomatic rifles. And there was a snowball fight on Capitol Hill led by Senator James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma.
There were laugh lines, standing ovations, jokes that fell flat, high-flying oratory and political barbs adroitly delivered - sometimes all in the same speech - as a parade of high-profile Republicans preached to the (usually) friendly audiences on Thursday at the Conservative Political Action Conference.
Not a few of the speakers are on the 2016 presidential shortlist, and here are three who left an impression:
Score One for Ted Cruz
The Texas senator urged the crowd to pay attention to which speakers had the records to back up their talk and which didn't, the clear implication being that he was among the few who did.
"I'm pretty confident you haven't seen any speakers come up yet to say, 'I'm a squishy moderate who stands for nothing,' " Mr. Cruz said.
Scott Walker Needs a New Opening Line
A current favorite among conservatives, the Wisconsin governor walked away from his speech with the hall ringing with cheers.
But that was after a stilted opening about his childhood.
"I loved reading about our founding fathers," he said to a suddenly silent audience. "They were like superheroes. Bigger than life."
Mr. Walker has faced criticism that he may be too dull to win the White House for the Republicans. He's trying to shed that image, but he may need some pointers on how to get off to a more rousing start.
Chris Christie Lives Up to His Reputation
He denounced elites, The New York Times and his critics back home.
And the New Jersey governor was not reluctant to give himself a pat on the back, saying he was one politician who refused to wait on the prevailing winds before making a decision.
"I don't have political consultants whispering in my ear," he said, who dictate his actions.
CPAC Today: Reagan and 'What You Need to Know' About Clinton
It's another day of big names at the Conservative Political Action Conference: Bush, Gingrich, Hannity, Norquist, Paul, Perry, Rubio, Reagan, Clinton.
Reagan? Clinton?
One of them is dead (the former president), and the other will certainly not be there (the former first lady, senator and secretary of state), but Hillary Rodham Clinton will be on a lot of conservative minds during Friday night's Ronald Reagan Dinner (on the heels of the Ronald Reagan Reception.)
That's because "Hillary: The Movie" is scheduled to be screened during dinner. It's more than just a conservative takedown of Mrs. Clinton; the movie is, in itself, celebrated among Republicans for the role it played in the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision that eased restrictions on campaign contributions. (In brief: The film was produced by Citizens United, which filed suit after the Federal Communications Commission refused to allow its broadcast as "electioneering communication.")
The CPAC agenda describes the 2008 documentary's anti-Clinton content this way: "Everything you've forgotten, and what you need to know."
- Steve Kenny
The Chair Recognizes the Senator With the Snowball
Senator James M. Inhofe took a snowball onto the Senate floor on Thursday, and the predictable happened: A snowball fight broke out.
Mr. Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican who is well known for denying that humans play a role in climate change, offered the well-packed snowball as Exhibit A in his case against the "hysteria" of global warming.
"It is very, very cold out," said Mr. Inhofe, chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. "Very unseasonal."
Mr. Inhofe's science project quickly touched off a blizzard of criticism on Twitter and from Democrats who said the lawmaker wasn't snowing anyone.
Senator Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, noted the freakish weather that has battered his state (about 100 inches of snow) and attributed it to a winter "supercharged" by climate change.
And Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, noted that virtually every major American scientific organization had judged man-made climate change to be reality.
You can believe them, he said, "or you can believe the senator with a snowball."
- Carl Hulse
What We're Watching Today
The Senate again considers the Department of Homeland Security financing bill.
President Obama meets with President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia to discuss the Ebola crisis.
With his nominee for attorney general moving through the confirmation process, President Obama will speak at a Justice Department ceremony to commemorate the tenure of the current attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr. Mr. Holder's official portrait will also be unveiled.
The State Department hosts a second round of talks on new diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba.
The Commerce Department releases fourth-quarter gross domestic product numbers.
At CPAC: Dueling Digital Cameras at 20 Paces
Who watches the watchmen? Well, it turns out, other watchmen.
At the Conservative Political Action Conference's Activism Boot Camp, the opposition research firm America Rising hosted a seminar titled "We're Watching You: How to Video Track 24/7."
Aaron Baer , the vice president of tracking at America Rising, offered tips on blending in ("Walk in like you belong"), using your cellphone for tracking ("hold it horizontally!") and landing a silver-bullet soundbite ("it's great and wonderful to have that moment," but don't go out of your way to hunt for it).
But sitting in the back corner, tripod and camera in hand, was a tracker from American Bridge, an opposition research firm on the left.
Mr. Baer quickly noticed and dispatched his tracker on hand, Ryan Powers, to tape the tracker in the back row.
For a solid minute, the two trackers aimed their cameras at each other, a Wild West standoff for the digital age, before Mr. Powers holstered his camera and sat down.
The meeting went on with no shots fired, no slips or gotchas, save from a few asides from Mr. Baer about the trackers' presence in the room. But he thanked them at the end.
"They've been perfect gentlemen," he said.
- Nick Corasaniti
Our Favorites From Today's Times
President Obama's administration has proposed banning the manufacture and sale of one of the most popular bullets used in AR-15 semiautomatic rifles.
Congressional Republicans warn District of Columbia officials that if they move forward on the legalization of marijuana, it will be at their "own peril."
The Pentagon is seeking national security ideas from Silicon Valley companies not because they have experience in defense policy but because they don't.
It looks like the debate over Homeland Security financing (and the president's immigration actions) will be delayed for three weeks.
The president will send Susan E. Rice, his national security adviser, and Samantha Power, his envoy to the United Nations, to speak to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee next week.
The Whitney Plantation in Wallace, La., has been turned into a museum dedicated to telling the story of slavery - the first of its kind in the United States.
Jay Carney, who resigned as the president's chief spokesman last spring, is joining Amazon as senior vice president for global corporate affairs.
Geography 101: Or, How Our Readers Are Right
Our readers are very smart - a lot smarter than we are - as they proved again on Thursday.
In the introduction to our last newsletter, we blithely mentioned that the Conservative Political Action Conference was being held "across the Potomac" from Washington.
The gathering is at National Harbor, Md.
Maryland is on the same side of the Potomac as the nation's capital. A lot of you noticed our confusion.
As one reader wrote: "Nowhere does the Potomac separate DC from Maryland. It does, however, keep us Virginians safely distant from the other two."
What We're Ready Elsewhere
Eric Cantor, the former House majority leader, is re-emerging as a political and fund-raising force in Washington after his humiliating defeat in a Republican primary last year, Politico reports.
Hillary Rodham Clinton is having an identity crisis, Jonah Goldberg writes in National Review. He adds: "Which is why the Hillary Industrial Complex is setting up a Manhattan Project to answer the question, 'Who should Hillary be this time?' "
It has been 75 days since the United States has suffered a combat-zone death among its armed forces. That's the the longest stretch without such a fatality since Sept. 11, 2001, according to The Washington Post.
The Center for American Progress breaks down the the "demographic evolution of the American electorate" from 1974 through 2060.
The Guardian tracks down more of Bill O'Reilly's former colleagues who dispute claims about his reporting.
Catwoman is coming out as a bisexual, The Hollywood Reporter says.
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The Guardian
February 26, 2015 Thursday 10:56 PM GMT
Republican Senate environment chief uses snowball as prop in climate rant;
Senator James Inhofe, who has famously claimed global warming is a hoax, wields snowball on Senate floor to in stunt against climate change evidence
BYLINE: Nicky Woolf in Washington
SECTION: US NEWS
LENGTH: 297 words
James Inhofe, the US senator who famously claimed that global warming was "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people", attempted to underscore his climate denial on the Senate floor Thursday by brandishing a snowball.
"I ask the chair: do you know what this is? It's a snowball," said Inhofe, hefting the icy globe in his right hand, before tossing it at a Senate page.
The snowball stunt was part of a rambling speech to America's most august deliberative body in which, among other points, Inhofe took aim at evidence by scientists that 2014 was the warmest year on record due to climate change. ( According to detailed research Nasa and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, two of the top bodies of government scientists, it was.)
In 2010, during another record-breaking snowstorm, Inhofe and his grandchildren built an igloo near the Capitol building in Washington, affixing signs to it that said "Al Gore's New Home" and "Honk If You Love Global Warming".
Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma, is chair of the Senate environment committee.
"I think it's lovely that Senator Inhofe enjoys the winter weather so much," said Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist and director of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. "I'm a winter sports fan myself. But there's a big difference between people playing with the snow, and global climate change."
Schmidt told the Guardian that, despite Senator Inhofe's views, 2014 had indisputably been the warmest year on record, and January 2015 had been one of the warmest Januaries on record.
"Europe was toasty warm. Alaska was toasty warm. Australia was toasty warm. All these things cancel out the fact that it happens to be cold in Washington DC this week," he said.
Inhofe's office could not be reached for comment.
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The Guardian
February 26, 2015 Thursday 7:20 PM GMT
Global warming slowdown probably due to natural cycles, study finds;
Manmade warming in past decade has likely been offset by cooling from natural cycles in the Pacific and Atlantic - but effect will reverse in coming decades
BYLINE: Adam Vaughan
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 677 words
Manmade global warming over the past decade has probably been partly offset by the cooling effect of natural variability in the Earth's climate system, a team of climate researchers have concluded.
The finding could help explain the slowdown in temperature rises this century that climate sceptics have seized on as evidence climate change has stopped, even though 14 of the 15 hottest years on record have happened since 2000.
The authors of the new paper describe the slowdown, sometimes called a global warming hiatus or pause, as a "false pause". They warn that the natural cycles in the Pacific and Atlantic that they found are currently having an overall cooling effect on temperatures will reverse in the coming decades - at which point warming will accelerate again.
"It [the new paper] has important implications for understanding the slowdown," said Byron A Steinman, the lead author of the study, which was published in the journal Science on Thursday.
"I think probably the biggest thing that people should understand is there is randomness in the climate system. The recent slowdown in no way invalidates the idea that continued burning of fossil fuels will increase Earth's surface temperature and pose a substantial burdens on human society," Steinman told the Guardian.
The slowdown in no way invalidates that the burning of fossil fuels will increase Earth's surface temperature.
Byron A Steinman, lead author of the study
The research looked at two long-term climate phenomenon that play a key role in global temperatures, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation. The authors worked to strip out 'external forces' on those oscillations, such as volcanoes and the burning of fossil fuels, to work out how much they varied naturally, or internally.
Such natural variability is likely to have had a substantial influence over the span of several decades on temperatures in the northern hemisphere, they concluded, of up to 0.15C in a warming or cooling effect - and in recent years it has been a cooling one.
"We find that internal multidecadal variability in northern hemisphere temperatures, rather than having contributed to recent warming, likely offset anthropogenic warming over the past decade," the authors write.
Michael E Mann, one of the co-authors, blogged that : "Our conclusion that natural cooling in the Pacific is a principal contributor to the recent slowdown in large-scale warming is consistent with some other recent studies, including a study I commented on previously showing that stronger-than-normal winds in the tropical Pacific during the past decade have lead to increased upwelling of cold deep water in the eastern equatorial Pacific".
Steinman said the new work was a substantial step forward and employed state-of-the-art climate models that previous studies on the subject had not used.
But the paper warned that the natural cycles are likely to reverse in coming years, adding to manmade warming in the coming decades. "When that trend reverses, that will then add to warming, so warming will accelerate," said Steinman. He added that it was difficult to say exactly when in the next few decades that would happen.
Mann wrote on the RealClimate blog that such an acceleration "is perhaps the most worrying implication of our study, for it implies that the 'false pause' may simply have been a cause for false complacency, when it comes to averting dangerous climate change".
Ben Booth, a scientist at the Met Office who was not involved in the study, said that the new work provided a more nuanced picture of the role natural cycles play in the climate. "What this result shows is that on a decadal time scale, the variability in the oceans can have an important role to play in dampening warming," he told the Guardian.
"The results support the conclusion that cool Pacific temperatures have played a key role in modulating atmospheric temperature increases in the past 10 years, only partially offset by modest warming in the Atlantic," he wrote in a commentary also published in Science.
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The Guardian
February 26, 2015 Thursday 4:53 PM GMT
Met backs down on refusal to police climate and women's marches;
Scotland Yard reverses earlier decision not to police Time to Act and Million Women Rise marches, after criticism from campaigners and Boris Johnson
BYLINE: Karl Mathiesen
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 624 words
The London Metropolitan Police have backed down on their refusal to police two protest marches next month after criticism from campaigners and London mayor Boris Johnson.
But the police maintained that protesters have no ongoing right to assistance from Scotland Yard and future protests remain in doubt.
The Met had previously told organisers from the Campaign against Climate Change (CACC) and Million Women Rise (MWR) that they would have to hire a private firm to organise traffic management, road closures, barriers and stewards for two separate protests on 7 March. Protest groups said the move amounted to an assault on the right to protest.
Related: Climate change marchers told to hire private security firm
On Wednesday the Met told CACC that they would facilitate their protest in the same way they have in the past.
"An agreement was reached with the organisers to ensure that the event will take place. They have agreed to provide stewards for the event, traffic authorities have agreed to write a temporary traffic regulation order to facilitate road closures," said a police statement. The Guardian understands that the MWR march has also been cleared by the Met.
The Met said the u-turn did not represent a change in policy and managing protests fell "beyond our policing responsibility". Future marches will have to negotiate with the police in order to secure their services.
The Met cited budgetary constraints for its original decision to cease its support for protesters.
The move attracted criticism from campaigners, politicians and legal experts. More than 60,000 people signed an online Avaaz campaign calling on the Met to reverse their policy and twelve campaign groups told the Met that they refused to pay private firms to manage protests. The CACC and MWR said they had received indications from traffic management companies that their involvement would cost several thousands of pounds.
Lindsay Alderton, an organiser for the CACC said: "We were deeply alarmed to find ourselves, two months before an election, at risk of not being able to express these basic democratic rights at our protest on 7 March. The privitisation of protest would have veered dangerously towards a situation where only those with money would be able to pay for the privilege."
Under questioning from Greens London Assembly member Jenny Jones, Mayor Johnson said on Monday he did not agree with the Met's stance and he was trying to talk them down.
"I'm in discussion with the Met about that. And for your guidance and the assembly's guidance, I'm very much of the view that the police do a fantastic job of managing about 5,000 protests of one kind or another every year. I think it's important that they should continue to do so."
He said the withdrawal of police from peaceful marches may encourage "the opposite result".
Related: Met's refusal to police London rally 'may be human rights breach'
"I'm concerned that that should not be the way forward. I'm probably at one with you Jenny in wanting to see the Met continue to police protests in London," said Johnson.
Jones said: "The Met police have got themselves into a mess on this. It's obvious they didn't discuss the decision with the Mayor, who clearly disagrees with them, and they certainly didn't think through the impact on the part of their job that means they must facilitate the democratic process. It's a cost-cutting move that has backfired."
The People's Assembly has an anti-austerity march planned for June. National secretary Sam Fairbairn said they have been told by the City of London Police that their policy was in line with the Met and their march would not receive police support.
"We'll shut the roads ourselves if we have to," Fairbairn told the Guardian.
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The Guardian
February 26, 2015 Thursday 3:30 PM GMT
Spy cables: Greenpeace head targeted by intelligence agencies before Seoul G20;
South Korea's intelligence service requested information about South African activist Kumi Naidoo in runup to leaders' meeting in 2010 · Read the leaked document here
BYLINE: Seumas Milne and Ewen MacAskill
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 998 words
The head of Greenpeace International, Kumi Naidoo, was targeted by intelligence agencies as a potential security threat ahead of a major international summit, leaked documents reveal.
Information about Naidoo, a prominent human rights activist from South Africa, was requested from South African intelligence by South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS) in the runup to a meeting of G20 leaders in Seoul in 2010.
He was linked in the intelligence request with two other South Africans who had been swept up in an anti-terrorist raid in Pakistan but later released and returned to South Africa.
Greenpeace is one of the world's best-known environmental groups, combining lobbying with high-profile direct action protests. South Korean intelligence may have been concerned about possible disruption at the summit. Told this week of the approach, Naidoo described it as outrageous.
According to a document, marked confidential and written by South African intelligence, the NIS asked its South African counterpart eight months before the summit "to indicate any possible security threat against the president of South Africa during the G20 summit to be held in South Korea from 11-12 November 2010".
The document added: "Specific security assessments were requested on the following SA nationals: the Director of Green Peace [sic], Mr Kim Naidoo; Mr Feerzoz Abubaker Ganchi (DoB 28/01/1971); Mr Zubair Ismail (DoB 06/12/1984)."
Ganchi and Ismail were held in jail in Pakistan in 2004 after being arrested by anti-terrorist police hunting al-Qaida members. The two said they had been planning a trek in Pakistan and were released, returning to South Africa.
In the runup to the Seoul summit, Naidoo called for action over climate change, international poverty and gender inequality, and for global tax initiatives to back it up. He was involved in the anti-apartheid movement as a teenager and arrested several times. After a period in exile in the UK, he returned to South Africa after the release of Nelson Mandela and worked for the African National Congress.
Greenpeace and other environmental groups have long been the target of extensive intelligence operations, both by governments and corporations, across the world. In 1985, the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior was sunk by French intelligence agents in Auckland, New Zealand, on its way to protest against a French nuclear test, killing a photographer. The FBI, undercover British police and corporations such as Shell and BP have targeted or used private security firms to spy on Greenpeace.
The leaked cables show South African intelligence turning down politically motivated requests for information about opposition activists from other spy agencies - including from Cameroon on the country's opposition leader, Pierre Mila Assouté, and from Sri Lanka about Tamil groups operating in South Africa.
Another document sheds some light on the CIA's involvement in climate change issues.
The reasons for the CIA's interest are not clear. It may see climate change as a potential source of conflict and want to explore possible consequences. Some see a potentially more sinister motivation.
A senior US climate scientist, Alan Robock, based at Rutgers University in New Jersey, expressed concern this month that the CIA and other intelligence agencies were funding climate change research to learn if new technologies could be used as potential weapons.
Robock, writing in the Guardian, said he had been approached by two men calling themselves consultants for the CIA who asked whether the US would be able to detect another country trying to control the US weather. Robock added: "At the same time, I wondered whether they also wanted to know if others would know about it, if the CIA was controlling the world's climate."
The CIA established the Center on Climate Change and National Security in 2009, a move heavily criticised by Republicans. Although the centre was closed down in 2012, the CIA said it would continue to monitor the security implications of climate change. A CIA document, part of the leaked cache, is focused on renewable energy.
The centre asked partner agencies in 2011 in the UK, Australia and South Africa to help explore the potential for renewable energy sources. The leaked document, marked confidential, is described as a joint intelligence product of the CIA, the UK, Australia and South Africa. "This effort is intended to provide the CIA with a deeper understanding of the potential for ramping up renewable and clean energy in key parts of the world and a better understanding of the collection capabilities and interests on renewables in the UK, South Africa and Australia," the document says.
The project looks at "wind, solar, biomass and geothermal for electricity generation and alternative fuels for transportation". A South African intelligence official, responding to the CIA request, wrote: "The issue area of 'renewables' have become even more strategic in the last several weeks, as the UK, Germany and now the US have established long-term energy strategies requiring 80% dependence on renewable and clean energy by the 2035-2050 period.
"At this early stage, we have already identified numerous challenges and potential problems with such ambitious targets but our joint paper will certainly be well-timed."
Within the US federal government, the Pentagon, like the CIA, has shown enormous interest in climate change, anticipating potential conflict as a result of climate change. In the document, the CIA suggests the four intelligence agencies look jointly at the role of renewables in tackling climate change, with the UK taking the lead in alternative fuels for transport to offset oil and the geopolitics of renewable energy, while the CIA looked at issues such as "possible unintended consequences".
The CIA climate change centre was closed in 2012 without an announcement or explanation following the replacement of Leon Panetta as CIA director by General David Petraeus in November 2011.
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The Guardian
February 26, 2015 Thursday 10:33 AM GMT
Tomorrow's world: seven development megatrends challenging NGOs;
Climate change, urbanisation and geopolitical shifts are some of the key areas international development organisations should focus on this year
BYLINE: Ben Jackson
SECTION: GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT PROFESSIONALS NETWORK
LENGTH: 973 words
As we move into 2015, many UK-based NGOs are wondering how to meet the challenges of a crucial year. What is the unique and distinct value that each organisation, and the UK sector as a whole, brings to international development, and how might this change in future?
To help the sector get on the front foot we have identified seven "megatrends" and posed a few questions to highlight some of the key choices NGOs might need to make. At the end of next week we'll be concluding a consultation with DfID on the future of the sector - all your thoughts are welcome.
1. Climate change and planetary boundaries
As evidence mounts that the impacts of human-caused climate change are already upon us, the future of international development cannot be considered in isolation from the need to adapt. Furthermore the Earth's natural systems are under enormous pressure, with huge consequences for the world's most vulnerable people. As UNep's 2012 Global Environment Outlook assessment concludes: "Scientific evidence shows that Earth systems are being pushed towards their bio-physical limits, with evidence that these limits are close and have in some cases been exceeded".
2. Demographic shifts
The global population could reach 9.6 billion by 2050 and 10.9 billion by 2100. In 2000, for the first time, there were more people over the age of 60 in the world than children under five. By 2050, four-fifths of older people will live in developing countries, where 80% of them will have no regular income. Youth unemployment is also growing. In 2012, 15- to 24-year-olds made up 40% of the total unemployed population.
3. Urbanisation
Globally, more people live in urban than rural areas and this is expected to gather pace. But the urban transition is taking place at different rates in different parts of the world. By 2050 most northern regions are expected to be at least 84% urban. In contrast, even by 2050, Africa's urban dwellers are projected to make up just 62% of its total, and Asia's 65%. Even in Asia and Africa, though, rapid rural-to-urban shifts are taking place. Urbanisation is a key engine of economic growth, but with this comes the risks of social marginality, conflict and exploitation.
4. Natural resource scarcity
Demographic pressures create food and water insecurity, and supplies of non-renewable natural resources including fossil fuels are depleting. Scarcity could push prices up, creating further hardship for those most in need. Notwithstanding the current low oil price, from 2000 to 2013 metal prices rose by 176%, energy prices by an average of 260% and food prices by 120%. Depending on political responses, this may drive humanitarian crises, population movements and a rise in protectionist or nationalist policies.
5. Geopolitical shifts
In 2012, the Brics countries of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa were reported as being responsible for more than 25% of the world's GDP based on purchasing power parity and home to 40% of the global population. The axis of the world's economic and geopolitical power has shifted - and will continue to shift - from west and north to east and south. Poverty patterns and distributions are changing alongside the wider geopolitical shifts, and donor policies are changing alongside them. Declining overseas development assistance to middle income countries and new donors entering the landscape are reshaping the nature of aid. Moreover, there is a risk that some growing political powers restrict the space for civil society action.
6. Processes of technological transformation and innovation
Technological innovation could have a very significant impact on the ability of people to meet their needs and to adapt to climate change. The world is becoming hyper-connected. Technological changes and the rapid diffusion of information and communications technologies, particularly among young people, have also broken down many of the old barriers between northern and southern publics. By 2030, it is estimated that 50% of the global population will have internet access. There is also growing appreciation of how technology links to human and environmental systems, escalating conflict or cooperation.
7. Inequality
Economic growth in at least 40 countries has helped to lift many hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. It is important not to allow rising GDP per capita in middle-income countries mask remaining underlying challenges - including rising inequality, weak social protection, poor infrastructures (particularly in urban areas), environmental degradation, and rising citizen expectations. Already, according to an Oxfam report, 85 billionaires have the same wealth as the bottom half of the world's population. In 2012, 71% of the world's population was reported to live in nations where income inequality is increasing. As well as stifling economic growth, inequality has a significant negative impact upon health and educational outcomes as well as security. These trends will shake some of the foundations around which our past approaches to programmes and conversations with the public were built. If we don't address these and show how we will evolve then the sector itself could be broken.
Over the next month the Global Development Professionals Network will be looking in more depth at these themes and their implications. Next Thursday's live Q&A will be focused on how UK NGOs can face the challenges of the next 10 years. Email globaldevpros@guardian.co.uk to recommend experts for the panel.
Join our community of development professionals and humanitarians. Follow @GuardianGDP on Twitter.
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The Guardian
February 26, 2015 Thursday 9:00 AM GMT
World leaders urged to tackle food waste to save billions and cut emissions;
Report by UK waste experts warns that growing global middle class could see £388bn worth of food wasted every year by 2030
BYLINE: Rebecca Smithers
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 528 words
Governments across the world should make reducing food waste an urgent priority in order to save as much as £194bn annually by 2030, according to a report.
Cutting food waste leads to greater efficiency, more productivity and higher economic growth, it said, but achieving such an aspiration would involve consumers cutting their own food and drink waste by as much as half.
One third of all food produced in the world ends up as waste, with food wasted by consumers globally valued at more than £259bn per year.
But that cost could soar to £388bn as the global middle class expands over the course of the next fifteen years, according to new figures from the UK government's waste advisory body Waste and Resources Action Programme (Wrap) for the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate.
Their new report, 'Strategies to achieve economic and environmental gains by reducing food waste', also identifies significant opportunities to improve economic performance and tackle climate change by reducing the amount of food that is wasted at various stages in the supply chain - in agriculture, transport, storage and consumption.
It highlights how practical changes, such as lowering the average temperatures of refrigerators or designing better packaging, can make a big difference in preventing spoilage. Approximately 25% of food waste in the developing world could be eliminated with better refrigeration equipment.
In the UK, the most recent data from Wrap showed that households threw away seven million tonnes of food waste in 2012, enough to fill London's Wembley Stadium nine times over. Avoidable household food waste in the UK is associated with 17 million tonnes of CO2 emissions annually.
Reducing food waste worldwide can make a significant contribution to tackling climate change, the report said. It found waste is responsible for around 7% of all greenhouse gas emissions globally, 3.3bn tonnes of CO2 equivalent (CO2e) a year.
Wrap estimates that emissions from food waste could cut by at least 0.2bn tonnes CO2e and possibly as much as 1 billion tonnes CO2e per year - more than the annual emissions of Germany.
Dr Richard Swannell, director of sustainable food systems at WRAP said: "Food waste is a global issue and tackling it is a priority. This report emphasises the benefits that can be obtained for businesses, consumers and the environment. The difficulty is often in knowing where to start and how to make the biggest economic and environmental savings."
Consumers had a vital role to play, he added: "In the UK, where we are based, the majority of food waste occurs in the home."
Helen Mountford, global programme director for the New Climate Economy, a programme of the commission, said: "Reducing food waste is good for the economy and good for the climate. Less food waste means greater efficiency, more productivity, and direct savings for consumers. It also means more food available to feed the estimated 805 million that go to bed hungry each day.
"Reducing food waste is also a great way to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change. These findings should serve as a wakeup call to policymakers around the world."
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The New York Times
February 26, 2015 Thursday
The New York Times on the Web
Lawmakers Seek Information on Funding for Climate Change Critics
BYLINE: By JOHN SCHWARTZ; Justin Gillis contributed reporting.
SECTION: Section ; Column 0; Science Desk; Pg.
LENGTH: 950 words
Democratic lawmakers in Washington are demanding information about funding for scientists who publicly dispute widely held views on the causes and risks of climate change.
Prominent members of the United States House of Representatives and the Senate have sent letters to universities, companies and trade groups asking for information about funding to the scientists.
The letters came after evidence emerged over the weekend that Wei-Hock Soon, known as Willie, a scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, had failed to disclose the industry funding for his academic work. The documents also included correspondence between Dr. Soon and the companies who funded his work in which he referred to his papers and testimony as ''deliverables.''
In letters sent to seven universities on Tuesday, Representative Raúl M. Grijalva, an Arizona Democrat who is the ranking member of the House committee on natural resources, sent detailed requests to the academic employers of scientists who had testified before Congress about climate change.
The requests focused on funding sources for the scientists, including David Legates of the University of Delaware and Roger Pielke Jr. of the University of Colorado at Boulder.
In the letters, Representative Grijalva wrote, ''My colleagues and I cannot perform our duties if research or testimony provided to us is influenced by undisclosed financial relationships.'' He asked for each university's policies on financial disclosure and the amount and sources of outside funding for each scholar, ''communications regarding the funding'' and ''all drafts'' of testimony.
Three Democratic members of the Senate sent 100 letters to fossil fuel companies, trade groups and other organizations asking about their funding of climate research and advocacy. The letters were signed by Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, Barbara Boxer of California and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island. The senators asked for responses by April 3.
''Corporate special interests shouldn't be able to secretly peddle the best junk science money can buy,'' Senator Markey said, denouncing what he called ''denial-for-hire operations.''
The funding disclosure questions concerning Dr. Soon have reverberated in other quarters as well. The Smithsonian Institution said on Sunday that it had handed its investigation of Dr. Soon's dealings with funders and journals over to its inspector general. The Smithsonian's acting secretary, Albert Horvath, announced that he would lead ''a full review of Smithsonian ethics and disclosure policies governing the conduct of sponsored research to ensure they meet the highest standards.''
The Smithsonian has already acknowledged one error in handling Dr. Soon.
Charles R. Alcock, director of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said last week that a contract provision with funders of Dr. Soon's work that appeared to prohibit disclosure of funding sources ''was a mistake.''
''We will not permit similar wording in future grant agreements,'' Dr. Alcock said in an email response to questions.
Dr. Soon has taken a view, contrary to the vast majority of climate scientists, that variations in sunlight may account for much of the recent warming of the earth. The Smithsonian has long distanced itself from Dr. Soon, stating that it does not share his conclusions about climate change, but allowed him to continue working at the Center for Astrophysics, a joint operation with Harvard that is based in Cambridge, Mass.
After news of the letters from Representative Grijalva was announced, Professor Pielke wrote on Twitter, ''Climate McCarthyism alive & well. Just learned a U.S. congressman has contacted my university to 'investigate' me.''
Professor Pielke went on to note in the tweet that ''I'm not even a skeptic'' and that he supports the conclusions of the United Nations committee that reviews climate science, as well as the Obama administration's proposed Environmental Protection Agency regulations on greenhouse gases. He has, however, expressed frequent criticism of climate scientists.
Professor Pielke also noted in a post on his blog that in 2010 he denounced the efforts of Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, then the attorney general for Virginia, to investigate the emails and papers of the climate scientist Michael Mann.
On his blog, Professor Pielke said that the pressure and ''smears'' had caused him to move away from climate research: ''I am simply not initiating any new research or papers on the topic and I have ring-fenced my slowly diminishing blogging on the subject.'' In an email response to questions, he said he had ''unequivocably, never'' taken money from the fossil fuel companies or allied organizations.
Andrew Dessler, a mainstream climate researcher and a professor of atmospheric science at Texas A&M University, said that he had concerns about ''fishing expeditions'' by Congress into researchers' work, especially drafts of testimony requested in the letters from Representative Grijalva.
''I like to apply the 'what if it happened to me test,' '' he said. And while asking hard questions about funding is worthwhile, ''when you start asking for these other documents, it's more difficult.''
In a statement, Representative Grijalva said that ''I fully support academic freedom and open, spirited debate.'' However, the news of Dr. Soon's disclosure issues troubled him, he said, adding that he sent the letters ''because of the harm done to public confidence in our scientific and legislative procedures.''
He concluded, ''Congressional disclosure requirements are not always strong enough to establish a witness' full impartiality, and we need to fill in those gaps.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/26/science/lawmakers-seek-information-on-funding-for-climate-change-critics.html
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The New York Times
February 26, 2015 Thursday
Late Edition - Final
European Leaders Seek Tighter Cooperation on Energy
BYLINE: By JAMES KANTER and STANLEY REED; James Kanter reported from Brussels, and Stanley Reed from London.
SECTION: Section B; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 2
LENGTH: 725 words
BRUSSELS -- The European Union authorities vowed on Wednesday to accelerate efforts to knit together their diverse energy systems amid deepening tensions with Russia, a major supplier of the bloc's natural gas.
The European Commission, the bloc's executive agency, said its proposal for an energy union represented an important step toward unifying member countries' economies and could help wean some countries from dependence on Russia, which supplies about a quarter of the bloc's natural gas.
About half of those Russian gas supplies are piped through Ukraine, where Russia is involved in heavy fighting in the east of the country. Disputes between Russia and Ukraine led to cutoffs of Russian gas to Europe in 2006 and 2009. Tensions have flared in recent days after the Russian gas exporter Gazprom threatened to halt deliveries because of a payment dispute.
But the ambitious plans -- including some initiatives that have failed to win Europewide approval before -- face difficult odds because the 28 European Union countries zealously guard their sovereignty over national energy systems.
The announcement ''almost seems to be a way of saying that we have got to do the things that we have already said we would do that we haven't done yet, but we have to do them quicker and better,'' said Jonathan Stern, the chairman of the gas research program at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies in Britain.
The proposals seek to balance the need to fight climate change and reduce emissions with an effort to lower prices, secure supplies and make it easier to trade energy inside the bloc. The European Commission also recommended that work should be intensified on a gas pipeline from Central Asia to diversify supplies away from Russia.
The announcement was given a cautious welcome in London. Edward Davey, the British government secretary for energy and climate change, suggested that success would rely on promoting a mix of low-carbon technologies including nuclear power, renewable sources like wind power, and greater energy efficiency.
Proponents of renewable energy said the commission would need to pass new legislation enforcing strict greenhouse gas reduction targets to promote the industry.
The ''disorderly patchwork on energy policies'' across Europe ''is currently sending a confusing message to those in financial circles and would-be investors,'' said Thomas Becker, the chief executive of the European Wind Energy Association, an industry group in Brussels.
Some lawmakers warned that plans to give Brussels a greater role in negotiating energy contracts with suppliers like Russia did not go far enough.
Referring to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Guy Verhofstadt, the leader of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, a free-market group in the European Parliament, said the goal should be to ''hit Putin where it hurts most.'' The commission ''should lead negotiations on energy agreements with third countries, not just participate,'' he said.
Cooperation in the coal and steel sectors was the basis more than half a century ago for what has now grown into the European Union. But past efforts to draft a unified energy policy have highlighted deep divisions between countries like France, which relies on nuclear technology for its power, and Germany, which is phasing out its reactors.
The energy systems of many Central and East European countries remain dependent on Russia, and while the authorities in countries like Poland favor hydraulic fracturing technology to tap natural gas domestically, countries like France have banned such techniques on environmental grounds.
Even so, Maros Sefcovic, a commission vice president, called the initiative ''undoubtedly the most ambitious energy project'' in more than a half century and said the policies could mean as much as 40 billion euros, or $45 billion, in savings for business and consumers annually.
Mr. Sefcovic also promised a decision ''within weeks'' on a long-running antitrust case against Gazprom. But he said a final decision about whether to charge the company with abusing monopoly power in countries like Lithuania that were formerly part of the Soviet Union must be made by Margrethe Vestager, the commission's antitrust chief.
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/26/business/international/european-leaders-push-for-energy-union.html
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The Guardian
February 25, 2015 Wednesday 5:39 PM GMT
The Pacific Islands: tomorrow's climate refugees struggle to access water today;
In fifty years the Pacific Islanders may be climate refugees, but today the more immediate challenge is to harvest enough water to live
BYLINE: Oliver Balch
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 1076 words
Among the Pacific islands, Tuvalu is among the most dependent on rainwater harvesting. Rainfall hasn't traditionally been a problem in the Pacific island state; the problem has been capturing it. Tuvalu is scattered across over 500,000 square kilometres, yet its nine low-lying islands only comprise 27km2 of land area.
Tuvalu's water problems are shared across Oceania, where - at one in four - fewer people have access to piped water than in sub-Saharan Africa. Over 3.2m of the region's 10.3m population, meanwhile, has no access to surface water.
Related: Making rain: can technology drought-proof the Caribbean?
According to the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC), a regional intergovernmental organisation based in Fiji, the Pacific Islands' 22 nations and territories are "significantly off track" to meet water improvement targets set under the Millennium Development Goals (pdf).
"If current trajectories persist," says Peter Sinclair, water resources assessment coordinator in SPC's Geoscience Division, "millions of Pacific islanders will continue to endure unsafe water and sanitation for generations to come, with profound implications for economic growth, public health, the environment and human rights."
Making the most of rainwater
While desalination plants and other large-scale infrastructure projects can be found scattered through these islands, lack of economic resources and an absence of fuel for generating power to run such facilities restricts their widespread uptake.
As such, the area continues to maintain a strong focus of catching what falls from the sky. On Tuvalu, rainwater is seen as a cheaper and more environmental alternative to imported bottled water, a primary water source for many of the island's 11,000 or so residents.
Helping promote rainwater harvesting there is the Pacific Regional Environment Programme, a Samoa-based intergovernmental organisation. The Programme's Pacific Adaptation to Climate Change project (PACC) just inaugurated a 288,000 litre cistern in Tekavatoetoe, on the Tuvaluan island of Funafuti. This follows a new 700,000 litre cistern in the nearby community of Lofeagai.
Related: The phantom flush: why high-tech toilets waste so much water
The cisterns are closed in so as to avoid contamination by salt water or water-borne diseases, such as e-coli. In both cases, the units are attached to church buildings, which, along with schools, hospitals and government offices, are widely used for communal rainwater harvesting.
"The roof surfaces of the island's largest buildings would be wasted if they're not used to collect water", says Netatua Pelesikoti, programme manager at PACC.
Technological innovation
As well as helping with everyday water needs, rainwater harvesting is seen as an important defence against climate change, which Pelesikoti says is causing shorter wet seasons and more erratic weather patterns. One of the consequences is a higher risk of drought, the last major instance of which occurred in 2011 (also a La Niña year), causing Tuvalu to introduce emergency water rationing. Samoa, Tokelau and Tonga suffered similar drastic water shortages.
"Other approaches [to rainwater harvesting] do not work in these low-lying atoll environments due to space, land issues and high energy wave environments on both the ocean and lagoon sides of Tuvlau atolls", says Peniamina Leavai, PACC's adaptation planning officer.
Rainwater harvesting is by no means new, but technological innovations are helping drive improvements. So-called 'first flush diverters' mark one notable example. Using a ball float system, the low-tech solution essentially isolates the first flows of rainwater in a separate chamber as these often contain bacteria and other pollutants collected in roof guttering. The technology is widely used in Niue, Samoa, Tonga, Fiji and Nauru, as well as Tuvalu.
The island of Niue boasts another notable innovation. With the assistance of New Zealand-based water tank manufacturer Galloway International, the island has built a tank moulding facility. The home-grown 5,000 litre tanks are made from high-density polyethylene, which is lighter weight and more durable than the imported tanks habitually used. The facility also has capacity to build septic tanks and waste bins.
Business lagging behind
In general, however, the region's business community has taken a back seat in promoting water collection efforts. Local firms, particularly in the tourist sector, may well donate tanks, pumps or other equipment, but such efforts are uncoordinated and sporadic. The charitable foundation of Fuji Water, a bottled water company, is one of the few to do so systematically and at scale.
Related: Global water loss: what should business do? - live chat
SPC's Peter Sinclair is among those who would like to see greater input by the private sector, especially when it comes to developing affordable technologies. The scope here is "tremendous", he insists, although he strikes a word of caution: "In the Pacific, technological solutions need to be replicable and of low cost or they could well leave a community reliant on a solution that cannot be sustained over the long term."
Community involvement has to be a central feature of any such endeavour, he argues. He cites a (EURO)3.3m (£2.4m) project that SPC is currently rolling out in Kiribati. The initiative, which includes the construction of small-scale rainwater harvesting units, will be jointly managed by the community and follows a three year outreach programme among 16 of Kiribati's outer islands.
Pacific islanders have long looked to the sky's munificence for their water needs - an experience outside funders should be mindful of, even if modernisation and expansion of rainwater collection systems is keenly needed.
As Sinclair concludes: "Effective communication is essential to understand the needs of communities and their existing solutions, which may have been serving communities well for hundreds of years."
This is the second in a three part series on islands and water. The first can be read here. Future articles will also be published in our water hub.
The water hub is funded by Grundfos. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled 'brought to you by'. Find out more here.
This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. Become a GSB member to get more stories like this direct to your inbox.
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The Guardian
February 25, 2015 Wednesday 5:00 PM GMT
Cameron's climate envoy blames big six energy firms for green deal's failure;
UK's leading energy companies 'have no interest in real energy efficiency', says Tory MP Greg Barker
BYLINE: Karl Mathiesen
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 555 words
The big six energy companies undermined the government's flagship programme to upgrade the energy efficiency of Britain's housing stock, according to the former climate minister who is now David Cameron's climate envoy.
Tory MP Greg Barker told an audience in London on Tuesday that large energy companies had feigned enthusiasm but never seriously tried to sell the green deal to consumers.
"The next five years have all got to be about innovation," said Barker. "We're not going to get that from the big six who have no interest in real energy efficiency. My biggest mistake was taking the big six at face value in the early years of this parliament when they said they were interested in energy efficiency. Absolute rubbish. They are not."
Ed Davey, secretary of state for energy and climate change, who was also on the panel, said he agreed with Barker.
Upon its launch in 2011, Barker said the green deal would be "the biggest home improvement programme since the Second World War".
The government scheme was designed to help people make their homes more energy efficient by installing new boilers, insulation and solar panels. But the unique financing at the heart of the scheme saw little take-up and the months after launch were hit by IT and legal problems. Five months after the launch, only one of the big six energy providers had rolled out a national green deal programme.
After an unsuccessful green deal trial in Plymouth, Barker said British Gas had told the government "your green deal's rubbish, we've put all our resources in and nobody wants these products".
But he said where big companies had failed, small ones had succeeded by listening to customers. One small business told Barker that British Gas had "a crap product that nobody wants". When contacted by the Guardian, British Gas did not want to comment directly on the remarks.
Davey, Barker's coalition partner, admitted in 2014 that the implementation of the green deal had been "disappointing". But last night he defended the government's overall record on energy efficiency, saying that measures running alongside the green deal have seen one million homes improved since January 2013.
Davey said to Barker: "There may have been some firms that weren't doing as well as they'd hoped but a lot of firms were doing a lot of work and a lot of homes were improved."
Barker also attacked Labour's relationship with the big six. He said the previous Labour government had presided over a "massive consolidation" of the energy market from 15 companies to six and Labour's promise to cap energy prices until 2017 would kill the small businesses that had emerged during this parliament.
"Labour's price freeze would smash those small new entrant companies. Labour's price freeze and regulatory approach would only benefit the big six," he said. "Labour are basically the party of big government solution, of big companies that they want to wrestle with and that they can regulate... And the Tories are on the side of the entrepreneurs," he said.
Labour's shadow minister for energy and climate change Jonathan Reynolds replied: "Of all the bad lines these guys have, Labour is the big six is one of the worst... Those 15 companies were regional monopolies so you didn't have the power to switch energy supplier until Labour won in 1997. That analysis just doesn't stack up."
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The Guardian
February 25, 2015 Wednesday 2:35 PM GMT
With climate change, US presidents matter;
Barack Obama cements legacy as the first climate-aware president
BYLINE: John Abraham
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 802 words
Yesterday, President Barack Obama became the first president who has taken a stand to stop climate change.
Actually, that isn't quite true. President Obama took that stand from his first step into the White House. He has put into place a series of initiatives that actually give us a chance at stopping the most serious consequences of climate change. Much of his actions have gone with little public notice. That changed yesterday with his veto of the ill-proposed Keystone XL pipeline.
Vetoing this pipeline, which would increase the rate of extraction of the world's dirtiest fuels (bitumen and the byproduct petroleum coke), was a no-brainer for anyone concerned about climate change. In fact, it is not possible to be in favor of the Keystone pipeline if you accept the science of climate change. The reason this story is so big isn't just about carbon dioxide emissions (although that matters). It is more about the strong stand taken by the President against a well-funded campaign to force the pipeline through. It is also important because of the signal it sends to those intent on long term dirty-fuels extraction.
Let's quickly summarize why the Keystone pipeline was a bad idea to begin with. First, by lowering the production costs, it will increase the rate of extraction of the dirtiest fuels in the world. Second, it will actually raise fuel prices in the United States where much of the tar sands is now sold at a discount. Third, the pipeline will lock in decades of production of dirty fuel even as the costs to deliver wind and solar energy are falling fast and becoming comparable with fossil fuels. Finally, the pipeline would have traversed the United States and would have presented a large spill risk. Why can't the Canadian government just put the pipeline through their own country? The reason is, their own citizens object.
Back to President Obama. His actions on climate change are numerous and significant. As outlined in his Climate Action Plan, his administration has overseen large investments in renewable energy industries in the U.S. that are creating high-pay and high-skill jobs. He has enacted increases in fuel-efficiency standards which not only reduce emissions but also save money. He has worked on international agreements to reduce hydrofluorocarbons and methane emissions, two potent greenhouse gases.
Even more significantly, he has overseen the plans to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from the nation's new and existing coal plants ; the EPA's Clean Power Plan rewards state-level initiatives to find flexible solutions to reduce their emissions. And also significantly, the President has achieved a huge agreement with China to curb and reduce carbon pollution.
I spoke with Anthony Swift at the National Resources Defense Council about the Clean Power Plan. He said,
The Clean Power Plan and the rejection of Keystone XL go hand in hand in a national policy to reduce our carbon emissions. On one hand, Clean Power Plan is an ambitious proposal to significantly reduce carbon emissions from our existing energy system; while on the other, rejecting tar sands infrastructure projects like Keystone XL ensures that we don't undermine those reductions by bringing in new, dirtier fuel sources.
What does all this mean, and how is it related to Keystone? It means that Obama's legacy is now cemented. He has done more on climate change than any predecessors, by a long shot. Importantly, he has trusted the science. When we look back on his presidency, this will be what he is remembered for.
It also cements the legacy of those who voted in favor of Keystone. It was largely along political party lines; however, in the recent House vote, 29 Democrats voted for the pipeline and one Republican voted against it (Justin Amash), although his reasoning had little to do with climate impacts.
I asked Dr. Joe Romm, founding editor of Climate Progress for his thoughts. He responded,
Future generations suffering from the consequences of our inaction will be bewildered that the legislative body of the richest country in the world could devote so little effort to ameliorating the climate problem and so much effort to making it worse.
What's clear is that the oil and gas industry contributed a significant amount of money to congresspersons who voted for the pipeline. According to an article in the International Business Times, "yes" voters received an average $45,000 from the oil and gas industry. Senators who voted for the pipeline received approximately $250,000 from the industry.
What is also clear is that as the costs from droughts, floods, more severe storms, and heat waves mount, we can all think back to defining votes like the ones taken in the U.S. Congress this winter.
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The Guardian
February 25, 2015 Wednesday 12:06 AM GMT
IPCC chair Rajendra Pachauri resigns;
High profile head of the UN's climate science panel steps down and denies charges of sexually harassing a 29-year-old female researcher
BYLINE: Damian Carrington
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 726 words
The chair of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri, resigned on Tuesday, following allegations of sexual harassment from a female employee at his research institute in Delhi.
Related: What is the IPCC?
The organisation will now be led by acting chair Ismail El Gizouli until the election for a new chair which had already been scheduled for October.
"The actions taken today will ensure that the IPCC's mission to assess climate change continues without interruption," said Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme, which is a sponsor of the IPCC.
Pachauri, 74, is accused of sexually harassing a 29-year-old female researcher shortly after she joined The Energy and Resources Institute. Lawyers for the woman, who cannot be named, said the harassment by Pachauri included unwanted emails, text messages and WhatsApp messages.
Pachauri, one of the UN's top climate change officials, has denied the charges and his spokesman said: "[He] is committed to provide all assistance and cooperation to the authorities in their ongoing investigations." His lawyers claimed in the court documents that his emails, mobile phone and WhatsApp messages were hacked and that criminals accessed his computer and phone to send the messages in an attempt to malign him.
Related: Climate change report 'should jolt people into action' says IPCC chief
In his letter of resignation to the UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon, he said: "The IPCC needs strong leadership and dedication of time and full attention by the chair in the immediate future, which under the current circumstances I am unable to provide."
Pachauri thanked the thousands of scientists who had worked for free on the IPCC's reports and made an "unmatched contribution to global society." He added: "I will continue to [work on climate change] assiduously throughout my life in what ever capacity I work. For me the protection of planet Earth, the survival of all species and sustainability of our ecosystems is more than my mission, it is my religion."
Climate scientist Professor Iqbal Hasnain, at Jawaharlal Nehru University told The Hindu newspaper : "I am outraged on the news that R.K. Pachauri is suspected to be involved in a sexual harassment case with a Teri employee." He said Pachauri should step down from both the IPCC and Teri "to safeguard the interest of global climate science".
Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics, said: "It is understandable that Dr Pachauri has resigned from his post while he is facing allegations against him in India."
Ward said: "There will no doubt be some climate change 'sceptics' who seek to use Dr Pachauri's resignation as an opportunity to attack the IPCC [but its most recent report] is the most comprehensive and authoritative assessment of the causes and potential consequences of climate change that we have ever had, and that remains true with or without Dr Pachauri as chair."
Pachauri had chaired the IPCC since 2002, during which time it has taken the lead in the scientific assessment of the causes and risks of climate change. Its reports are written and reviewed by thousands of scientists and approved by the IPCC's 195 member nations.
The most recent report concluded that climate change is set to inflict "severe, widespread, and irreversible impacts" on people and the natural world unless carbon emissions are cut sharply and rapidly. The IPCC was jointly awarded the Nobel peace prize with former US vice-president Al Gore in 2007 for their part in driving international action against climate change.
Pachauri was reelected unopposed by the 195 member nations of the IPCC in 2008 but the election in October will see a number of scientists standing as candidates. Prof Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, from Belgium, and Prof Thomas Stocker, from Switzerland, have both declared their candidacy. It is also understood that Prof Chris Field, from the US, will run.
Prof Nebojsa Nakicenovic, from Austria, South Korea's Hoesung Lee and the German economist Prof Ottmar Edenhofer, who said in 2014 that " it doesn't cost the world to save the planet ", are understood to be considering putting themselves forward. The successful candidate has to be nominated by their home country and then elected by the member nations.
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The New York Times
February 25, 2015 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
Obama Vetoes Effort by Republicans to Force Approval of Keystone Pipeline
BYLINE: By MICHAEL D. SHEAR and CORAL DAVENPORT
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 16
LENGTH: 1181 words
WASHINGTON -- President Obama on Tuesday rejected an attempt by lawmakers to force his hand on the Keystone XL oil pipeline, using his veto pen to sweep aside one of the first major challenges to his authority by the new Republican Congress.
With no fanfare and a 104-word letter to the Senate, Mr. Obama vetoed legislation to authorize construction of a 1,179-mile pipeline that would carry 800,000 barrels of heavy petroleum a day from the oil sands of Alberta to ports and refineries on the Gulf Coast.
In exercising the unique power of the Oval Office for only the third time since his election in 2008, Mr. Obama accused lawmakers of seeking to circumvent the administration's approval process for the pipeline by cutting short ''consideration of issues that could bear on our national interest.''
By rejecting the legislation, Mr. Obama retains the right to make a final judgment on the pipeline on his own timeline. But he did little to calm the political debate over Keystone, which has become a symbol of the continuing struggle between environmentalists and conservatives.
Backers of the pipeline denounced Mr. Obama's actions and vowed to keep fighting for its construction.
The House speaker, John A. Boehner of Ohio, called the president's veto ''a national embarrassment'' and accused Mr. Obama of being ''too close to environmental extremists'' and ''too invested in left-fringe politics.''
Environmentalists quickly hailed the decision, which they said clearly indicated Mr. Obama's intention to reject the pipeline's construction. The White House has said the president will decide whether to allow the pipeline when all of the environmental reviews are completed in the coming weeks.
''Republicans in Congress continued to waste everyone's time with a bill destined to go nowhere, just to satisfy the agenda of their big oil allies,'' said Michael Brune, the executive director of the Sierra Club. ''The president has all the evidence he needs to reject Keystone XL now, and we are confident that he will.''
Since 2011, the proposed Keystone pipeline has emerged as a broader symbol of the partisan political clash over energy, climate change and the economy.
Most energy policy experts say the project will have a minimal impact on jobs and climate. But Republicans insist that the pipeline will increase employment by linking the United States to an energy supply from a friendly neighbor. Environmentalists say it will contribute to ecological destruction and damaging climate change.
Mr. Obama has hinted that he thinks both sides have inflated their arguments, but he has not said what he will decide.
In his State of the Union address last month, Mr. Obama urged lawmakers to move past the pipeline debate, calling for passage of a comprehensive infrastructure plan. ''Let's set our sights higher than a single oil pipeline,'' he said.
Republican leaders had promised to use the veto, which was expected, to denounce Mr. Obama as a partisan obstructionist. They made good on that promise minutes after the president's veto message was read on the floor of the Senate on Tuesday.
''The fact he vetoed the bipartisan Keystone Pipeline in private shows how out of step he is with the priorities of the American people, who overwhelmingly support this vital jobs and infrastructure project,'' Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, said in a statement.
In recent months, the environmental activists -- who have spent years marching, protesting and getting arrested outside the White House in their quest to persuade Mr. Obama to reject the project -- have said they are increasingly optimistic that their efforts will succeed.
''Hopefully the ongoing legislative charade has strengthened his commitment to do the right thing,'' said Bill McKibben, a founder of the group 350.org, which has led the campaign to urge Mr. Obama to reject the pipeline.
The debate began in 2008, when the TransCanada Corporation applied for a permit to construct the pipeline. The State Department is required to determine whether the pipeline is in the national interest, but the last word on whether the project will go forward ultimately rests with the president.
Mr. Obama has delayed making that decision until all the legal and environmental reviews of the process are completed. He has said a critical factor in his decision will be whether the project contributes to climate change.
Last year, an 11-volume environmental impact review by the State Department concluded that oil extracted from the Canadian oil sands produced about 17 percent more carbon pollution than conventionally extracted oil.
But the review said the pipeline was unlikely to contribute to a significant increase in planet-warming greenhouse gases because the fuel would probably be extracted from the oil sands and sold with or without construction of the pipeline.
This month, environmentalists pointed to a letter from the Environmental Protection Agency that they said proved that the pipeline could add to greenhouse gases.
The question of whether to build the pipeline comes as Mr. Obama hopes to make climate change policy a cornerstone of his legacy. This summer, the E.P.A. is expected to issue sweeping regulations to cut greenhouse gas pollution from power plants, a move experts say would have vastly more impact on the nation's carbon footprint than construction of the Keystone pipeline.
In December, world leaders hope to sign a global United Nations accord in Paris that would commit every nation in the world to enacting plans to reduce its rates of planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions. In the coming months, countries are expected to begin putting forward those policies for cutting carbon emissions.
While the Keystone pipeline is not expected to be part of the United States climate change plan, a public presidential decision on the project could be interpreted as a message about Mr. Obama's symbolic commitment to the issue of climate change.
Until that decision is made, however, both sides of the Keystone fight are stepping up their tactics. Environmental groups are planning more marches and White House petitions, while Republicans in Congress are looking for ways to bring the Keystone measure back to Mr. Obama's desk.
Senator John Hoeven, Republican of North Dakota, who sponsored the Keystone bill, said he would consider adding language requiring construction of the pipeline to other legislation, such as spending bills to fund federal agencies, which could make a veto far more politically risky for Mr. Obama.
A final decision by the president could come soon. Last month, a court in Nebraska reached a verdict in a case about the pipeline's route through the state, clearing the way for construction. And this month, final reviews of the pipeline by eight federal agencies were completed.
However, Mr. Obama is under no legal obligation to make a final decision, and there is no official timetable for a decision. He could approve or deny the project at any time -- or leave the decision to the next president.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/25/us/politics/as-expected-obama-vetoes-keystone-xl-pipeline-bill.html
LOAD-DATE: February 25, 2015
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GRAPHIC: PHOTO: President Obama on Tuesday. He has delayed deciding on the Keystone pipeline, pending legal and environmental reviews. (PHOTOGRAPH BY DOUG MILLS/THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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The New York Times
February 25, 2015 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
U.N. Climate Panel Chief Quits Amid Harassment Case
BYLINE: By JUSTIN GILLIS
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Foreign Desk; Pg. 10
LENGTH: 585 words
The head of the United Nations panel on climate science resigned on Tuesday after allegations of sexual harassment were filed against him in India, where he lives and works.
Rajendra K. Pachauri, whose 13 years as chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had made him one of the world's most important voices on the risks of global warming, had been scheduled to leave the post in October. But he tendered his resignation early after news that a woman employed at an institute that he heads in India had accused him of unwanted text messages, emails and other contact.
The accuser, 29, has not been publicly identified. Lawyers for Dr. Pachauri, 74, have said in court filings that his computer and phone were hacked and that the unwanted messages were sent by someone else to make him look bad. The police in India are investigating, as is an internal-complaints committee at the Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi.
The allegations could take years to resolve in India's slow-moving justice system. ''The I.P.C.C. needs strong leadership and dedication of time and full attention by the chair in the immediate future, which under the current circumstances I may be unable to provide,'' Dr. Pachauri wrote in his resignation letter.
The panel is a worldwide committee of thousands of scientists and other experts, appointed by the United Nations and its member governments, who review and periodically summarize the findings of climate research. The chairman's role is largely organizational and ceremonial.
The group's increasingly urgent warnings about the risks of unchecked greenhouse-gas emissions have galvanized a worldwide effort -- costing hundreds of billions of dollars a year, but so far largely unsuccessful -- to bring them under control.
Under Dr. Pachauri's leadership, the panel won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, along with Al Gore, for its efforts to warn the public about the risks of climate change, and Dr. Pachauri accepted the prize on its behalf at a ceremony that year in Oslo.
But that moment of triumph was followed by several black eyes for the panel, including the finding that one of its reports had exaggerated the rate of melting of glaciers in the Himalayas. Dr. Pachauri resisted calls in 2010 for his resignation.
His efforts in recent years included trying to tighten the panel's review procedures.
The resignation came as a meeting of the I.P.C.C. was starting in Nairobi, Kenya. The panel, which completed its fifth major assessment of climate science last fall at a meeting in Copenhagen, is debating how to organize its future efforts.
In a statement that included no substantive discussion of the allegations against Dr. Pachauri, the panel said that its vice chairman, Ismail El Gizouli, would serve as interim chairman until a new leader was elected in October.
The I.P.C.C. has long been a target of criticism for opponents of the scientific consensus on climate change, and they issued new denunciations of both Dr. Pachauri and the panel over the past week as details of the harassment allegations emerged in India.
Donna Laframboise, author of a critical book about the I.P.C.C., pointed out in a blog post that Dr. Pachauri's resignation letter included no apology to his colleagues on the panel.
''What's missing from this letter is any suggestion of remorse,'' she wrote. ''Where are his words of apology to the thousands of I.P.C.C.-linked scientists whose honor is now eternally tarnished by their association with him?''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/25/science/earth/head-of-un-climate-panel-resigns-amid-harassment-accusations.html
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The New York Times Blogs
(Dot Earth)
February 25, 2015 Wednesday
On Keystone and Climate, Bloomberg Presses Obama to Negotiate with Canada Instead of Congress
BYLINE: ANDREW C. REVKIN
SECTION: OPINION
LENGTH: 625 words
HIGHLIGHT: Former Mayor Bloomberg presses Obama to bypass Keystone gridlock by seeking climate progress in Canada.
Former New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, now a United Nations climate envoy, has laid out a wise path for President Obama that could sidestep the political morass surrounding Canada's oil-rich Alberta tar (sands) pits and the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.
As he did with China, Obama can negotiate with Canada to gain commitments on the prime goal of those fighting the pipeline, cutting carbon dioxide emissions, Bloomberg says.
Cleaning up the pollution on the ground and in the waters of Alberta is Canada's domestic responsibility. Making sure all pipelines carrying oil across the United States are safe (not to mention trains!) is this country's existing responsibility, with or without the Keystone pipeline additions.
Bloomberg's approach, like most moves in this fraught arena, will never appease Obama's critics on the left and right. But it could demonstrate leadership, both to the American middle class and the international community preparing for talks aimed at forging a global climate agreement at the end of the year in Paris. And, of course, its success depends on Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper getting serious about addressing climate change.
Here are some excerpts from Bloomberg's piece on (yes) Bloomberg View:
The Keystone XL pipeline has become a perfect symbol of Washington's dysfunction. Democrats exaggerate its environmental impact while Republicans exaggerate its economic benefits. In the debate, each side talks past the other, because each cares more about gaining a political advantage than a policy achievement. Yet a path exists for President Barack Obama to transcend these differences and allow both sides to declare victory....
The Canadian government has been pressing the White House to approve the pipeline, which would bring many more economic benefits to Canada than it would to the U.S. That gives the White House enormous leverage, which it should use to negotiate a broader, climate-friendly deal that far more than offsets the potential impact of the pipeline.
The timing is right for talks. The Canadian government will face increasing pressure to take a more aggressive approach to climate change in the run-up to the United Nations conference in Paris this December. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has committed $300 million to help developing countries tackle climate change, which is commendable. But there is much more that Canada can be doing at home. According to a recent report on the progress that industrialized countries are making on climate change, Canada ranks near the bottom. The U.S. doesn't fare much better....
Canada and the U.S. have always worked together closely on climate-related matters. Canada is our largest supplier of oil, and one of our closest allies. Keystone is a diplomatic issue, and the White House should begin treating it that way. Republicans in Congress who have criticized the president for not being a sufficiently tough international negotiator should insist on nothing less.
As the UN secretary-general's special envoy for cities and climate change, I encourage President Obama and Prime Minister Harper to engage in talks that can lead to an agreement that will benefit both our nations' economies and environments.
The endless partisan debate over the Keystone XL pipeline has gotten us nowhere. Instead of continuing to argue among ourselves, it would be far more productive to engage our friends north of the border. The gridlock that defines Washington need not curtail diplomacy - nor stand in the way of progress on climate change.
Please read the rest here.
Cilck back to this 2011 post to see how Bloomberg's strategy fits when you consider the pipeline in broader contexts: "Can Obama Escape the Alberta Tar Pit?"
Bloomberg's answer is yes.
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The Guardian
February 24, 2015 Tuesday 6:45 PM GMT
Five ways that people frame climate change debates;
The way climate change discussions are framed shapes everything from who's held accountable to what actions we take. Here's how to spot some common frames and where we might go next.
BYLINE: Laurence and Alison Matthews
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 966 words
Words are powerful. The word 'consumer', for example, isn't just an innocent part of the language: it triggers a frame - a set of assumptions about what you should think and how you should behave.
Inside this frame, your job as a consumer is simply to choose between different options available to you for consumption. You might not realise that you have no say over what choices were put on the menu: that's outside the frame.
Framing happens in all sorts of contexts, from obesity to economic growth. Spotting frames is an invaluable skill because noticing a frame opens the door to looking outside it, where new and innovative ideas may be lurking.
Related: Communicating sustainability is a subtle attempt at doing good
In the case of climate change, framing abounds as CEOs, politicians, NGOs and many more besides vie to frame the debate to suit their agendas - not always with the best environmental outcomes in mind. But even when their intentions are good, they can remain unknowingly trapped in frames.
With this in mind, here are five frames to help build your framespotting skills:
1. Responding to climate change
Climate change is a defining issue of our age. Our response will define our future - UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon at the UN Climate Summit, New York, 23 November 2014
True, but there's a danger in talking about responses to climate change: it frames climate change as something out there that's just 'happening'. In this frame our role is to respond to it - by building flood barriers, say. Asking whose fault it is, or what can be done to stop it, falls outside the frame.
Staying in this frame is like rearranging deck-chairs on a sinking ship instead of fixing the hole in the hull. In other words, it doesn't tackle the problem. We don't have to respond to climate change; we have to stop causing it.
2. Efficiency is the name of the game
The government is working at home and abroad to... reduce greenhouse gas emissions by investing in low-carbon energy sources, improving fuel standards in cars and increasing energy efficiency wherever possible - Department of Energy & Climate Change website
At least we're talking about tackling the cause now, and looking at reducing emissions. Or are we? Do greener cars bring down carbon emissions?
Well no, not necessarily. There's a frame here focusing on the wrong thing. The efficiency frame looks at emissions per car, but ignores the number of cars. Greener cars may simply encourage more of us to buy them and to travel further, causing more emissions, not fewer.
We need a cap on total emissions so that this rebound effect can't happen.
3. Tackling emissions
In the European Union, we've agreed that by 2030 we will reduce our greenhouse emissions by at least 40% compared to 1990 levels - German chancellor Angela Merkel at the Lowy Institute for International Policy, Sydney, 17 November 2014
That's more like it. So how do we do this? Of course, the starting point is to tackle the emissions from cars, planes, power stations, and the like. Or is it? What's the frame here?
Related: Science won't win over the climate change sceptics - we need stories
Suppose you had a garden hose connected to a sprinkler. If you wanted to save water, would you try to block up holes in the sprinkler? Of course you wouldn't; you'd simply turn off the tap a bit. By controlling the fossil fuels coming into the system (the tap), we can automatically control the emissions created further down the line (the sprinkler). This would be simpler, cheaper and would focus attention on the root cause of emissions: the extraction of fossil fuels.
4. The cost of taking action
Businesses are realising that the cost of inaction is greater than the cost of action - CEO of Unilever Paul Polman at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change's Annual Lecture, Imperial College London, 7 April 2014
Calls for action are growing - but still frame action as a cost or burden that will hamper business and act as a drag on the economy. The 'green means austerity' frame is widespread, equating a green future with 'returning to living in caves' mentality - in other words, taking a step back.
But is it true? We gave up slavery, but we're immeasurably richer now than the slave owners ever were.
And step outside the economics frame for a minute. Are we seriously saying cost is the deciding factor when it comes to preserving our planetary life-support systems?
5. An international problem
No nation is immune, and every nation has a responsibility to do its part - US President Barack Obama at the University of Queensland, Australia, 15 November 2014
Most people unthinkingly accept the frame that sees the world as a collection of countries. Attention immediately focuses on national statistics, national commitment and negotiations between nations. Global policy becomes inter-national policy.
What might lie outside this frame? What about a single, worldwide solution for the planet as a whole? Wouldn't it galvanise the debate if the Paris talks later this year ditch the national posturing and game-playing in favour of a unified, transparent system, and then rallied support for it?
National governments will resist global solutions, since each government wants to control what happens in its own country, but global emergencies need global action. After all, we're not dealing with international warming.
Framespotting by Laurence and Alison Matthews is published by IFF Books.
The rethinking prosperity hub is sponsored by DNV GL. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled "brought to you by". Find out more here.
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LOAD-DATE: February 24, 2015
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The Guardian
February 24, 2015 Tuesday 12:45 PM GMT
Nobody is immune from resisting science they wish weren't true. Even liberals;
Many believe that conservatives have a strange relationship to the truth. But we may all be more concerned with shoring up our beliefs than objective reality
BYLINE: Oliver Burkeman
SECTION: COMMENT IS FREE
LENGTH: 1081 words
There's been plenty of evidence, in recent days, to support the popular liberal notion that conservatives have a uniquely weird relationship to the truth. Take the allegations that Bill O'Reilly lied about seeing combat in the Falkland Islands: lying is hardly an exclusively right-wing trait, of course, but there's something brazen in the Fox host's decision to fight back by simply asserting that he never claimed he was there - even though he did so, and in print. Then there's the case of the climate researcher Willie Soon, whose doubt-mongering work turns out to have been funded by huge cash infusions from the fossil-fuel industry, a fact he didn't bother making clear in most of his publications.
Oh, and let's not forget Rudy Giuliani's boast that he was raised a better American than Barack Obama - despite the fact that Giuliani's father, in the resonant words of investigative reporter Wayne Barrett, "did time in Sing Sing for holding up a Harlem milkman and was the bat-wielding enforcer for the loan-sharking operation run out of a Brooklyn bar owned by Rudy's uncle." Little wonder that, before this week was a day old, Salon had published two pieces exploring the eccentricity of "right-wing brains" and the mysteries of the conservative mind.
Yet a new study by researchers at the Ohio State University ought to stop us liberals from getting overly smug. Focusing specifically on science as reported in the media, it concludes that liberals and conservatives alike are capable of subconsciously rejecting findings that don't fit their preconceived views. In one sense, this is unsurprising: we're all subject to biases - excusing, say, bad behavior by a member of the party we support more readily than when it's those terrible people on the other side of the aisle, up to their usual tricks. Still, science is supposed to be a way of getting at the facts beyond those biases, and liberals tend to pride themselves on being open to its results. So it's a little unsettling to encounter evidence that nobody's immune from resisting findings they wish weren't true.
Erik Nisbet, Kathryn Cooper and Kelly Garrett recruited more than 1,500 people to, purportedly, test out a new educational science website. First, they asked respondents to agree or disagree with various claims - for example, that there's widespread disagreement among scientists about humanity's role in climate change (there isn't); or that people living near nuclear power stations are exposed to 20% more radiation than the rest of us (they aren't). Then participants explored the site, which included the right answers to those questions. When people encountered "dissonant messages" - findings that challenged their views - they were more likely to rate the site negatively, to resist the implications of the information they read there and to express distrust of the scientific community in general. That happened whether they were right-wingers encountering facts about evolution and climate change, or left-wingers encountering facts about fracking and nuclear power.
There was one significant difference to make liberals feel better: the negative reaction to dissonant findings was four times greater among conservatives. Yet, as the researchers point out, this might just be because climate change has a higher media profile than nuclear power, and that conservative think-tanks spend millions providing denialists with off-the-rack arguments they can reach for when they wish to avoid the truth - not because one side of the political spectrum is inherently more prone to the bias than the other. (The anti-vaccine movement reinforces the point: it seems to be a largely left-wing phenomenon.)
Here's one disastrously wrongheaded conclusion you could draw from this kind of work: that nobody knows anything, both sides are as bad as each other, and that the scientific consensus on climate change is probably just the result of a bunch of corrupt and biased liberal scientists intent on seeing only the facts they prefer. (If those are the lessons you draw from this study, perhaps you're just exhibiting the phenomenon itself, and seeing what you want to see in the research?) There's nothing in the study to support that, nor anything that favors the "on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand" style of false balance in journalism.
Instead, this is more evidence for how central a role emotions and subconscious motives play in our thinking processes - a phenomenon known as "motivated reasoning". It's tempting to think of psychological biases as relatively minor irritants that distort our otherwise reliable efforts to get at the truth. But what if our reasoning is shot through, from start to finish, with emotional considerations, such as the desire to feel a sense of group belonging, or an unwillingness to admit your previous judgments were flawed? (Or just a strong desire to pander to your chosen constituency for money?) As neuroscience has shown us, emotional judgments get made instantaneously; by the time reasoning cranks into action, it's doing so in a pre-existing emotional soup. We may be, as Jonathan Haidt puts it, more like lawyers than scientists, concerned above all not with finding the truth but with shoring up our case. No wonder we respond to science that threatens our case not by changing our beliefs but doubting the science.
The scholars Dan Sperber and Hugo Mercier, among others, even argue that this might be why we've evolved to be reasoning creatures in the first place: not to get at facts, but because it's evolutionarily adaptive to be able to win others to your cause.
These are troubling reflections. What if your most deeply held principles aren't deeply held because they're right, but because you're really good at convincing yourself? But the most troubling aspect of the new study may be the following finding: encountering those "conservative-dissonant" facts about the truth of climate change and evolution, it turned out, led to a greater distrust of science across the board, among liberal as well as conservative participants. It seems, in other words, as if the very fact that climate change has become politicized makes everyone trust science a little less. There is no such thing as "just the facts": every fact you encounter arrives in a mind that's already full of emotional baggage. When it comes to sculpting reality to fit our preferences, few of us may rise to the level of a Fox News host - but all of us may be a little O'Reillyish inside.
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The Guardian
February 24, 2015 Tuesday 11:18 AM GMT
Artificial glacier could help Ladakh villagers adapt to climate change;
Engineers are creating giant pyramids of ice in the drought-hit Indian Himalayas to see if the melt water they release can help solve water shortages during the region's dry season
BYLINE: Janaki Lenin
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 633 words
Villagers of the high desert of Ladakh in India's Jammu and Kashmir state used to harvest bountiful crops of barley, wheat, fruits, and vegetables in summer.
But for years the streams have run dry in spring, just when farmers needed water to sow seeds. They had water when it wasn't needed during the rest of the year, such as in winter, when Ladakhis let water gush from taps to prevent pipes from freezing and bursting.
Villagers blame climate change for causing glaciers to shrink by melting them faster than before.
To resolve the water-shortage problem, Sonam Wangchuk, a mechanical engineer, and his team of volunteers are building a gigantic vertical block of ice in Phyang, nine miles from Leh, the capital of Ladakh. When spring comes and the artificial glacier melts, farmers will have flowing water.
The ingenious method stores water without the need for concrete water storage tanks or dams. While it won't stop glaciers from shrinking, it could help people adapt to a warming world.
Last winter, Wangchuk built a six-metre-high prototype on a fully exposed riverbank to test his novel idea. It stored 150,000 litres of water at 3,170 metres, the lowest altitude in Leh valley. This, he said, proved ice pyramids can be built anywhere in the region.
The frozen cone resembles Buddhist mud stupas, and Wangchuk was quick to come up with a name for them: ice stupa. When the prototype lasted until mid-May, he was encouraged to attempt a 30-metre-high pyramid of ice this winter.
But the cost of piping water from the Phyang stream, 1.5 miles away, was an exorbitant $100,000 (£64,700). Unperturbed, he raised the money on the crowd-funding platform Indiegogo and work began on 21 January.
The site was waterproofed with clay, so when the ice stupa melted, water would not seep into the desert sand. Sprinklers sprayed water from above, and the frigid wind froze the droplets as they hit the ground. A cone of ice built up slowly but steadily.
With only two more weeks of winter left, time is running short. The stupa will likely be no more than 15 metres high when completed, half the size of the planned 30 metres.
"This year was the first time, so there were complications and delays," Wangchuk told the Guardian. "We wanted to achieve two things - to show how to make a stupa and how to green a patch of desert. We want to create orchards and greenhouses for vegetables.
"It's difficult to say how many people will eventually benefit. Phyang village has only 2,000 people. But there'll be enough water for many more. This is an economic as well as ecologic[al] activity."
In the coming years, Wangchuk hopes to build 80 to 90 stupas, each more than 30 metres tall, in Phyang village. They'll store 1bn litres of water, enough to irrigate 600 hectares (1,500 acres) of desert, he says.
To make so many ice pyramids, the only additional investment is the pipeline. Wangchuk said: "We need more pipes so we can extend it farther and farther. It will take another $100,000 [£64,800] to make the other stupas."
Once the pipes are laid, frozen ice pyramids can be built year after year without pumping in more money. "The capital cost of infrastructure is Rs. 0.025 per litre. After that the water is free. The underground pipes will last a hundred years."
Wangchuk thinks the only way of dealing with the effects of climate change in Ladakh is to build "stupas clubbed with small reservoirs that hold rainwater where it can't freeze. People say there's less and less snow, but there's more precipitation in the form of rain. We need some way of holding water in the high mountains and then form ice stupas. The scope will become smaller if streams have less and less water."
But for now, the desert around the 3,500-metre-high Phyang will turn green in summer, as water flows for the first time in many years.
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The Guardian
February 24, 2015 Tuesday 10:51 AM GMT
Harvard prepares to fight fossil fuel divestment case in court;
World's richest university will appear in court on Friday to seek dismissmal of lawsuit brought by students calling for it to pull investments out of coal, oil and gas companies
BYLINE: Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 547 words
Lawyers for Harvard University will appear in court on Friday to fight off attempts to force the world's richest university to dump coal, oil and gas companies from its $36bn (£23bn) endowment.
A lawsuit filed late last year by seven law students and undergraduates argues the university has a duty to fight climate change by pulling out of fossil fuel companies.
The university and the state of Massachusetts, which is also named in the lawsuit, are asking the judge to dismiss the case.
But a student sit-in at the Harvard president's offices last week - and the rapid expansion of the campus divestment movement - suggest that the university can expect continued pressure.
"This is important to us because climate change is supposed to be a huge problem and so far our existing institutions have been unable to address it in a way that is commensurate with the problem," said Alice Cherry, a second year law student and one of the seven bringing the suit. "We think it is past time for our legal system to have something to say about it."
The lawsuit argues that Harvard, by continuing to invest in fossil fuels, is putting current and future generations in danger.
"Such investments contribute to current and future damage to the University's reputation and to that of its students and graduates, to the ability of students to study and thrive free from the threat of catastrophic climate change, and to future damage to the university's physical campus as a result of sea-level rise and increased storm activity," the complaint contends.
The students are calling for Harvard to withdraw immediately from an estimated $79m in direct investments in coal, oil and gas companies, and begin phasing out all other investments containing fossil fuel stocks.
The lawsuit puts a growing spotlight on Harvard, as the world's richest university. Over the last few years, the divestment movement has jumped from college campuses to charitable foundations and pensions funds - with the recent crash of oil prices strengthening the financial argument for getting out of fossil fuels.
Last week, 34 Harvard students staged a sit-in outside the offices of the university president, Drew Gilpin Faust. More than 230 faculty members have signed a letter calling on Harvard to drop oil and coal companies.
So far, Harvard hasn't budged on its refusal to divest. In 2013, when Harvard was first confronted with divestment demands, Faust responded that the endowment was set up to support academic aims, and not serve other purposes.
The university said its lawyers would urge the judge to dismiss the lawsuit.
"Climate change poses a serious threat to our planet. Harvard agrees that this threat must be confronted, but we have focused our efforts on supporting the research and teaching that will ultimately create the solutions to this challenge," Jeff Neal, a university spokesman, said in an email.
The email accused last week's sit-in protesters of coercion, and said they had crossed the line into unacceptable forms of protest.
"We are deeply disappointed that divestment advocates have chosen to resort to a disruptive building occupation as a means to advance their view. Such tactics cross the line from persuasion to disrespectful and coercive interference with the activities of others."
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The Guardian
February 24, 2015 Tuesday 12:43 AM GMT
Is Bolivia going to frack 'Mother Earth'?;
First steps towards producing shale gas meet with increasing concern among Bolivian civil society
BYLINE: David Hill
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 1049 words
The momentum is building. Bolivia's state oil and gas company YPFB announced in early 2013 it would begin studies to identify shale gas deposits, and in November that same year it gave a presentation in Santa Cruz on shale gas and the country's probable reserves. Also in 2013 it ordered companies to take samples of one particularly promising geological formation, sent a delegation to the Vaca Muerte shale gas deposits in Argentina, and signed an agreement with YPF, Argentina's state oil and gas company, to "evaluate shale gas potential" in Bolivia's Chaco region and train Bolivians in shale gas techniques.
That's to say nothing of the "minifracking" that has already been done at one Bolivian well "with the support of the Halliburton company" and which found tight oil, according to Reporte Energia in June 2013 drawing on "trustworthy sources in the hydrocarbons industry."
"The possibility that Bolivia will start extra-officially producing unconventional gas is slowly crystallizing," Jorge Campanini, from Cochabamba-based CEDIB, wrote in a report on fracking in Latin America published in July 2014 by the Observatorio Petrolero Sur. "Extra-officially because there is no law that regulates hydraulic fracturing, but as a result of policy expanding the hydrocarbons frontier it's possible to begin evaluations/studies - as well as conduct deep exploration - because nothing prohibits it."
A new hydrocarbons law has been promised, though, and back in 2012 the Vice-Minister for Hydrocarbons Exploration and Exploitation was reported by media saying it would open the way for shale gas operations.
"The hydrocarbons bill is still officially a state secret," Campanini told the Guardian, "but despite that we have managed to see a presentation which included a slide saying that the exploitation of unconventional gas would be included."
Some Bolivians are immensely concerned. A collective of organisations and individuals calling itself the "Antifracking Movement in Bolivia" has emerged, and last October the Fundacion Solon in La Paz issued a "Declaration against Fracking in Bolivia", describing it as a "highly risky and contaminating" technique using huge amounts of water and highly toxic chemicals with devastating health impacts.
"If Bolivia exploits its 48 trillion cubic feet of shale gas, 242 billion litres of water will be contaminated forever and 2.6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide will be emitted, further contributing to climate change," the Declaration states.
In December Bolivians Fabrizio Uscamayta and Martin Vilela, from TierrActiva and the Bolivian Platform on Climate Change, travelled to Peru to present the fracking threat to the International Tribunal for the Rights of Nature. They told the Tribunal the Chaco was a "very, very vulnerable" region, that fracking posed serious dangers to rare water sources, and that it would massively increase the country's carbon emissions.
"There is very little publicly-known about this," said Uscamayta. "Access to information is very restricted."
According to Uscamayta, it isn't clear who would be directly affected by fracking in the Chaco, but the "potential" areas are "on or near territories" belonging to several indigenous peoples: the "Guaranies, Tapiete, Weenhayek and Ayoreos."
"Indirectly, by contaminating water in the Chaco basin, it would impact three out of the country's nine departments and easily more than a million people," he told the Guardian.
Amos Batto, an American from Bolivian grassroots organisation Reaccion Climatica, says interest in fracking goes right to the heart of the government's ideas about industrialisation, growth and energy independence. Batto told the Guardian that Bolivians' increasing wealth is largely based on gas revenues, that domestic gas consumption is soaring, that there are plans to build 19 industrial plants, that Bolivia has committed to supply Argentina and Brazil in the future, and yet the country's gas deposits could run out before 2026. That explains the recent drive to expand its hydrocarbons frontier, including into supposedly "protected natural areas", and moves to frack.
"What happens if they can't find enough new reserves?" Batto asks. "That's where fracking comes in. Fracking is basically plan B. I think of it as permanent destruction, but that's not how they think about it. They see fracking as another way to industralize."
Bolivia passed a "Law for the Rights of Mother Earth" in 2010. One of its principles is "guaranteeing Mother Earth's regeneration", and one of the seven rights is the "protection of water from contamination." How, on these grounds alone, could fracking be compatible with Bolivian law?
"[President] Evo [Morales] has adopted the Mother Earth discourse and goes all over the world and says these things and that's why people love him," says Batto. "But if you look at what has actually been done since 2010... This is the industrial growth most of the rest of the world is saying no to. This is what a lot of people looking at Bolivia don't understand."
Uscamayta says that the government has a vision of Bolivia becoming "South America's energy heart", although a recent power shift in Morales's administration might change things.
"In civil society we hope the government can comply more closely with the constitution and we can establish a more harmonious relationship with Mother Earth, prohibiting the use of technologies like fracking and instead encouraging alternatives," says Uscamayta.
Elizabeth Peredo, from the Fundacion Solon, told the Guardian that Bolivia's aim is to become a "regional energy power" and that plans to invest in nuclear - US$2 billion, according to Morales - are "very concerning" too.
"We don't have enough oil or gas reserves to become a regional energy power," she says. "This totally contravenes the Law of Mother Earth. We have to find another way to think about development and energy. We have to think about it in terms of climate change, and not fracking or nuclear."
YPFB's agreement with YPF to evaluate shale gas deposits in the Bolivian Chaco was scheduled to expire in the next few months, according to a June 2013 YPFB statement. What has happened in the meantime and what are the next steps?
Bolivia's Ministry of Hydrocarbons and Energy, YPFB and YPF could not be reached for comment.
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The New York Times
February 24, 2015 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final
Fighting Back Against Climate Change
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Editorial Desk; LETTER; Pg. 22
LENGTH: 684 words
To the Editor:
Re ''The Risks of Climate Engineering'' (Op-Ed, Feb. 12):
Contrary to Clive Hamilton, a recent National Research Council study isn't a ''Plan B'' that sits ready to be deployed as a substitute for deep cuts in emissions. Instead, at best geoengineering -- defined in the article as ''technologies aimed at deliberate, large-scale intervention in the climate system to counter global warming'' -- is a possible tourniquet that might crudely blunt, in an emergency, some of the most horrible effects of climate change.
When policy makers realize the severe flaws of this option, yet its possible need, they won't lose the nerve to make essential cuts in emissions. Rather, they will probably redouble their efforts. Without research, however, this emergency option isn't really available, nor are the badly needed mechanisms for governing geoengineering that will emerge only if countries do research and testing.
Contrary to Mr. Hamilton's suggestion, moves by Russia to insert pro-geoengineering language in a recent United Nations assessment of climate science are not an ominous sign that governments are trying to deploy the technology. As one of the main authors of that report, I found much more worrisome the successful efforts by many other governments and NGOs to strip away all mentions of geoengineering.
DAVID G. VICTOR
La Jolla, Calif.
The writer, convening lead author for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is a professor of international relations at the University of California, San Diego.
To the Editor:
Clive Hamilton is correct to evince extreme skepticism about the efficacy of geoengineering, called ''Plan B,'' as a strategic response to the perils of climate change. What is revealing about the emerging public debate on deployment of audacious atmosphere-regulating technologies is that we have been so reluctant to consider far more modest strategies that, for purposes of drawing a direct analogy, might be referred to as ''societal engineering.''
By markedly reducing our appropriation of fossil-fuel energy and other materials, we could achieve a similar margin of safety without the need for jury-rigging the planet with elaborate contrivances that will probably need to be actively managed in perpetuity. Societal engineering, to have meaningful effect, will entail more than modest improvements in efficiency but instead require thoughtful reductions in overall resources.
The challenge of devising ways to enable affluent consumers to have flourishing lifestyles at lower levels of material use could turn out to be a more readily achievable objective than learning how to safely disperse tons of sulfate particles into the atmosphere or forever entomb carbon dioxide in geological formations.
MAURIE J. COHEN
Princeton, N.J.
The writer is director of the Science, Technology and Society Program at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.
To the Editor:
Everything Clive Hamilton writes about climate engineering is true, but his conclusion that research is dangerous is misguided.
Starting small-scale research would communicate the potential for serious harm from climate change. More awareness that we might need climate engineering may help spur meaningful action to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions.
As we recommended in the Bipartisan Policy Center's report on climate engineering, research must be conducted transparently and with deliberate public engagement.
Climate engineering will never be a panacea or a replacement for the hard work of eliminating greenhouse gas emissions, but gaining more knowledge about its drawbacks could stop a dangerous, uninformed deployment. There remains a chance that some helpful methods will be found, and, sadly, we may need that help.
JANE C. S. LONG
M. GRANGER MORGAN
FRANK LOY
Oakland, Calif.
Dr. Long is co-chairwoman of the Task Force on Geoengineering at the Bipartisan Policy Center. Dr. Morgan is a professor in the engineering and public policy department at Carnegie Mellon University. Mr. Loy is a former under secretary of state for global affairs.
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The New York Times Blogs
(Dot Earth)
February 24, 2015 Tuesday
On Rajendra Pachauri's Resignation from the U.N. Climate Panel
BYLINE: ANDREW C. REVKIN
SECTION: OPINION
LENGTH: 469 words
HIGHLIGHT: The longtime head of the U.N. climate science panel steps down amid sexual misconduct allegations.
Rajendra K. Pachauri, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since 2002, resigned today amid allegations of sexual harassment by a 29-year-old female employee of the Indian energy institute he has long run.
Bloomberg Business discusses the complaint:
Last week, a 29-year-old researcher accused the 74-year-old Pachauri of making physical advances and sending lewd text messages and e-mails, according to a copy of the complaint and her lawyer. The female researcher had joined The Energy and Research Institute Pachauri leads in September 2013.
The Guardian describes his defense:
His lawyers claimed in the court documents that his emails, mobile phone and WhatsApp messages were hacked and that criminals accessed his computer and phone to send the messages in an attempt to malign him.
Needless to say, if the allegations hold up, this is a terrible blot on his reputation. But the real shame is that he stayed in his position so long - and my reasoning has nothing to do with sexual misconduct.
In his resignation letter to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Pachauri said he'd planned to step down on Nov. 2 last year after the release of the final portion of the panel's fifth climate report, but "close friends and colleagues advised me against that action and to continue with outreach efforts worldwide."
Pachauri also had colleagues on the panel who had, privately, been eager for new leadership for years. One reason was his habit of mixing personal advocacy with the authority granted by his position.
In 2011, I wrote a piece on this issue in which I suggested - as a consumer of panel reports since 1990 - that he adjust his approach (for instance, speaking in two sentences - one official, one personal) or step down to focus on climate campaigning. Here's an excerpt:
To my eye, Pachauri has strayed too often into policy statements that appear to go well beyond what the panel, in its charter and its new communication plan, is supposed to do "to ensure objectivity and transparency as well as safe-guard the IPCC as a policy-relevant but policy-neutral organization."
Of course, my views are simply those of someone who has relied on the panel as a journalist since it was created as a remarkable experiment in science analysis and communication in 1988.
(Here's a comprehensive paper by Alan Hecht and Dennis Tirpak putting the panel in broader context.)
But my views largely mesh with the conclusions of the review of the climate panel's procedures by the InterAcademy Council, the network of the world's national academies of science, which last year concluded, "Straying into advocacy can only hurt I.P.C.C.'s credibility."
In more than a few ways, it would have been wise for him to have ignored his friends' advice last November and stepped down at the top of his game.
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The Guardian
February 23, 2015 Monday 11:37 PM GMT
Oysters, clams and scallops face high risk from ocean acidification, new study finds;
Shellfish make up a lucrative business in the US, bringing in $1bn annually. But climate change puts the industry at risk, especially in Massachusetts' Cape Cod
BYLINE: Siri Srinivas
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 967 words
As oceans become more acidic, the US shellfish business is facing "high economic risk" in 15 out of 23 coastal states, according to a study published Monday in the Nature Climate Change journal. Massachusetts tops the list of states facing the highest risk, the study concluded.
Shelled mollusks such as oysters, clams and scallops are extremely sensitive to ocean acidification, according to the paper. Those species represent lucrative fisheries, and a big part of the economy in coastal communities that depend on their sale. The US shellfish industry brings in $1bn annually, according to the report.
In the Southern Massachusetts fishery alone, shellfish makes up a $300m-per-year business, with the state giving out 1,350 commercial fishing licenses annually. In the states of Washington and Oregon, the mollusk business produces approximately $100m in direct sales. It supports 3,200 jobs in Washington alone.
The two-year study, which claims to be the first ever shellfish vulnerability assessment for ocean acidification, charts the long-term economic impacts of ocean acidification in coastal communities across the US.
Researchers identified places where rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, as well as ocean acidification due to algae blooms, have caused mollusk harvests to decline, and used this information to map the risk profiles of different coastal communities.
Why are oceans growing more acidic?
Oceans typically absorb about 30% of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But consistent air pollution has tilted that balance. When CO2 levels in the atmosphere increase, CO2 in the oceans also increase accordingly, making the oceans more acidic.
Meanwhile, rising sewage and chemical waste released into the oceans introduce nutrients that spur algae populations to bloom in the oceans. Any algae that isn't eaten by other marine life then decomposes, releasing CO2 into the water and further lowering pH levels.
The higher acidity is threatening marine species such as shellfish - and, as a result, related seafood businesses.
Massachusetts is most vulnerable
The Southern Massachusetts counties of Cape Cod and the Islands, south of the cape, are "more economically dependent on shelled mollusks than any other region", making them the most vulnerable communities in the country to ocean acidification, according to an explainer from the National Resources Defense Council, an environmental nonprofit.
In other words, Cape Cod gets a huge amount of its income from shelled mollusks. "Not only do they have lot to lose in terms of jobs and income, revenue, but they can't easily swap out and start fishing something else," says Lisa Suatoni, one of the authors of the report.
New Bedford, Massachusetts, is particularly vulnerable because approximately 80% of its fishing revenue comes from a single species: the sea scallop, she says. "Their fisheries options are low, they have a lot of poverty in those areas, low job options - just so much money on the line."
The social dimension of shellfish
Massachusetts' high risk came as a surprise to researchers, Suatoni says. "In the US, our economic impact so far has been primarily in the Pacific Northwest," she says. "Our vulnerability assessment says that the impacts are going to be much broader geographically and more hard hitting than people really thought."
By studying fishing communities at a closer, more granular level, researchers developed vulnerability profiles that are unique to each region, allowing for "tailored strategies" for mitigating the effects of ocean acidification in each place.
While they were at it, the researchers also studied what they call the "social dimension of ocean acidification", or the attempt to answer the question: "Who has the propensity to be harmed by loss of shellfish?"
By taking into account both the vulnerability of the fisheries and of the populations that benefit from them, researchers were able to factor in potential alternatives and ongoing policy changes in weighing regions' potential ability to reduce their risks and adapt.
More policy - and study - needed
Policymakers in some states are already aware of the economic threats posed by ocean acidification. Former Washington governor Christine Gregoire signed an executive order aimed at protecting the state's $270m shellfish industry in 2012. Washington, along with Maine and Maryland, have assembled expert commissions to tackle ocean acidification.
Other policymakers, though, have yet to take notice of ocean acidification as a serious threat to local economies. Suatoni says she hopes the report will help change that, and will also act as a strong message to federal research and monitoring programs, which aren't monitoring ocean water in most of the places researchers have identified as most vulnerable.
Suatoni says that there's a "real disconnect", due to underfunding, with research projects limited mainly to where marine researchers are already based. Their study was funded by a National Science Foundation grant.
"Very opportunistically we're monitoring the backyard of the marine maps of locations where scientific expertise [exists]," she says. "Sometimes that overlaps in areas of great social need, but most often it doesn't."
This article was amended on 22 February 2015. A previous version mistakenly stated that Bedford, Massachusetts, is vulnerable to ocean acidification, according to a new study. The correct town is New Bedford, Massachusetts.
The food hub is funded by The Irish Food Board. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled 'brought to you by'. Find out more here .
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The Guardian
February 23, 2015 Monday 4:32 PM GMT
EU wants Paris climate deal to cut carbon emissions 60% by 2050;
A major UN climate summit in Paris later this year should call on countries to make tough carbon cuts to avoid dangerous global warming, EU document says
BYLINE: Arthur Neslen in Brussels
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 637 words
The world's states should commit to a legally binding emissions cut of 60% by 2050, with five-yearly reviews, in a Paris Protocol to replace the moribund Kyoto agreement at a climate summit later this year, according to a leaked EU document.
But environmentalists have questioned the integrity of the headline 60% figure, and a strategy which is seen as overly-tilted towards the US.
"Major economies, in particular the EU, China and the US, should show political leadership by joining the Protocol as early as possible," says the EU's 'Road to Paris 2015' communication, which the Guardian has seen. "It should enter into force as soon as countries with a share of 80% of current global emissions have ratified it.
The EU accounts for nine percent of global emissions, compared to China's 24%, and the 12% emitted by the US, according to the document. "Combined, these targets would cover around half of global emissions," it says.
As soon as that number reached 80% - or 40 Gigatones of CO2 equivalent pollution - the new Paris Protocol would kick in.
Environmentalists welcomed the EU's attempt to keep emissions cuts within the rubric of a legally binding deal, rather than seeing it relegated to a protocol annex.
But many noted that the 60% CO2 cut would be measured against 2010 levels, and was thus the same as the bloc's previous aspiration of a 50% cut measured against 1990 levels - itself a genuflection to a 2007 IPCC report seen as outdated.
"The communication is absolutely not in line with the two degrees target and is a missed opportunity after the latest IPCC report clearly stated that there is a cumulative carbon budget," the Green MEP Bas Eickhout told the Guardian.
"It's frustrating to see the European Commission insist on the need to keep global temperature increases below two degrees celsius, but gloss over the inadequacy of its own action on climate change," added Brook Riley, a spokesman for Friends of the Earth Europe.
The five-yearly review suggestion is viewed by green NGOs as a concession to advance the EU's ten-year emission-cutting model onto other countries. The previous Kyoto agreement had begun with a five-year commitment period, which President Obama implicitly acknowledged in his offer of CO2 reductions by 2025 earlier this year.
The EU's gambit may receive a cool reception in Washington, where the Obama administration fears a Senate block on any legal agreement that gives the UN arbiter powers. But according to Eickhout, a focus on Obama's difficulties could cement a perception in the developing world that the EU was acting as the gatekeeper for a rich world club.
"I find it worrying that the EU is still so trans-Atlantically obsessed when there is much more movement in China and among other developing countries which want a deal," he said. "If we are able to build an alliance for a final deal with the African Union, progressive Latin Americans, Least Developed Countries and the low-lying islands - who are most affected by climate change - I don't think the US will really block it."
The EU's communication does exempt the poorest countries from presenting their proposed emissions cuts in the first quarter of 2015 - unlike G20 nations - and stresses that public sector climate finance should "continue to play an important role after 2020."
But only $10bn of a proposed $100bn a year climate aid fund by 2020 has so far been provided, raising fears that the global foundations of any deal could be eroded before negotiators have even arrived in Paris.
"The EU can do these communications but the big debate in Paris will be on finance where developing countries will ask for more," Eickhout said. "We should send the finance ministers to Paris, not the environment ones. The EU is trying to downplay the issue but it wont be downplayed by our partners around the world."
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The Guardian
February 23, 2015 Monday 3:48 PM GMT
Five reasons why soil is key to the planet's sustainable future;
It may look plain but soil is a natural resource essential to sustaining life on Earth
SECTION: FAO PARTNER ZONE
LENGTH: 990 words
It may not be as visually striking as a green forest or appear as vital as fresh water, but plain-looking soil is a natural resource just as essential to sustaining life on Earth. Soil provides nutrients, water and minerals to plants and trees, stores carbon and is home to billions of insects, small animals, bacteria and many other micro-organisms. Yet the amount of fertile soil on the planet has been diminishing at an alarming rate, compromising the ability of farmers to grow food to feed a global population that is projected to top nine billion by 2050.
One of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)'s 14 themes of focus in sustainable development, soil has been among priority areas discussed at UN headquarters in New York where intergovernmental negotiations for a post-2015 development agenda are currently taking place. Underscoring its importance, 2015, the year in which the world community will agree a new global development framework to succeed the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), has been declared the International Year of Soils by the United Nations. Here are five reasons to treasure our often overlooked natural resource.
1. Healthy soil feeds the world
Soil is where food begins. Composed of minerals, water, air and organic matter, soil provides primary nutrient cycling for plant and animal life and acts as a basis for feed, fuel, fibre and medical products as well as for many critical ecosystem services. "The quality of our food very much depends on the quality of our soil," says Ronald Vargas, Soils and Land Management Officer at FAO. "Soil degradation is a silent process but with huge consequences for humanity. Studies show that about a third of the planet's soils are facing moderate to severe degradation. Along with the international year of soils, 2015 happens to be a particularly important year for the planet's sustainable future with new global goals set to be announced. A focus and commitment to healthy living soils will be a crucial ally in ensuring food security and nutrition for all."
2. Soil, like oil or natural gas, is a finite resource
Soil is non-renewable - its loss is not recoverable within a human lifespan. It can take hundreds to thousands of years to form one centimetre of soil from parent rock, but that centimetre of soil can be lost in a single year through erosion.
Poor farming practices - extensive tilling, removal of organic matter, excessive irrigation using poor quality water and overuse of fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides - deplete soil nutrients faster than they are able to form, leading to loss of soil fertility and degrading soils. Some experts say the number of years of top soil left on the planet is comparable to estimates for reserves of oil and natural gas. At least 16% of African land has been affected by soil degradation. And globally, 50,000 square kilometres of soil, an area the size of Costa Rica, is lost each year, according to the * Global Soil Partnership.
3. Soil can mitigate climate change Soil makes up the greatest pool of terrestrial organic carbon, more than double the amount stored in vegetation. As well as helping to supply clean water, prevent desertification and provide resilience to flood and drought, soil mitigates climate change through carbon sequestration and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. "Soils of the world must be part of any agenda to address climate change, as well as food and water security," says Rattan Lal, Director of Ohio State University's Carbon Management and Sequestration Center. "I think there is now a general awareness of soil carbon, an awareness that soil isn't just a medium for plant growth."
4. Soil is alive, teeming with life
A quarter of the planet's biological diversity exists in soil. There are literally billions of microorganisms such as bacteria, fungi, and protozoans in the soil, as well as thousands of insects, mites and worms. More organisms are contained in one tablespoon of healthy soil than there are people on the planet. "It's only been recently that we've begun thinking about soil biodiversity as a resource we need to know something about," says Diana Wall, Scientific Chair of the Global Soil Biodiversity Initiative. "Without soil and their biodiversity, there is no human life."
5. Investing in sustainable soil management makes economic and environmental sense
Managing soil sustainably is cheaper than rehabilitating or restoring soil functions. In the Lempira Sur region of Honduras, a FAO project developed the Quesungual slash and mulch agroforestry system to replace the age-old slash-and-burn method of farming, which had led to declining moisture and fertility. It resulted in increased productivity and income for the region's farmers. A very different FAO-led project focusing on land, water and biological resources to reverse the process of land degradation in the Kagera river basin between Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania has improved the livelihoods and food security of farmers around Lake Victoria.
"Across the globe, human pressure on soils is reaching critical limits," adds Vargas. "As per the principles outlined in the World Soil Charter and supported by FAO, good soil governance requires actions at all levels, from governments to individuals in promoting sustainable soil management.
"A focus on soils in the post-2015 development agenda would bear rich rewards." *Committed to sustainable soil management, FAO members have established the Global Soil Partnership.
Content on this page is paid for and provided by FAO sponsor of the Guardian Global Development Professional Network.
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The Guardian
February 23, 2015 Monday 3:40 PM GMT
Turning up the heat: climate-proofing agriculture;
How can we protect one of the most important sectors in the world?
BYLINE: Nick Moss and Kristofer Gravning
SECTION: ADAM SMITH INTERNATIONAL PARTNER ZONE
LENGTH: 620 words
In 2014, more than 20 governments and 30 organisations launched a Global Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture. This was historic. It marked the first step in climate proofing one of the most important livelihood sectors in the world: agriculture.
But 2015 hasn't been a great year for protecting populations vulnerable to climate change; especially farmers in Malawi. The new year brought new tragedies for one of the poorest countries in the world: 15 out of 28 districts were flooded and 40,000 hectares of agricultural land destroyed, displacing over 200,000 people.
For Malawians, and other developing countries, extreme weather will increasingly become the norm. Agricultural sectors are extremely vulnerable to climatic changes. High temperatures and unstable weather conditions will continue to affect harvests, and yields will continue to drop in the face of unstable weather conditions. This will only get worse as global temperatures are forecast to rise by more than two degrees Celsius within the next 35 years.
Agriculture is the economic foundation of many African countries, contributing approximately 40 percent of Africa's total gross GDP. For many countries, agricultural development offers one of the best opportunities to promote job growth and improve incomes in rural areas. By 2050, Africa is expected to more than double its population to 2.4 billion. Feeding the continent will be one of the most important challenges of the 21st century, which further increases the importance of agriculture.
However, climate change threatens livelihoods, economic growth and development. "Climate resilient" methods of agriculture must be adopted before it is too late. For example, in Malawi farmers need to use crops accustomed to higher precipitation, change crop cycles to conform to seasonal patterns and use sustainable fertilizers to increase productivity.
At the moment, productivity is low due to under-investment, poor access to fertilizers and quality seeds, low grade technology, and poor training and capacity. Many smallholder farmers have been using the same techniques for generations, and systemic change to ensure agriculture is resilient requires a shift in behaviour change. Farmers need technical support and training to develop capacity in new farming techniques to deal with climate threats.
Each community will require advice tailored to specific climatic threats. Similarly they need access to funds to finance the purchase of new agricultural inputs and technologies: flood defences, terraces for conserving soil and water, proper irrigation, drainage systems and local meteorological warning systems. Governments can also help farmers manage climate risks by developing safety nets such as climate smart insurance products and financial structures that make it easier for farmers to invest in more climate friendly and resilient infrastructure.
The best way to help the 120,000 farmers affected by Malawi's devastating floods is to help them develop agricultural livelihoods that can withstand the climatic shocks of the future. However, a one-size-fits-all approach will not work. A smarter approach is needed: context-specific interventions. The international community must play an important role in ensuring climate-resilient farming practices; before it is too late.
Content on this page is paid for and provided by Adam Smith International sponsor of the Guardian Global Development Professional Network.
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The Guardian
February 23, 2015 Monday 2:01 PM GMT
Work of prominent climate change denier was funded by energy industry;
Willie Soon is researcher at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for AstrophysicsDocuments: Koch brothers foundation among groups that gave total of $1.25m
BYLINE: Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 1046 words
A prominent academic and climate change denier's work was funded almost entirely by the energy industry, receiving more than $1.2m from companies, lobby groups and oil billionaires over more than a decade, newly released documents show.
Over the last 14 years Willie Soon, a researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, received a total of $1.25m from Exxon Mobil, Southern Company, the American Petroleum Institute (API) and a foundation run by the ultra-conservative Koch brothers, the documents obtained by Greenpeace through freedom of information filings show.
According to the documents, the biggest single funder was Southern Company, one of the country's biggest electricity providers that relies heavily on coal.
The documents draw new attention to the industry's efforts to block action against climate change - including President Barack Obama's power-plant rules.
Related: Lobbyist dubbed Dr Evil behind front groups attacking Obama power rules
Unlike the vast majority of scientists, Soon does not accept that rising greenhouse gas emissions since the industrial age are causing climate changes. He contends climate change is driven by the sun.
In the relatively small universe of climate denial Soon, with his Harvard-Smithsonian credentials, was a sought after commodity. He was cited admiringly by Senator James Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who famously called global warming a hoax. He was called to testify when Republicans in the Kansas state legislature tried to block measures promoting wind and solar power. The Heartland Institute, a hub of climate denial, gave Soon a courage award.
Soon did not enjoy such recognition from the scientific community. There were no grants from Nasa, the National Science Foundation or the other institutions which were funding his colleagues at the Center for Astrophysics. According to the documents, his work was funded almost entirely by the fossil fuel lobby.
"The question here is really: 'What did API, ExxonMobil, Southern Company and Charles Koch see in Willie Soon? What did they get for $1m-plus," said Kert Davies, a former Greenpeace researcher who filed the original freedom of information requests. Greenpeace and the Climate Investigations Center, of which Davies is the founder, shared the documents with news organisations.
"Did they simply hope he was on to research that would disprove the consensus? Or was it too enticing to be able to basically buy the nameplate Harvard-Smithsonian?"
From 2005, Southern Company gave Soon nearly $410,000. In return, Soon promised to publish research about the sun's influence on climate change in leading journals, and to deliver lectures about his theories at national and international events, according to the correspondence.
The funding would lead to "active participations by this PI (principal investigator) of this research proposal in all national and international forums interested in promoting the basic understanding of solar variability and climate change", Soon wrote in a report to Southern Company.
Related: Harvard's high-profile alumni join fossil fuel divestment campaign in open letter
In 2012, Soon told Southern Company its grants had supported publications on polar bears, temperature changes in the Arctic and China, and rainfall patterns in the Indian monsoon.
ExxonMobil gave $335,000 but stopped funding Soon in 2010, according to the documents. The astrophysicist reportedly received $274,000 from the main oil lobby, the American Petroleum Institute, and $230,000 from the Charles G Koch Foundation. He received an additional $324,000 in anonymous donations through a trust used by the Kochs and other conservative donors, the documents showed.
Greenpeace has suggested Soon also improperly concealed his funding sources for a recent article, in violation of the journal's conflict of interest guidelines.
"The company was paying him to write peer-reviewed science and that relationship was not acknowledged in the peer-reviewed literature," Davies said. "These proposals and contracts show debatable interventions in science literally on the behalf of Southern Company and the Kochs."
In letters to the Internal Revenue Service and Congress, Greenpeace said Soon may have misused the grants from the Koch foundation by trying to influence legislation.
Soon did not respond to requests for comment. But he has in the past strenuously denied his industry funders had any influence over his conclusions.
"No amount of money can influence what I have to say and write, especially on my scientific quest to understand how climate works, all by itself," he told the Boston Globe in 2013.
As is common among Harvard-Smithsonian scientists, Soon is not on a salary. He receives his compensation from outside grant money, said Christine Pulliam, a spokeswoman for the Center for Astrophysics.
Related: World's biggest PR firm calls it quits with American oil lobby - reports
The Center for Astrophysics does not require scientists to disclose their funding sources. But Pulliam acknowleged that Soon had failed to meet disclosure requirements of some of the journals that published his research. "Soon should have followed those policies," she said.
Harvard said Soon operated outside of the university - even though he carries a Harvard ID and uses a Harvard email address.
"Willie Soon is a Smithsonian staff researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, a collaboration of the Harvard College Observatory and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory," a Harvard spokesman, Jeff Neal, said.
"There is no record of Soon having applied for or having been granted funds that were or are administered by the University. Soon is not an employee of Harvard."
Both Harvard and the Smithsonian acknowledge that the climate is changing because of rising levels of greenhouse gas concentrations caused by human activities.
Pulliam cast Soon's association with the institutions as an issue of academic freedom: "Academic freedom is critically important. The Smithsonian stands by the process by which the research results of all of its scholars are peer reviewed and vetted by other scientists. This is the way that the scientific process works. The funding entities, regardless of their affiliation, have no influence on the research."
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The Guardian
February 23, 2015 Monday 2:00 PM GMT
Climatology versus Pseudoscience book tests whose predictions have been right;
New book investigates climate prediction accuracy to determine who's credible
BYLINE: Dana Nuccitelli
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 665 words
I've just had a book published entitled Climatology versus Pseudoscience: Exposing the Failed Predictions of Global Warming Skeptics.
The book covers a wide range of climate-related topics, starting with a history of some key discoveries in the field of climate science beginning nearly 200 years ago. Along the way it debunks some common climate myths, progressing forward in time to the 1970s, when scientists' ability to model the global climate began to advance rapidly. It examines the accuracy of a variety of global warming projections, starting with J.S. Sawyer in 1972, through the recent IPCC reports, as well as some predictions by contrarians like Richard Lindzen.
Accountability was one of my prime motivating factors for writing this book. While contrarians often criticize the accuracy of climate models, their projections have actually been quite accurate. Not only were climate scientists and their models correct to project global warming resulting from the increasing greenhouse effect, but they've been quite good at projecting the right amount of warming. Climate scientists don't take nearly as much credit as they should for these accurate projections.
On the flip side of the coin, climate contrarians have predicted anything from minimal warming to rapid global cooling. Their predictions have generally been terribly inaccurate, and yet the same people who have made these wrong predictions are still treated as credible experts by certain segments of the media. It seems as though their history of inaccurate predictions has no effect on their credibility. When scientists with a history of inaccurate predictions are treated with the same credibility as those who have made accurate predictions, that's a problem.
The book discusses the 97% expert consensus on human-caused global warming and the details of our 2013 study that was the latest to arrive at that result. It also looks at the scientific evidence that underlies that expert consensus. After all, the consensus itself is just an indicator of the strength of the underlying scientific evidence. Climatology versus Pseudoscience is extensively researched, with over 100 references to peer-reviewed climate studies.
One chapter focuses specifically on some recent scientific research on continued global warming and the causes of the temporary slowdown of surface warming. This is an important topic, because the temporary so-called 'pause' or 'hiatus' has been so overblown in the media.
In fact, holding the media accountable for inaccurate and unrepresentative climate coverage was another factor that motivated me to write this book. The less than 3% of contrarian climate scientists like fossil fuel-funded Willie Soon (and worse, contrarian non-experts) have received a disproportionate media coverage. This is why people vastly underestimate the expert consensus on human-caused global warming, and it's one of the main reasons why people don't view climate change as an urgent issue. This problem of false balance in climate reporting has even plagued normally reliable media outlets like the BBC and The Telegraph.
Finally, the book considers what our future holds. The more global warming we cause, the more dangerous climate change impacts we'll trigger. These potentially include widespread species extinctions, crop failures leading to famines, costly loss of coastal property, and so forth. However, the book ends on a note of optimism. There are palatable policy options that could take us a long way toward avoiding the worst climate change impacts while allowing economies to keep growing, and improving air quality and public health as a side benefit.
My hope is that this book will serve as a useful and understandable resource of climate science information, highlight the credibility gap between mainstream climate scientists and contrarians, and show that we have a clear path forward toward minimizing the threats posed by rapid global warming. We just need to choose to take that path.
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The Guardian
February 23, 2015 Monday 9:52 AM GMT
Vancouver versus the rising sea: how the city is adapting to climate change;
The densely populated Canadian city is tenth most at risk of flooding in the world. Here's what the authorities are doing about itHow a children's playground protects Rotterdam from flooding
BYLINE: Jim Hall
SECTION: PUBLIC LEADERS NETWORK
LENGTH: 793 words
Major flashpoints in our changing climate are gradually forcing political leaders to prepare their populations for a radically different global environment.
Relatively low-lying coastal cities such as Vancouver are starting to realise that the window of opportunity to act in defence against climate change is closing. While Vancouver hasn't felt the full brunt of extreme weather, such as that recently experienced in the east coast of North America, the city has been judged as the tenth most vulnerable city in the world to flooding caused by sea level rise.
Anticipating major flooding, the city's mayor, Gregor Robertson, has called on the British Columbia province and federal governments to assist in preparing and financing flood adaptation projects.
Vancouver, a young city with a healthy market for residential development, has boomed in recent decades: the past 30 years have seen the city's population increase by a third to 600,000. For a country as vast as Canada the city is densely populated, with about 13,500 people per square mile; Glasgow, by comparison, has roughly the same population but just over half the residential density. Additionally, many of the most densely populated parts of Vancouver are either coastal or situated at the mouth of the Fraser River - an area particularly susceptible to flooding due to heavy rainfall and snow melt.
While the city authorities are keen to keep Vancouver's back from against the wall, they also want to make sure that its anti-flooding adaptation projects suit Vancouver's geography and complement the social make up of the city. The city has done well to update its flood maps and raise the minimum construction elevation for new buildings by 1.1 metres, but the scheme is in its infancy and still at risk of stalling.
In 2010, Vancouver gave itself 10 years to become the "greenest city in the world". This ambition sits alongside its adaptation strategy, both of which aim to deal with the effects and causes of climate change.
The city's officials recognise the challenge will be integrating flood protection into Vancouver's urban fabric, in a way that improves quality of life rather than impeding it. This is a big undertaking, with lots of work to follow including dyking, raising land above sea level, and ensuring flood resilient construction.
Vancouver is making good progress, this can be seen in projects that work with the grain of the local environment. It is working to restore old creeks to provide additional storm water storage. This also helps reintegrate biodiversity - one restored creek even encouraged the return of salmon in 2012 for the first time in 80 years. The local authorities have also initiated a major tree planting scheme and are amending the law to make it harder for households to chop down their own.
Related: How a children's playground protects Rotterdam from flooding
If infrastructure projects are to succeed in actually improving lives - and be delivered on time - it is vital that the public are on board. Vancouver and its local institutions have been keen to get residents involved in thinking about the sustainability of the city's infrastructure and its preparedness for large-scale flooding. As a way of generating public interest in flooding adaptation, researchers at the local Simon Fraser University held a public design contest in the autumn of last year, asking residents to submit their own redesign of the city with the sea level rise in mind.
Vancouver's plan to become the greenest city in the world has been internationally commended as a successful climate change strategy. Even so, our analysis at the Institution of Civil Engineers suggests that the city should avoid setting vague targets and focus on policy. Nevertheless, if the rhetoric succeeds in galvanising public and political support then the pursuit of these goals could have value.
Rising sea levels and raging storms spare no second thoughts for electoral cycles and political whims: a point Vancouver's leaders need to keep in mind when delivering the city's long-term flood defence programmes.
Jim Hall is a fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers and an author of Availability Infrastructure: Resilient Cities - analysis into resilience to climate change in Rotterdam, Vancouver and New York.
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The New York Times
February 23, 2015 Monday
Late Edition - Final
Cutting Through India's Smog
BYLINE: By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Editorial Desk; EDITORIAL; Pg. 18
LENGTH: 685 words
Proof of the grave air pollution problem confronting India is seen not just in the suffocating smog that on many days crowds out the sun in New Delhi, the world's most polluted city. It can be measured as well in the fact that the country has the world's highest death rate from chronic respiratory diseases, which kill an estimated 1.5 million Indians every year. A 2014 World Health Organization report concluded of the 20 most polluted cities in the world, India has 13.
After years of denial and indifference, ordinary Indians appear to be waking up to the dangers of relying on some of the dirtiest energy sources on the planet, including coal, diesel oil and burning garbage, to sustain economic growth and an exploding population. Yet the government has failed to address with any urgency what is indisputably a national health emergency.
And it is more than just a national emergency. The unregulated use of these energy sources adds copious emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas responsible for the warming of the Earth's atmosphere. So India's inaction is a problem for everybody, not just its more than 1.2 billion people.
World leaders are now preparing for a global summit on climate change in Paris in December, where they hope to agree on a global strategy. There have been positive gestures. Three months ago, the United States and China announced a breakthrough deal in which the Americans agreed to new emissions reductions and the Chinese agreed to a date when their emissions would peak. The European Union has made an ambitious pledge to reduce emissions by 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2030.
As the world's third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, India also needs to make a similarly strong commitment to keep the momentum going -- not just because its own emissions are large (about 5 percent of the world's total as of 2011) but because India often speaks for the developing world, and the example it sets will be crucial.
President Obama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India made only modest progress on climate change during their summit in New Delhi last month. Although Mr. Modi said he would make a positive contribution in Paris, there was no specific pledge to cut carbon emissions. Later one of his advisers told The Times that India is hoping to cut a side deal in Paris that would ensure India has ''exemptions'' from whatever broader agreement is reached. The notion of some kind of carve-out is not at all encouraging.
Mr. Modi was elected on a promise to liberalize India's economy as a means to encourage foreign investment, create new jobs and lift millions of Indians out of poverty. The country has long argued that emissions targets would thwart these goals. Given that about 300 million Indians lack access to electricity and millions more live with shortages, the need for power is obviously great.
Even so, the current path -- a continued heavy investment in coal -- is self-destructive, killing India's people, taxing its health care system and making the environment so inhospitable that foreign investors could be scared away. In the last five years, India increased its coal power capacity by 73 percent. There is talk of building more nuclear power plants, a cleaner alternative, but that is expensive, and it is unclear if a recent agreement with the United States on India's liability law will make foreign investors less wary about pursuing such projects.
There have been a few positives signs. India is home to Asia's largest solar plant and Mr. Modi has pledged to expand solar capacity by training young people in these technologies. Mr. Obama offered to help with $1 billion in clean energy projects.
But much more can be done.
As Michael Bloomberg, the former New York mayor and now the United Nations envoy for climate change and cities, argued on a visit to New Delhi last week, the notion of a choice between economic development and environmental quality is a false one because ''if you don't focus on the environmental quality you will not be able to fix the economic side.'' Therein lies a message for India.
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The Guardian
February 22, 2015 Sunday 10:32 PM GMT
NSW urged to ban new coal mines in the Hunter Valley on health and climate grounds;
Renowned former Nasa climate scientist James Hansen among signatories of letter to the government calling for halt to mining expansion
BYLINE: Oliver Milman
SECTION: AUSTRALIA NEWS
LENGTH: 792 words
Former Nasa climate scientist James Hansen has joined 21 other academics to urge the New South Wales government to ban new coal mines in the Hunter Valley, saying mining is putting residents' health at risk.
In a pre-election salvo, a letter to NSW premier Mike Baird raises concerns about health impacts from air pollution, degradation of underground water and soil and the resulting "dangerous changes" to Australia's climate due to the release of greenhouse gases.
The letter states: "The health of the community and the social and environmental values of the Hunter Valley are being damaged by the increasing coal production in the region.
"People's health is at risk from declining air quality associated with coal mining, transportation and combustion. The illnesses and deaths associated with air pollution from coal in the region are potentially costing taxpayers millions of dollars each year.
"It is time to begin to phase out coal production in the Hunter Valley and begin a transition to a safer, healthier, and secure economic future."
The letter is signed by Hansen, who is considered one of the first scientists to highlight the issue of climate change through his testimony to US Congress in the 1980s, along with former Australians of the year Fiona Stanley and Tim Flannery.
An accompanying report by the Climate and Health Alliance, a coalition of 28 health groups that are concerned about climate change, calculates that the health damage caused by the Hunter Valley's five coal-fired power stations costs the economy $600m a year.
This figure, estimated by Economists at Large, is based on the health costs and lost productivity from respiratory problems, such as asthma, and cardiac issues caused by coal dust particles released into the atmosphere.
Air quality monitors in the Hunter Valley picked up 118 breaches of the safe national standard for PM10, a type of fine particle that can cause ill health when absorbed, in 2013. Such air pollution has been clearly linked to adverse health overseas but, the report admits, no comprehensive study of the impact of coal mining on health in the Hunter Valley has been conducted.
The Climate and Health Alliance said the NSW government and the opposition Labor party should commit to halting any new coal projects in the Hunter Valley. NSW goes to the polls on 28 March.
The Hunter Valley is now home to two thirds of NSW's coal production, with 31 coal mines and five coal-fired power stations pumping out an estimated 145m tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.
There are 21 new mines or mine extensions proposed for the Hunter, meaning emissions would rise to 243m tonnes if they went ahead.
"The decision to continue the expansion of coal is flawed for many reasons, one being the strong association between living near coal mines and a variety of health impacts," said Liz Hanna, an ANU academic and president of the Climate and Health Alliance.
"The huge subsidies given to the mining industry are immoral and the economic benefit for a small few, which are sacrificing the health and livelihoods of people, is not even justified given that coal is an outmoded energy source.
"The Hunter Valley was once beautiful and pristine, it was green and lush with clean air. It's a shameful disgrace to sacrifice this beautiful area for a toxic industry."
Hanna said there would be "cascading health impacts" if coal mining was allowed to expand in the Hunter, predicting that politicians who backed this growth "will not be rewarded at the ballot box".
Wendy Bauman, a farmer who lives in the small town of Camberwell, 90km from Newcastle, said the community was concerned about the health ramifications of mining.
"I am surrounded by mines here, the nearest open cut mine is just 1km from me," she said. "The biggest issue is the air pollution which is absolutely horrendous, it gets inside your house and we breath it in. I've had a CT scan and I've lost 20% of my lung function and I've got dust in my lungs.
"The other problem is the water. We live on the driest inhabited continent on Earth, so water is critical. The Hunter river is so polluted now."
Bauman said she had to give up dairy farming due to the negative impact of coal dust upon her business.
Earlier this month, Rio Tinto's Bengella Mine extension project was approved. The mine is 4km from the Hunter Valley town of Muswellbrook and will be able to mine an additional 15m tonnes of coal a year for 24 years. It is estimated this expansion will provide about 900 jobs and $778m in state royalties.
Last week, both the NSW Coalition government and Labor opposition voiced support for the mining industry. The parties said they supported a reduction in the time it took to assess mining projects, in order to deliver jobs and investment more rapidly.
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The New York Times
February 22, 2015 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
A Bleak Forecast
BYLINE: By GINIA BELLAFANTE
SECTION: Section MB; Column 0; Metropolitan Desk; BIG CITY; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 849 words
As you went spelunking through snowdrifts in recent days, pondering the moral necessity of pet-friendly ice melt and perhaps noting in horror the story of a Manhattan woman who froze to death hiking in subzero New Hampshire temperatures over the weekend, you were thinking about the future, defined in the moment as July. City functionaries were looking further ahead to a potentially more ''Hunger Games'' epoch.
Extreme weather has coincided with the release of a report by the New York City Panel on Climate Change. It isn't the sort of thing that will leave you guiltlessly saying, ''Just give me 15 minutes to pack my takeout meal and arrange my nine-irons'' the next time a well-meaning venture capitalist offers you a ride on his Gulfstream to Palm Springs.
The panel, including scientists and infrastructure and risk-management experts, was established during the Bloomberg years to forecast climate trends and advise on resiliency. Its report projects that sea levels will probably rise four to eight inches in New York City in the 2020s and perhaps up to 75 inches by the beginning of the 22nd century. By 2080, mean temperature in New York City during a typical year ''may bear similarities to those of a city like Norfolk, Va.,'' the report states.
Other unsettling predictions (based on NASA modeling tools) abound. From 1971 to 2000, mean annual temperature in New York City was 54 degrees; by 2100, the report said, the mean temperature could be as high as 66 degrees. By the 2050s, the number of heat waves per year is expected to more than double in the city (relative to the 29-year base period between 1971 and 2000) with the number of days at or above 90 degrees reaching somewhere between 32 and 57. By the 2080s, there could be 75 days a year of 90-degree weather. And of course there is no statistical apparatus available to forecast the uptick in distemper likely to accompany these changes.
In general, the report prepares us to expect increased flooding and more extreme weather ''events.'' Last year, the de Blasio administration announced an ambitious goal to mitigate such disruptions by reducing carbon emissions 80 percent by 2050, a standard set by the United Nations for developing countries. The plan is to be achieved here largely through retrofitting existing buildings -- both public and private, through financial incentives and mandates -- to enhance their energy efficiency.
In New York, unlike many other places, the majority of carbon emissions, 70 percent, come from buildings rather than from transportation. (In some sense, asking New Yorkers to do more to combat climate change is like having your most dutiful child sweep the floor after dinner and wash the dishes; our carbon footprint is already comparatively small because of a reliance on mass transit.)
How would the city's housing stock respond, though, to a weather ''event'' in the near future, before we all installed triple-glazed windows -- something like Hurricane Sandy or approximating it, causing power failures -- during a period not of moderate temperatures, but of extreme cold or heat? What if electrical supplies had shut down during a week like this one?
Not long after Hurricane Sandy, the Urban Green Council, an organization focused on sustainable building, set out to study those questions and found that few buildings of the kind that populate the city would fare well. The worst possible place to live in a scenario like that one would be a single-family detached house; in other words you would not want to be living in Mill Basin in Brooklyn or many places on Staten Island or in Queens. A single-family detached house, the study found, would fall below freezing by the fourth day of a blackout.
But the luxury glass towers proliferating in Manhattan would also do terribly -- reaching just slightly above freezing by the fourth day. During a summer blackout, glass towers, because of the intensity with which glass conducts heat, would be rough places to live; indoor temperature would get into the high 80s and beyond by Day 3. (Of course, it is the ultimate science fiction to imagine that anyone living in a $50 million apartment with wall-to-wall views would be in New York in August in the first place.)
In both cold and hot conditions, the study found, a rowhouse would be the best place to be. Being attached to other houses limits its exposure and keeps it better insulated. During a winter blackout, the temperature in a townhouse would still be in the low 40s after a week. As if the Brooklyn brownstone needed more to make it a precious commodity, this should be reason enough. And what this all implies is that the poor are right to resent the affluent, but might feel sorry for the exceedingly rich.
According to Russell Unger, executive director of the Urban Green Council, the building sector in New York is looking to reduce carbon emissions by 10 percent in the next 10 years, largely through innovative reconstruction. ''What Denmark is to windmills,'' he told me, ''New York could be to retrofit.''
Email: bigcity@nytimes.com
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/nyregion/global-warming-could-make-the-super-rich-jealous-of-rowhouse-residents.html
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GRAPHIC: PHOTO: A garage near Wall Street after Hurricane Sandy, the kind of weather event reports say could become more likely in New York as climate change continues. (PHOTOGRAPH BY DAMON WINTER/THE NEW YORK TIMES) (MB7)
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The New York Times
February 22, 2015 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
Deeper Ties to Corporate Cash for Doubtful Climate Researcher
BYLINE: By JUSTIN GILLIS and JOHN SCHWARTZ
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1688 words
For years, politicians wanting to block legislation on climate change have bolstered their arguments by pointing to the work of a handful of scientists who claim that greenhouse gases pose little risk to humanity.
One of the names they invoke most often is Wei-Hock Soon, known as Willie, a scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who claims that variations in the sun's energy can largely explain recent global warming. He has often appeared on conservative news programs, testified before Congress and in state capitals, and starred at conferences of people who deny the risks of global warming.
But newly released documents show the extent to which Dr. Soon's work has been tied to funding he received from corporate interests.
He has accepted more than $1.2 million in money from the fossil-fuel industry over the last decade while failing to disclose that conflict of interest in most of his scientific papers. At least 11 papers he has published since 2008 omitted such a disclosure, and in at least eight of those cases, he appears to have violated ethical guidelines of the journals that published his work.
The documents show that Dr. Soon, in correspondence with his corporate funders, described many of his scientific papers as ''deliverables'' that he completed in exchange for their money. He used the same term to describe testimony he prepared for Congress.
Though Dr. Soon did not respond to questions about the documents, he has long stated that his corporate funding has not influenced his scientific findings.
The documents were obtained by Greenpeace, the environmental group, under the Freedom of Information Act. Greenpeace and an allied group, the Climate Investigations Center, shared them with several news organizations last week.
The documents shed light on the role of scientists like Dr. Soon in fostering public debate over whether human activity is causing global warming. The vast majority of experts have concluded that it is and that greenhouse emissions pose long-term risks to civilization.
Historians and sociologists of science say that since the tobacco wars of the 1960s, corporations trying to block legislation that hurts their interests have employed a strategy of creating the appearance of scientific doubt, usually with the help of ostensibly independent researchers who accept industry funding.
Fossil-fuel interests have followed this approach for years, but the mechanics of their activities remained largely hidden.
''The whole doubt-mongering strategy relies on creating the impression of scientific debate,'' said Naomi Oreskes, a historian of science at Harvard University and the co-author of ''Merchants of Doubt,'' a book about such campaigns. ''Willie Soon is playing a role in a certain kind of political theater.''
Environmentalists have long questioned Dr. Soon's work, and his acceptance of funding from the fossil-fuel industry was previously known. But the full extent of the links was not; the documents show that corporate contributions were tied to specific papers and were not disclosed, as required by modern standards of publishing.
''What it shows is the continuation of a long-term campaign by specific fossil-fuel companies and interests to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change,'' said Kert Davies, executive director of the Climate Investigations Center, a group funded by foundations seeking to limit the risks of climate change.
Charles R. Alcock, director of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center, acknowledged on Friday that Dr. Soon had violated the disclosure standards of some journals.
''I think that's inappropriate behavior,'' Dr. Alcock said. ''This frankly becomes a personnel matter, which we have to handle with Dr. Soon internally.''
Dr. Soon is employed by the Smithsonian Institution, which jointly sponsors the astrophysics center with Harvard.
''I am aware of the situation with Willie Soon, and I'm very concerned about it,'' W. John Kress, interim under secretary for science at the Smithsonian in Washington, said on Friday. ''We are checking into this ourselves.''
Dr. Soon rarely grants interviews to reporters, and he did not respond to multiple emails and phone calls last week; nor did he respond to an interview request conveyed to him by his employer. In past public appearances, he has reacted angrily to questions about his funding sources, but then acknowledged some corporate ties and said that they had not altered his scientific findings.
''I write proposals; I let them decide whether to fund me or not,'' he said at an event in Madison, Wis., in 2013. ''If they choose to fund me, I'm happy to receive it.'' A moment later, he added, ''I would never be motivated by money for anything.''
The newly disclosed documents, plus additional documents compiled by Greenpeace over the last four years, show that at least $409,000 of Dr. Soon's funding in the past decade came from Southern Company Services, a subsidiary of the Southern Company, based in Atlanta.
Southern is one of the largest utility holding companies in the country, with huge investments in coal-burning power plants. The company has spent heavily over many years to lobby against greenhouse-gas regulations in Washington. More recently, it has spent significant money to research ways to limit emissions.
''Southern Company funds a broad range of research on a number of topics that have potentially significant public-policy implications for our business,'' said Jeannice M. Hall, a spokeswoman. The company declined to answer detailed questions about its funding of Dr. Soon's research.
Dr. Soon also received at least $230,000 from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. (Mr. Koch's fortune derives partly from oil refining.) However, other companies and industry groups that once supported Dr. Soon, including Exxon Mobil and the American Petroleum Institute, appear to have eliminated their grants to him in recent years.
As the oil-industry contributions fell, Dr. Soon started receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars through DonorsTrust, an organization based in Alexandria, Va., that accepts money from donors who wish to remain anonymous, then funnels it to various conservative causes.
The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, in Cambridge, Mass., is a joint venture between Harvard and the Smithsonian Institution, housing some 300 scientists from both institutions. Because the Smithsonian is a government agency, Greenpeace was able to request that Dr. Soon's correspondence and grant agreements be released under the Freedom of Information Act.
Though often described on conservative news programs as a ''Harvard astrophysicist,'' Dr. Soon is not an astrophysicist and has never been employed by Harvard. He is a part-time employee of the Smithsonian Institution with a doctoral degree in aerospace engineering. He has received little federal research money over the past decade and is thus responsible for bringing in his own funds, including his salary.
Though he has little formal training in climatology, Dr. Soon has for years published papers trying to show that variations in the sun's energy can explain most recent global warming. His thesis is that human activity has played a relatively small role in causing climate change.
Many experts in the field say that Dr. Soon uses out-of-date data, publishes spurious correlations between solar output and climate indicators, and does not take account of the evidence implicating emissions from human behavior in climate change.
Gavin A. Schmidt, head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan, a NASA division that studies climate change, said that the sun had probably accounted for no more than 10 percent of recent global warming and that greenhouse gases produced by human activity explained most of it.
''The science that Willie Soon does is almost pointless,'' Dr. Schmidt said.
The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, whose scientists focus largely on understanding distant stars and galaxies, routinely distances itself from Dr. Soon's findings. The Smithsonian has also published a statement accepting the scientific consensus on climate change.
Dr. Alcock said that, aside from the disclosure issue, he thought it was important to protect Dr. Soon's academic freedom, even if most of his colleagues disagreed with his findings.
Dr. Soon has found a warm welcome among politicians in Washington and state capitals who try to block climate action. United States Senator James M. Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican who claims that climate change is a global scientific hoax, has repeatedly cited Dr. Soon's work over the years.
In a Senate debate last month, Mr. Inhofe pointed to a poster with photos of scientists questioning the climate-change consensus, including Dr. Soon. ''These are scientists that cannot be challenged,'' the senator said. A spokeswoman for the senator said Friday that he was traveling and could not be reached for comment.
As of late last week, most of the journals in which Dr. Soon's work had appeared were not aware of the newly disclosed documents. The Climate Investigations Center is planning to notify them over the coming week. Several journals advised of the situation by The New York Times said they would look into the matter.
Robert J. Strangeway, the editor of a journal that published three of Dr. Soon's papers, said that editors relied on authors to be candid about any conflicts of interest. ''We assume that when people put stuff in a paper, or anywhere else, they're basically being honest,'' said Dr. Strangeway, editor of the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics.
Dr. Oreskes, the Harvard science historian, said that academic institutions and scientific journals had been too lax in recent decades in ferreting out dubious research created to serve a corporate agenda.
''I think universities desperately need to look more closely at this issue,'' Dr. Oreskes said. She added that Dr. Soon's papers omitting disclosure of his corporate funding should be retracted by the journals that published them.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/us/ties-to-corporate-cash-for-climate-change-researcher-Wei-Hock-Soon.html
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GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: Above, Wei-Hock Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, whose articles have been tied to corporate funding. Left, Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, praising scientists like Dr. Soon. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY PETE MAROVICH
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The Guardian
February 20, 2015 Friday 5:23 PM GMT
Harvard's high-profile alumni join fossil fuel divestment campaign in open letter;
University faces hearing in a lawsuit that argues Harvard has a duty to fight climate change by dumping fossil fuel companies from $36bn endowment
BYLINE: Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 760 words
Some of Harvard's most prominent graduates - from Hollywood star Natalie Portman to environmentalist Robert Kennedy Jr and the scholar Cornel West - called on the world's richest university to dump fossil- fuel companies from its $36bn endowment.
In an open letter, released on Friday as the university was being taken to court by its own students, more than 30 former Harvard students signed on to a campus campaign calling on the university to fight climate change by divesting from coal, oil and gas companies.
The alumni included Maya Lin, the architect of the Vietnam war memorial, Nobel laureate Eric Chivian, Pulitzer prize-winning author Susan Faludi, academics, preachers, former US senators and Securities and Exchange commissioners as well as Bill McKibben, the founder of the group 350.org, which has driven the campus divestment campaign.
"As Harvard's own researchers have done so much to show, global warming is the greatest threat the planet faces," the letter says. "From the typhoon-battered Philippines to the disappearing islands of the Pacific to the water-starved towns of California's drought-ridden Central Valley, this issue demands we all make changes to business as usual - especially those of us who have prospered from the systems driving climate change.
The letter, released just hours before the university faced a hearing in a lawsuit filed by students arguing that Harvard has a duty to fight climate change by pulling out of fossil fuel investments, suggests Harvard will face continued pressure in the months ahead over its endowment policies.
The alumni called for an old-style teach-in at Harvard on 12 April, followed by several days of sit-ins and rallies.
Over the last two years, the university has faced rising demands from students and faculty to set an example by winding down its direct investments in coal, oil and gas companies, thought to be worth at least $79m. It is believed indirect investments in fossil fuels are much greater.
Since then, a number of other universities have taken steps to divest. Stanford last May announced it would get rid of investments in coal companies. The heirs to the Rockefeller oil fortune decided to move out of fossil fuels last September.
Meanwhile, the steep fall in oil prices has helped the financial case for divestment, the letter argues.
However, Harvard's president, Drew Gilpin Faust, has said repeatedly that the university will not commit to divestment, and will fight climate change through research and other work.
Last week, Faust accused student divestment campaigners of resorting to "coercive" methods after they staged a sit-in at her offices.
"We do not believe that divestment from the fossil fuel industry is the appropriate answer to this challenge," a Harvard spokesman, Jeff Neal, wrote in an email. "We are deeply disappointed that divestment advocates have chosen to resort to a disruptive building occupation as a means to advance their view. Such tactics cross the line from persuasion to disrespectful and coercive interference with the activities of others."
Friday's letter argues that divestment is an effective strategy, and that Harvard - as the world's richest university - had an obligation to do more.
"Harvard's the most important non-profit in the world probably and the lead that Harvard takes is watched by everybody else. Other people who are timid will hide behind Harvard skirts if Harvard doesn't do anything," said Tim Wirth, a former Democratic senator from Colorado and climate change official in the Clinton administration, who signed on to the letter.
"It is very important that Harvard recognise this leadership responsibility. So far it's been very disappointing."
McKibben, whose 350.org organisation set off the divestment movement that has now spread to some 300 campuses, said that a number of former students were disappointed by Harvard's stand.
"A lot of alumni were depressed by the news that Harvard had reacted to the huge interest from students and faculty by increasing their investments in dirty fossil fuel," McKibben said.
"I also think Harvard may have been underestimating just how much its alumni care about climate change. I think there are a lot of us we are at an age where we are thinking about our children and grandchildren and the kind of world we are leaving behind, and we want to address this biggest crises in all the ways that we can."
McKibben said that Harvard risked being left behind by other institutions.
"In a world where the Rockefellers decided to divest from fossil fuel probably Harvard can too," he said.
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February 20, 2015 Friday 1:31 PM GMT
Full steam ahead: how will the election result affect UK rail passengers?;
HS2 is here to stay but Labour could derail franchising policy and push devolution. Ruth Hardy looks at rail policy post May 2015 The road ahead: how will the election result affect UK drivers?Up ahead: how will the election result affect UK air passengers?
BYLINE: Ruth Hardy
SECTION: PUBLIC LEADERS NETWORK
LENGTH: 1087 words
How did you get to work this morning? For a growing number of people, the answer's rail. After periods of stagnation, the UK's rail network is now busier than it has been for over 80 years: between 1998 and 2011, the number of passenger journeys rose by 62%. It's good news for the railway and train companies - but some parts of the network are approaching capacity.
Rail services can increase economic output by up to £10.2bn each year, by moving congestion off the roads and aiding productivity. And as climate change becomes an increasing concern, the environmental credentials of rail are key. So for the party - or parties - that form the next government, increasing rail capacity is a priority.
The rail industry today
Successive governments have increasingly invested in rail since the early 2000s. Despite the climate of austerity, this government has continued to invest, putting £5.3bn into the industry in 2013-14. The London Crossrail project took £1.1bn, while £3.5bn was the annual grant for Network Rail, which maintains the rail network and gives subsidies to the companies running services on the lines.
Key to this government's rail policy has been continued franchising of passenger services to private companies. But since the 2012 West Coast Railways fiasco, where errors by the Department for Transport meant it had to scrap a deal with FirstGroup, there have been some changes. Stephen Joseph, chief executive of the Campaign for Better Transport, says the department "has moved away from the lowest cost tender, which got them into serious trouble with the West Coast franchise ... to one that rewards quality."
Under the current system, only private companies can compete for franchises. Transport minister Claire Perry argues that this has worked well for the UK's railways. "I base that on not any ideological addiction to an ownership model," she says, but on the "huge growth [in the industry], both in terms of passenger numbers and in terms of investment".
A Tory government after May 2015 would deliver more of the same in rail policy. Perry says that the Conservatives have a "very strong commitment to continue investment in rail strategy and road strategy, and frankly I think our coalition partners have shared that involvement". Work on HS2 would continue, the proposed HS3 rail link to connect northern cities might also progress, and there are proposals to invest in rail infrastructure in Devon and Cornwall.
Rail policy under a new government
Related: 'UK's crazy franchising system is not a viable way to run railways'
While Labour has committed to HS2 - along with all main parties except Ukip and the Greens - it differs on franchising. "We'd be looking to review the failed franchising process," says Lilian Greenwood, shadow rail minister. She wants to allow public sector companies to compete for franchises and challenge the existing train operators. Labour would also look at devolving decisions about regional services, creating a "guiding mind" to oversee longer-term strategy, and capping fares.
How would public sector involvement affect the railways? Greenwood says we have seen the benefits of having a not-for-dividend rail operator recently. The East Coast franchise - which returned to the public sector after two private operators walked away - has since done well in terms of passenger satisfaction and punctuality. But despite its success, a deal has just been done to return it to the private sector.
Critics argue that letting public sector organisations bid for franchises will solve little, as it will require public money to be spent in the expensive tendering process, with no guarantee of success. Transport expert Christian Wolmar, who is running for the Labour nomination in the London mayoral elections, suspects the party may not get this far. He argues that it would be "too complex, it requires primary legislation and it really doesn't address any issues".
The only party suggesting anything radically different are the Greens, who want to "bring the railways back into public ownership". This is backed by the TUC, but as yet there is little detail about how it would be achieved; in a post-devolution society, there could be no return to a national British Rail run from London. Rail expert Paul Salveson points to the Welsh government's slightly more radical transport policy. Transport minister Edwina Hart recently announced the creation of a non-for-profit subsidiary of the Welsh government, which could potentially run rail services from 2018.
The future of rail travel
The growth in passenger numbers and freight shows no sign of slowing down. Paul Harwood, strategy and planning director at Network Rail, says: "Demand increasing all the time means it's a challenge to operate the trains quite as reliably because of the sheer number of people moving around." He says digital technology will be important, with computer-based systems replacing signalling lights, enabling more trains to run on existing lines. Passengers could receive more nuanced information about the trains they're trying to catch: not just whether they're delayed, but which trains are the busiest, and which parts are less crowded.
Related: The road ahead: how will the election result affect UK drivers?
The creation of more services is key. One way of doing this is by reopening unused rail lines, many of which were closed in the 1960s. This could act as "a catalyst to local development", says Joseph. "We need to have much more development based around revitalised rail networks."
Big projects like HS2, the electrification of lines currently used by diesel trains and investment in rolling stock can all help increase capacity. There's also the question of climate change, and Salveson argues that we need to be thinking about how to create a sustainable transport network. He says: "There is a big question about where rail goes in the next 30 to 40 years, and that's bound up with where the UK goes and what sort of society we become."
More in the series on transport policy post May 2015: · The road ahead: how will the election result affect UK drivers?· Up ahead: how will the election result affect UK air passengers?
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February 20, 2015 Friday 9:31 AM GMT
Green news roundup: Siberian tigers, divestment and fox hunting;
The week's top environment news stories and green events. If you are not already receiving this roundup, sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox
BYLINE: Environment editor
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 283 words
Environment news
· Fossil fuel industry protests over 'risky' assets warning from energy secretary· Harvard prepares to fight fossil fuel divestment case in court· World's biggest offshore windfarm approved for Yorkshire coast· Canadian mounties' secret memo casts doubt on climate change threat· World's coral reefs face major bleaching event this year, US agency warns· Minister's claims that solar panels harm UK food security are false· Biofuel from trash could create green jobs bonanza, says report· Germany moves to legalise fracking· Great Barrier Reef polluters face tougher action under Queensland's new government
On the blogs
· The rise of cycle touring - from crazy to cool· Privatisation of UK woodlands is happening by the backdoor· Oliver Rackham, tree writer, leaves behind big boots to fill· Nasa climate study warns of unprecedented North American drought· Is Hawaii's solar power surge slowing down?
Multimedia
· Siberian tiger video suggests species is returning to China, conservationists say· The week in wildlife - in pictures
Features and comment
· Has the Hunting Act stopped cruelty towards foxes?· Real progress on climate change needs trust between all political parties· The truth behind the wind power subsidies row· Is wearing fur morally worse than wearing leather?
Observer Ethical Awards
The Observer Ethical Awards are back for their 10 year anniversary. So tell us who you think is making the biggest difference in the fight for environmental and social justice. Browse the categories and nominate today
And finally...
· Energy-saving oven law gets warm welcome from celebrity chefsYour Sunday roast is set to get greener as Europe brings in a maximum power limit for ovens
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(Op-Talk)
February 20, 2015 Friday
What If We Lost the Sky?
BYLINE: ANNA NORTH
SECTION: OPINION
LENGTH: 1632 words
HIGHLIGHT: One proposal for reversing climate change could alter the appearance of the sky — and that in turn could affect everything from our physical health to the way we see ourselves.
What is the sky worth?
This sounds like a philosophical question, but it might become a more concrete one. A report released last week by the National Research Council called for research into reversing climate change through a process called albedo modification: reflecting sunlight away from earth by, for instance, spraying aerosols into the atmosphere. Such a process could, some say, change the appearance of the sky - and that in turn could affect everything from our physical health to the way we see ourselves.
If albedo modification were actually implemented, Alan Robock, a professor of environmental sciences at Rutgers, told Joel Achenbach at The Washington Post: "You'd get whiter skies. People wouldn't have blue skies anymore." And, he added, "astronomers wouldn't be happy, because you'd have a cloud up there permanently. It'd be hard to see the Milky Way anymore."
Losing the night sky would have big consequences, said Dacher Keltner, a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley. His recent work looks at the health effects of the emotion of awe. In a study published in January in the journal Emotion, he and his team found that people who experienced a great deal of awe had lower levels of a marker of inflammation that has been linked to physical and mental ailments. One major source of awe is the natural world. "When you go outside, and you walk in a beautiful setting, and you just feel not only uplifted but you just feel stronger," said Dr. Keltner, "there's clearly a neurophysiological basis for that."
And, he added, looking up at a starry sky provides "almost a prototypical awe experience," an opportunity to feel "that you are small and modest and part of something vast."
Research on the benefits of awe, he said, suggests that without a starry sky, "kids are going to be less imaginative, we're going to be less modest and less kind to each other," and "it may cost us in terms of health."
If we lose the night sky, he said, "we lose something precious and sacred."
He believes whitening the daytime sky might result in "that same loss of the sense of what's vast," a sense his team's research suggests is "one of the most important things that people build into their lives."
Paul K. Piff, a professor of psychology and social behavior at the University of California, Irvine, says that when he studied awe among the Himba in Namibia, "the night sky was one of the very clear elicitors" of the emotion. The sky "has this really important role, obviously, in all sorts of different historical ways for the development of humankind and human consciousness, but it also has this shared feature of, no matter where you are and where you come from, it seems to brings about this really, really amazing and transformative experience."
"We're finding in our lab that the experience of awe gets you to feel connected to something larger than yourself, see the humanity in other people," he explained. "In many ways it's kind of an antidote to narcissism." And the sky is one of the few sources of that experience that's available to almost everybody: "Not everyone has access to the ocean or giant trees, or the Grand Canyon, but we certainly all live beneath the night sky."
"Everyone's looked up at the sky and wondered what our place is relative to the universe," he said, "and so blotting out the stars would deprive people of this extremely compelling, awe-inspiring, transformative and cherished experience that we all share."
***
"We used to be a lot more connected to the sky," said the artist Ken Murphy. "It used to be either you'd look at the campfire, look at the sky, or go to bed, and now our lives have radically changed, and I think there's definitely a loss in that."
For his project "A History of the Sky," he set up a camera to take a photograph of the San Francisco sky every 10 seconds for a year. He then made a time-lapse movie of each day and arranged them into a grid, creating a sort of video diary of the view above the city:
"While I was shooting, I was very tuned into what was going on with the sky," he said. "It's very compelling to witness what's going on over our heads."
On long backpacking trips, his focus often turns to the sky: "It becomes this unfolding drama every night, and you really can see how in history we've spun these elaborate myths around things going on in the sky. It must have been such a huge part of people's consciousness before we had all these other distractions."
"It's a horribly disturbing thought to me that that would be permanently obscured in some way," he said.
For Jennifer Wu, a photographer and a co-author of the book "Photography: Night Sky," the starry sky is "one of those things that I hope that people will always enjoy."
"When we go out and we see the stars there's that connection," she said. "We have creativity, we get renewed. There's kind of a refreshing feeling about going out and being outdoors at night and seeing the stars."
If something came between us and the stars, she said, "we won't be able to photograph them as much." This is already a problem for city-dwellers, she noted - because of light pollution, many in dense areas can't see or photograph the stars.
"I love seeing the Milky Way," she added. "Going out and seeing this incredible, beautiful band of light overhead, it's just magnificent, and it would be disappointing to not see it anymore," to lose the feeling that "we're just one of these little dots among these many."
Dimming the appearance of the stars would also make it harder for astronomers to study them. Telescope technology has just reached a point, said Steven Flanders, the public affairs coordinator for Caltech's Palomar Observatory, "where the corrective systems on these telescopes are able now increasingly to compensate for the blurring of the earth's atmosphere. At least at visual wavelengths, we don't need to go out into space as we did with the Hubble Space Telescope, because we can do as well or better with corrective technology." And, he said, "that whole process is for naught if we lose access to the night sky."
One area that might suffer, he said, is the effort to identify planets in other solar systems. And that effort plays a big role in keeping the public interested in astronomy: When "we talk about planets," he explained, "we talk about the search for life."
As for how the loss of a swath of astronomical research would affect humanity, he said, "at a practical level, I don't think we would lose anything." But "at another level," he said, "we would lose some of the curiosity that in some manner helps keep this society vibrant and moving."
"The search for life is terribly exciting," he added, "and you can argue that a society, any society, needs that kind of stimulus in various forms."
***
It's not completely clear, some researchers say, just how much aerosols would change the look of the sky. "You are essentially putting stuff between you and the light," said Waleed Abdalati, a professor of geography at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and one of the authors of the report. "So when you're talking about dim light like stars," he explained, "it's certainly conceivable and even likely that they would appear dimmer." Aerosols might whiten the sky during the day as well. How visible these effects are, he said, would depend on how much material was injected into the atmosphere - and we don't yet know how much we'd want to inject, because we don't yet know what the other side effects of such injection might be.
Ben Kravitz, a postdoctoral researcher at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory who has studied the possibility of albedo modification through aerosols, said in an email that according to current models, the whitening effect of aerosol injection "would be similar to the whiter sky that is often seen in large cities or areas with industrial pollution." As for starlight, he said, "I don't know of any study showing that the aerosols would obscure the stars; that sounds like an interesting research problem."
Alan Robock, the environmental sciences professor, mentioned one possible upside in an interview: "You'd get these beautiful red and yellow sunsets," as "the yellow and red colors reflect off the bottom of this cloud."
He recommends more research into albedo modification: "If people ever are tempted to do this, I want them to have a lot of information about what the potential benefits and risks would be so they can make an informed decision."
Part of understanding those risks and benefits may be evaluating the emotional impacts of making big changes to the way the sky looks. Of these impacts, Dr. Abdalati said, "my own view is they're huge."
"I think in time their magnitude will diminish as it becomes the new normal," he said. But "for the generation that makes the decision to undertake something like that, to deploy something like that, I think the implications would be profound."
Still, he believes "it's incumbent upon us to understand the options before us, even if they're options that may never be deployed." That means making an effort to keep climate change from worsening in the first place, exploring ways to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere once its there - and understanding the implications of putting aerosols in the atmosphere, even if we never do it. "Deploying something like albedo modification is a last-ditch effort," he explained. "I think it's one that should be avoided at all costs, but should be understood."
And, he said, "we've gotten ourselves into a climate mess. The fact that we're even talking about these kinds of things is indicative of that."
For Dr. Keltner, the sky is a source of awe. For Ms. Wu, it's a fount of creativity. And if it one day turns white, it may become something else: a reminder that humanity ran out of options.
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February 19, 2015 Thursday 10:24 PM GMT
Readers respond to Davos: 'if a corporation breaks the law, send it to jail';
We were at the World Economic Forum this week, and we asked you what you'd like to say to business delegates. Here are some of your responses'It is profitable to let the world go to hell'As inequality soars, the super rich plan their escapes
BYLINE: Guardian readers
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 962 words
Approximately 2,500 global government and business leaders gather in Davos, Switzerland, this week for one of the hottest tickets in international relations.
Their stated aim is to bring business and politics together to solve global problems. While the meeting has garnered criticism as a "summit for the 1%", it provides a rare opportunity to get in front of some of the world's most influential people.
Earlier this week we asked: what bold pledges would you request if you could speak with Davos business delegates directly? From calls for a commitment to a global carbon tax to initiatives to end hunger, here are some of your responses.
Karina - Nuevo Leon, Mexico
Issues attendees should prioritize this year: climate change, inequality, food
I would urge enterprises to take a risk on sustainable investments that take more than one year to show returns. I'd also ask them to consider how inequality will increase if climate change is not attended urgently and how markets will collapse if inequality is not levelled.
Patrick - Hampshire, England, United Kingdom
Issues attendees should prioritize this year: climate change, inequality
I would ask business leaders to follow the native American Indians who sought to act in the interest of the next seven generations.
Aditi - New Delhi, India
Issues attendees should prioritize this year: climate change, health
I would ask business leaders to shift to renewable energy sources for 80% of their energy requirements in the next 10 years, covering energy requirements of every aspect of their business lifecycle - from procurement, to production, to marketing & distribution, to end lifecycle.
David Baxter - Cape Town, South Africa
Issues attendees should prioritize this year: inequality, education
Davos delegates should pledge free, quality education for all. They should also commit to increased taxes on the wealthy and to require corporations to fund healthcare and education.
Albert - Bangor, Maine, USA
Pledge to leave our planet! The only contribution, the only benevolent gift the world wishes to have bestowed upon it from these egomaniacs is to go away.
James - Victoria, Australia
Issues attendees should prioritize this year: climate change, inequality, employment, health, education, financial inclusion, food, conflict
Food is a human right. 805 million people are estimated to be chronically undernourished. Food has already been identified as a source of global conflict. Climate change is predicted to have devastating impacts on yields and nutrition. Our global health already has significant issues and the current generation are predicted to have shorter lives than their parents. Businesses should consider the opportunity of value creation by meeting the need for a sustainable, healthy diet. The current system has waste, processes that are uneconomic, and environmentally damaging, yet has potential to deliver lifelong employment. Technology transfer, fair trade, economic and management skills, land, water and energy allocation should be on the agenda.
Henning - Newcastle, England
What issues should attendees prioritize this year? climate change, inequality, food
Make integrated reporting mandatory for all globally listed companies by 2020 and all private, public and SMEs by 2025. Use the G-20 in Istanbul later this year to start this process."
Ravi - Pune, India
What issues should attendees prioritize this year? climate change, employment
1. Pledge that each process, product, services will be delivered which do not cause negative climate change 2. Pledge to make each individual at the age above 18 as employable by imparting certain skills
Chris - United Kingdom
What issues should attendees prioritize this year? climate change, inequality, conflict
Given the new fiscal space opened up by the oil price collapse, the time is now right for a bold pledge from business to get behind a global carbon tax. If it has to happen, and happen soon, why not now?
Kris - Australia
What issues should attendees prioritize this year? climate change, inequality, employment
I'd like business leaders to make a commitment to hold corporations who flout the law accountable. If a corporation breaks the law, then send it to jail in the same way an individual is denied Liberty.
Beverley - Leicestershire, England
What issues should attendees prioritize this year? climate change, health, education, food
Pledge to focus on health and nutrition education. Put the physical and mental health of nations before profit by focusing on correct nutrition, food production, preventative medicine-not the current emphasis on selling drugs and cures.
Published responses have been lightly edited for clarity. Add additional pledges for Davos delegates in the comments below.
This year's Davos coverage is funded by The B Team. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled "brought to you by". Find out more here .
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February 19, 2015 Thursday 8:43 PM GMT
World's biggest PR firm calls it quits with American oil lobby - reports;
Edelman public relations ends relationship with American Petroleum Institute despite contract that at times was worth more than 10% of firm's global revenue
BYLINE: Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
SECTION: BUSINESS
LENGTH: 474 words
The world's largest public relations firm is ending its lucrative relationship with America's powerful oil lobby - after more than a decade and at least $327m in billings.
Circumstances of the divorce between Edelman public relations and the American Petroleum Institute (API) were not immediately clear.
Edelman said it would not comment on the report, and there was no immediate response from API.
But ties between the oil lobby and the PR firm ran deep.
Much of the advertising work for API was handled by an Edelman subsidiary, Blue Advertising. The Holmes Report, which covers the public relations industry and first reported the split, said Blue would divest from Edelman and go on handling the oil lobby's advertising campaigns.
The oil lobby paid Edelman $327.4m for lobbying and public relations, according to an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity. Those earnings, which include money later spent by Edelman for advertising, cover only a five-year period from 2008-2012.
But there were some very good years. In 2010, the contract with API was worth more than 10% of Edelman's global revenue, according to the Climate Investigations Center. In that year, Edelman's global revenue was $532m and the contract with API $63m.
That relationship was by no means exclusive. API paid another PR firm, FleishmanHillard, an additional $51m.
But Edelman had favoured status, according to the Climate Investigations Center, which has tracked the company's complicated relationship with the fossil fuel industry. In 2008, the oil lobby paid Edelman $75m, more than a third of the $203m in revenues collected in membership dues from ExxonMobil, Chevron and other oil companies.
Related: Climate changeable: waffling lands PR firm Edelman in hot water
The lucrative relationship was not without costs. Over the past year, Edelman came under growing public pressure for its ties to fossil fuel companies and industry groups which have promoted misinformation about climate change.
Last year, Edelman was caught out when other major public relations firms announced they would no longer work for climate deniers, in response to a Guardian report.
Edelman later scrambled to catch up with the new industry standard and declared it too would not represent climate deniers.
The company also faced scrutiny for advising TransCanada pipeline company to run a "perpetual campaign" against opponents of a pipeline project across eastern Canada. TransCanada later announced it had dropped Edelman.
Such hardball tactics - and the accusations of climate denial - put Edelman in an uncomfortable position with some of its other clients, according to Kert Davies of the Climate Investigations Center.
API does not explicitly deny climate change, but its website suggests - incorrectly - that there is some doubt whether burning of fossil fuels is warming the planet.
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February 19, 2015 Thursday 12:52 AM GMT
Citigroup to invest $100bn in tackling climate change;
The global financial institution is putting $100bn towards financing renewable-energy projects, affordable green housing, municipal projects and more
BYLINE: Siri Srinivas
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 742 words
Citigroup, the third largest US financial institution, on Wednesday said it will invest a whopping $100bn over the next decade to reduce the impacts of climate change. The bank said it will use the money the finance green initiatives and sustainable growth.
The global financial corporation's CEO Michael Corbat made the announcement at a breakfast gathering of stakeholders, employees and partner organizations in New York.
The money will be used to finance large renewable-energy projects, for example, to aid greener affordable housing and to finance municipal infrastructure to reduce water waste and more, says Valerie Smith, director of corporate sustainability at Citigroup.
It will also be used to help Citigroup reduce the environmental impacts of its global operations and supply chain, and to help its clients address environmental risks, according to Corbat's prepared statement.
This isn't the first time Citigroup has committed money to tackling climate change. The company in 2007 set a similar goal of making $50bn in green investments by 2016, a goal which it met three years early. Now it is doubling down.
Sustainability is good business
In the last few years, several large banks have set similar investment goals. Bank of America and Wells Fargo both committed $50bn for financing sustainable initiatives and green transport in 2013, for example. It adds up to real money.
But some industry insiders question whether all the new money for sustainable investments is enough to defray the environmental damage from banks' investments in coal and other fossil fuels. Citibank also is still active in the coal market, although it has said coal is "in structural decline".
It's no secret that banks are in business to make money. This slew of environmental commitments is interesting because it underlines that sustainability is in high demand.
Citigroup's Smith confirmed that the company's announcement comes in the face of immense client demand for sustainable investing: "You probably can follow the chain. Our clients are demanding it, our clients' clients are demanding it, our clients' investors are demanding it. There is a momentum and focus on solving big global societal problems that everybody is rallying to."
In addition to investing decisions being driven by sustainability metrics, there is a business case for investing in instruments such as green bonds.
"The business case is that we are at the inflection point of the greatest transition in human history from a fossil-fuel-based economy to a clean economy," says Andrew Behar, the CEO of As You Sow, a nonprofit promoting environmental and social corporate responsibility.
The World Economic Forum estimates this transition will require $1tn in investments each year for the next 20 years, Behar says.
"Investors are looking at this and going, 'I want to be a part of this,'" he said. "Look at a municipal bond, they're going to want to change their streetlights to LEDs, why? Sustainable electricity. Why would they want to put solar on their roofs? [So] they can lock in 20-year rates. It's the economics now. It's not just about wanting to save the planet."
A strong signal to clients
The business case, he agrees, provides the context for banks' new strategies. "They've seen the demand and are stepping up and providing the products," he said.
According to Behar, the larger movement towards sustainable investment was prompted at least in part by the Valdez Principles, instituted by sustainable business nonprofit Ceres after the Exxon Valdez oil tanker spill in 1989.
The 10-point code directs corporations, amongst other things, to better inform the public and establish audits and reports on their environmental impact. The availability of metrics coupled with the larger transition of energy systems makes this the time for financial institutions to keep pace.
"We've been starting to see that the smarter investment people are getting ahead of the curve and making sure that there's enough capital to make this transition," Behar said.
Citi's new ambitious goals were based on the lessons learned from its previous targets, Smith said. "This strategy and the goals are related with the fact in mind that we saw activity increase much more than we expected with our previous $50bn finance goals."
The finance hub is funded by EY. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled "brought to you by". Find out more here.
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The Guardian
February 18, 2015 Wednesday 6:17 PM GMT
Canadian mounties' secret memo casts doubt on climate change threat;
Intelligence report identifies anti-petroleum movement as a threat to Canadian security and suggests those concerned with climate consequences occupy political fringe
BYLINE: Suzanne Goldenberg
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 591 words
The US security establishment views climate change as real and a dangerous threat to national security. But Canada takes a very different view, according to a secret intelligence memo prepared by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).
The memo, stamped "Canadian eyes only", repeatedly casts doubt on the causes of climate change - the burning of fossil fuels - and its potential threat.
The 44-page intelligence assessment of Canada's environmental protest movement was prepared for the government of Stephen Harper, who is expected to roll out new anti-terror legislation.
In the memo, obtained by Greenpeace and seen by the Guardian, the RCMP repeatedly departs from the conclusions of an overwhelming majority of scientists - and the majority of elected leaders in the international arena - that climate change is a growing threat to global security.
Instead, the memo on the "anti-Canada petroleum movement" presents continued expansion of oil and gas production as an inevitability, and repeatedly casts doubt on the causes and consequences of climate change.
It mentions the "perceived environmental threat from the continued use of fossil fuels". It suggests that those concerned with the consequences of climate change occupy the political fringe.
"In their literature, representatives of the movement claim that climate change is now the most serious global environmental threat and that climate change is a direct consequence of elevated anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions which, reportedly, are directly linked to the continued use of fossil fuels," the memo says.
It does not refer to the findings of the United Nations' climate science panel, the IPCC, and its exhaustive reports on the causes of climate change and its consequence.
The language and tone of the RCMP memo are strikingly at odds with perceptions of climate change within the security establishment of Canada's closest ally, the US, and with the current findings of the world's best scientists.
Scientists have known for decades that the burning of fossil fuels is the main driver of global warming, and parts of Canada are in line for some of its gravest consequences. The Arctic is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world.
In terms of security perceptions, Barack Obama in a national security assessment earlier this month called climate change "an urgent and growing threat".
The CIA and Pentagon both view climate change as a serious threat to international order, and factor sea-level rise, drought, and extreme weather into their future security planning.
The US military has been tasked with reducing its carbon footprint at all of its military bases and in war zones.
The Globe and Mail, which was the first to report on the memo, said the tone of the RCMP memo reflects the hostility of the Harper government towards environmental activists.
The memo warns: "Violent anti-petroleum extremists will continue to engage in criminal activity to promote their anti-petroleum ideology".
The memo also echoes the accusations of former Harper officials of foreign funding of environmental protesters.
"There is a growing, highly organized and well-financed anti-Canada petroleum movement that consists of peaceful activists, militants and violent extremists who are opposed to society's reliance on fossil fuels," the memo says.
"If violent environmental extremists engage in unlawful activity, it jeopardizes the health and safety of its participants, the general public and the natural environment."
The RCMP did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
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The Guardian
February 18, 2015 Wednesday 6:10 PM GMT
Fossil fuel industry protests over 'risky' assets warning from energy secretary;
Oil and gas industry expresses concern in a letter to Ed Davey about his comments on fossil fuel assets becoming unburnable to stop dangerous climate change
BYLINE: Damian Carrington
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 1051 words
The fossil fuel industry was deeply "unsettled" by comments from energy secretary Ed Davey raising the prospect that their assets could be rendered worthless by global action on climate change, according to a letter of protest sent to the secretary of state.
Malcolm Webb, chief executive of Oil and Gas UK, which represents the industry, wrote to Davey saying he was "perplexed" by the "conflicting and confusing messages" and accused him of making investment in the North Sea less attractive. The letter was released to the Guardian under freedom of information rules.
The issue was also raised by Erik Bonino, chairman of Shell UK, at a meeting with Davey in January, at which Bonino said if Shell "knew there were to be no more fossil fuels, [it] could cash out and give shareholders their money back in four years".
The strong reactions reveal the depth of concern inside fossil fuel companies at analyses showing there are already three times more fossil fuels in proven reserves than can be burned if global warming is to be limited to 2C, the pledge made by the world's nations. If a global climate deal makes good on that pledge, those coal, oil and gas reserves could become worthless, potentially losing investors trillions of dollars. Fossil fuel companies, which spent $650bn (£422bn) in 2013, searching for more reserves are also under attack from a fast-growing divestment campaign, which has persuaded over 180 groups to dump their fossil fuel stocks.
Davey made the comments at the UN's climate change summit in Lima in December, saying that some analysts estimated that the action needed to cut carbon emissions and tackle climate change could result in the global fossil fuel industry losing as much as $28tn (£18tn) in the next 20 years. Davey said he supported calls for asset managers and banks to disclose the size of their fossil fuel holdings to investors. "There is a case for making it mandatory," he said. "People need to know the risks."
Webb wrote to Davey a few days later: "[Newspaper] articles reported you backing moves that would encourage investors to think about moving their money out of 'risky' fossil fuel assets, suggesting global emissions limits could make hydrocarbon reserves unburnable, therefore stranding assets and rendering them worthless."
Webb said: "I must confess I find these statements unsettling. They come, after all, at a time when you and the Treasury are putting great effort into delivering the much-needed regulatory and fiscal reforms that will make the UK North Sea more [original italics] attractive to investors in oil and gas, not less. I am intrigued to understand how such opposing viewpoints can be reconciled."
Webb also cited the tax breaks promised by chancellor George Osborne in December's autumn statement as testament to "the crucial need to stimulate new investment in offshore oil and gas development that will safeguard UK jobs, tax revenues, exports and secure primary energy supplies. Yet still we see conflicting and confusing messages coming out of the Department of Energy and Climate Change."
Davey said in a reply: "My recent comments were about highlighting that moving to a low-carbon economy is a 'business smart' choice, both in terms of risks and returns. I simply reflected what a number of other organisations have been promoting about sounding a note of caution internationally on the need to carefully consider fossil fuel investment in the light of their life-cycle carbon emissions."
Davey cited the statement by Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, that the bank is deepening and widening its enquiry into stranded assets and whether they pose a risk to the nation's financial stability. He also cited the decision of the heirs to the Rockefeller oil fortune to sell all the fossil fuel holdings in their $862m portfolio. In 2014, the president of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, said : "Sooner rather than later, [financial regulators] must address the systemic risk associated with carbon-intensive activities in their economies."
Davey said he "fully recognised" that the world would need oil and gas for decades to come. "The challenge we face is to effectively address climate change while at the same time ensuring that we remain energy secure and promoting economic growth. As government, we are clear these key priorities are compatible," he wrote, adding "we have put in place policies needed to maximise the recovery of oil and gas from the UK continental shelf."
In a handwritten postscript, Davey said: "Indeed my comments were focused far more on coal than oil and gas. This has been a consistent theme of mine! Happy to pick up at our next meeting."
The note of the meeting between Davey and Shell's Bonino states: "Davey's purported comments in Lima were discussed, with Bonino commenting that he knows the SoS was 'wildly misquoted'." Davey is not recorded as agreeing. "Davey commented that he had said that investors need full disclosure so they can take a decision," the note recorded.
James Leaton, research director at think tank Carbon Tracker, which has led the analysis of stranded fossil fuel assets, said: "It is disappointing that Oil and Gas UK seems confused about how to rationalise tackling climate change and developing more oil and gas. Unfortunately this reflects the ongoing contradiction in many oil company positions that they want to increase oil production despite the importance of preventing dangerous levels of warming."
Leaton said: "Shell have admitted that a third of their projects are not making any return for shareholders. From a financial sense for investors expecting a return, those assets look pretty stranded. Carbon Tracker's focus is to make sure more capital is not sunk on high-cost, high-carbon projects, like Kashagan in the Caspian or oil sands in Canada."
In January, Shell made the unusual move of backing a climate proposal from a group of activist shareholders. The resolution, which will be voted on at Shell's AGM in May, requires the oil major to test whether its business model is compatible with the pledge by the world's nations to limit global warming. Also in January, a scientific analysis published in Nature concluded that 80% of coal reserves, 50% of gas reserves and 33% of oil reserves were unburnable if warming is to be limited to 2C.
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The Guardian
February 18, 2015 Wednesday 10:11 AM GMT
Artificial intelligence and nanotechnology 'threaten civilisation';
Technologies join nuclear war, ecological catastrophe, super-volcanoes and asteroid impacts in Global Challenges Foundation's risk report
BYLINE: Stuart Dredge
SECTION: TECHNOLOGY
LENGTH: 655 words
Artificial intelligence and nanotechnology have been named alongside nuclear war, ecological catastrophe and super-volcano eruptions as "risks that threaten human civilisation" in a report by the Global Challenges Foundation.
In the case of AI, the report suggests that future machines and software with "human-level intelligence" could create new, dangerous challenges for humanity - although they could also help to combat many of the other risks cited in the report.
"Such extreme intelligences could not easily be controlled (either by the groups creating them, or by some international regulatory regime), and would probably act to boost their own intelligence and acquire maximal resources for almost all initial AI motivations," suggest authors Dennis Pamlin and Stuart Armstrong.
Related: Artificial intelligence: can scientists stop 'negative' outcomes?
"And if these motivations do not detail the survival and value of humanity, the intelligence will be driven to construct a world without humans. This makes extremely intelligent AIs a unique risk, in that extinction is more likely than lesser impacts."
The report also warns of the risk that "economic collapse may follow from mass unemployment as humans are replaced by copyable human capital", and expresses concern at the prospect of AI being used for warfare: "An AI arms race could result in AIs being constructed with pernicious goals or lack of safety precautions."
In the case of nanotechnology, the report notes that "atomically precise manufacturing" could have a range of benefits for humans. It could help to tackle challenges including depletion of natural resources, pollution and climate change. But it foresees risks too.
"It could create new products - such as smart or extremely resilient materials - and would allow many different groups or even individuals to manufacture a wide range of things," suggests the report. "This could lead to the easy construction of large arsenals of conventional or more novel weapons made possible by atomically precise manufacturing."
The foundation was set up in 2011 with the aim of funding research into risks that could threaten humanity, and encouraging more collaboration between governments, scientists and companies to combat them.
That is why its report presents worst-case scenarios for its 12 chosen risks, albeit alongside suggestions for avoiding them and acknowledgements of the positive potential for the technologies involved.
In the case of artificial intelligence, though, Global Challenges Foundation's report is part of a wider debate about possible risks as AI gets more powerful in the future.
In January, former Microsoft boss Bill Gates said that he is "in the camp that is concerned about super intelligence", even if in the short term, machines doing more jobs for humans should be a positive trend if managed well.
Related: Rise of the robots: how long do we have until they take our jobs?
"A few decades after that though the intelligence is strong enough to be a concern. I agree with Elon Musk and some others on this and don't understand why some people are not concerned."
Tesla and SpaceX boss Musk had spoken out in October 2014, suggesting that "we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I had to guess at what our biggest existential threat is, it's probably that".
Professor Stephen Hawking is another worrier, saying in December that "the primitive forms of artificial intelligence we already have, have proved very useful. But I think the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race."
The full list of "risks that threaten human civilisation, according to Global Challenges Foundation:
Extreme climate change
Nuclear war
Global pandemic
Ecological catastrophe
Global system collapse
Major asteroid impact
Super-volcano
Synthetic biology
Nanotechnology
Artificial intelligence
Unknown consequences
Future bad global governance
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The New York Times Blogs
(Dot Earth)
February 18, 2015 Wednesday
A Look Behind the Headlines on China's Coal Trends
BYLINE: ANDREW C. REVKIN
SECTION: OPINION
LENGTH: 891 words
HIGHLIGHT: A reality check on coal trends in China and their implications for the climate.
Armond Cohen at Clean Air Task Force has provided helpful context in the face of recent headlines and a Greenpeace analysis focused on what appears to be the first drop in Chinese coal use in a century.
Here's the brunt of his post:
In late 2014, China pledged to peak its CO2 emissions by 2030, and achieve 20 percent of its primary energy from non-fossil energy sources. And China continues to lead the world in annual additions of wind and solar power. While these developments are to be celebrated, there remains a sobering reality: they still leave a lot of headroom for China to expand its coal power plant capacity between now and 2030, even though its coal fleet is already more than twice the size of the US coal fleet.
Indeed, China's march towards coal continued in 2014 as shown by data from the latest report from China's National Energy Administration....
[D]espite additions of substantial wind, solar, and nuclear capacity, when properly adjusted for capacity factor (the amount of annual energy produced per unit of capacity) to reflect production capability , the amount of new coal energy added to the China grid last year exceeded new solar energy by 17 times, new wind energy by more than 4 times, and even new hydro by more than 3 times. And, despite having more than 30 new nuclear reactors under construction, China's new nuclear capability was still a fraction of new coal energy.
[At first blush, this data seems to contradict recent reports that total China coal use fell in 2014 for the first time by about 2.5 percent. However, the two trends are not inconsistent. Half of China coal use is outside of the power sector, especially in heavy industry, which has reduced its coal use as exports fell in 2014 and government policies to remove subsidies from heavy industry took hold. Second, overall demand growth in the power sector reached a decade low but is expected to resume. Finally, 2014 was an exceptional hydro output year for China. The short-term blip does not undermine the general trend of continued upward trend in coal deployment in China's power sector , which represents a growing share of China's energy use].
Unfortunately for climate, these China 2014 coal additions - which in one year alone were double the size of the United Kingdom's entire legacy coal fleet - will be around and cranking away for many decades, along with the rest of China's coal fleet, most of which is less than 15 years old. Indeed, these plants can continue to pump CO2 out well into the second half of this century even with China's pledged 2030 CO2 peak. And once in the atmosphere, those CO2 emissions will be warming the planet for many centuries to come.
To Cohen, the persistent China coal push points to the importance of intensifying work on cutting the costs of systems for capturing smokestack carbon dioxide and sequestering it underground. His headline says as much: "No China coal peak in sight; carbon capture will be necessary to tame emissions in this century":
The implications are clear for climate. In addition to rapidly increasing China's adoption of non-fossil power sources such as renewables and nuclear, to mitigate long-lived CO2 emissions, carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) must be applied to both new and existing China plants, both coal and gas. Full commercial scale projects in Canada and the US demonstrate that CCS is not a science project but is here today and works. But, as with all low carbon energy sources, we need to bring CCS costs down over time to accelerate deployment. That will require a steady commitment to early demonstration, commercialization and cost reductions through scaled deployment of CCS, as the world did for renewable energy. As several recent international reports suggest, without such an effort, we have little chance of successfully managing climate change in this century, or beyond.
The basic coal math in his piece is a sobering reminder that the fossil age is not ending any time soon. Unfortunately, I don't share Cohen's optimism about prospects for the deployment of such systems at a scale the climate would notice, mainly because there's no incentive for China to pay the additional cost, no sign (unless you can identify one?) that developed countries will be willing to cover the difference and little evidence that the world is serious about a much more ambitious push on large-scale demonstration of integrated systems for capturing and storing CO2.
On carbon capture at scale, I still haven't seen much to shift me from the view I held in 2010, when I wrote this about carbon capture and storage:
[I]t remains an absolute pipe dream if considered at anywhere near the scale that would be required to impress the global atmosphere in a world where coal use is expected to surge for decades.
The issue isn't technology or geology (finding safe storage sites for huge volumes) nearly so much as cost. And remember, this isn't about the affordability of the technology in the United States or Europe. It's about the cost of deployment at large scale in the coal-boom countries, China and India.
I still think this 2010 paper by Howard J. Herzog at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology very nicely lays out what to look for to gauge if countries are serious about this issue: "Scaling up carbon dioxide capture and storage: From megatons to gigatons."
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The Guardian
February 17, 2015 Tuesday 7:46 PM GMT
BP: huge rise in energy demand at odds with climate change fight;
Annual outlook forecasts unsustainable rise in carbon emissions, fuelled by 40% rise in energy demand that it says can only be met by fossil fuels
BYLINE: Larry Elliott, economics editor
SECTION: BUSINESS
LENGTH: 924 words
Rising global demand for energy over the next two decades is at odds with the fight against climate change, the head of BP said on Tuesday, as he outlined the oil giant's forecasts showing unsustainable increases in carbon emissions.
BP's annual energy outlook predicted that the world economy would double in size in the next 20 years, resulting in demand for energy rising by almost 40%. The company said two-thirds of this demand would be met from fossil fuels - oil, gas and coal - and that this would lead to a 25% increase in carbon emissions.
BP said slower growth in China and India coupled with greater energy efficiency would mean that demand would rise by 1.5% a year over the next two decades, rather than the 2.5% a year recorded during the past decade.
Even so, the company said carbon emissions would be growing by 1% a year - "well above" the path recommended by scientists to keep emissions below the ceiling of 450 parts per million that would provide a 50% chance of stabilising global temperatures at 2% above pre-industrial levels.
The most likely path for carbon emissions, despite current government policies, does not appear sustainable.
BP chief executive Bob Dudley
Dudl added that the environmental risks put pressure on politicians to come up with a deal at this year's climate conference in Paris. "The projections highlight the scale of the challenge facing policy makers at this year's UN-led discussions in Paris. No single change or policy is likely to be sufficient on its own.
"And identifying in advance which changes are likely to be most effective is fraught with difficulty. This underpins the importance of policymakers taking steps that lead to a global price for carbon, which provides the right incentives for everyone to play their part."
BP said the continued increase in emissions would come in spite of less reliance on coal over the coming decades. China has been heavily dependent on coal during its rapid industrialisation since 1990, but demand is expected to grow at 0.8% a year in the period up until 2035, down from 3.8% a year since 2000.
Even with the expected rapid growth in the use of renewable forms of energy over the next two decades, they will still only account for 8% of energy demand by 2035, BP said. Fossil fuels will account for 81% of energy, down from 86% at present.
"Fossil fuels are projected to provide the majority of the world's energy needs, meeting two-thirds of the increase in energy demand out of 2035," Dudley said. "However, the mix will shift. Renewables and unconventional fossil fuels will take a larger share, along with gas, which is set to be the fastest-growing fossil fuel, as well as the cleanest, meeting as much of the increase in demand as coal and oil combined.
"Meanwhile, coal is now expected to be the slowest-growing fuel, as industrialisation in emerging Asian economies slows and environmental policies around the globe tighten."
BP believes the recent fall in oil prices will prove temporary, putting the decline from $115 a barrel to a low of $45 a barrel down to increases in supply caused by the US shale revolution. Recent weeks have seen a partial recovery in the oil price, with the cost of a barrel of Brent crude standing at around $62 a barrel last night.
The oil company said growth in supply from the new US fields would slow but that global demand would continue to increase, leading to higher prices.
The forecasts suggest that the US will be self-sufficient in energy by the 2030s, but that the fracking revolution will not spread to other parts of the world.
Spencer Dale, BP's chief economist, said: "After three years of high and deceptively steady oil prices, the fall of recent months is a stark reminder that the norm in energy markets is one of continuous change. It is important that we look through short-term volatility to identify those longer-term trends in supply and demand that are likely to shape the energy sector over the next 20 years and so help inform the strategic choices facing the industry and policy-makers alike."
BP anticipates a slowdown in US shale oil allowing for Middle East output to start regaining lost ground at the start of the next decade, according to the report. The 12 members of the Opec (Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries) cartel will expand output by 7 million barrels a day while non-Opec supply will increase by 13 million barrels by 2035. Opec will keep its market share of 40% of total global crude production by 2035, according to the report. "These reports of the demise of Opec seem to me greatly exaggerated," Dale said. The group decided in November not to cut its production target in order to keep its market share against a backdrop of rising supplies from non-Opec nations, a move that accelerated the fall in oil prices at the end of 2014.
The company produced alternative forecasts for global energy demand based on China and India growing at 4% a year rather than the 5.5% a year expected in the base case. In those circumstances, energy demand would rise by 25% rather than 37% in the next two decades - with the difference equivalent to the total energy needs of the European Union in 2035.
Over the same period, North Sea oil production is expected to decline to around 500,000 barrels per day as fields in the basin deplete.
"The North sea is a very mature oil and gas province and it will inevitably go through a decline. It peaked in 1999 at around 2.9 millions barrels per day and our projections are that it will be half a million barrels in 2035," Dudley said.
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The Guardian
February 17, 2015 Tuesday 11:47 AM GMT
MPs' pension fund at risk from fossil fuel investments, Caroline Lucas warns;
Trustees ignoring risk of financial impact of companies not able to use their carbon reserves due to climate concerns, say a group of 11 MPs and two Lords
BYLINE: Adam Vaughan
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 672 words
The £487m MPs' pension pot is in danger of taking a financial hit due to the failure of its trustees to acknowledge the economic risk posed by fossil fuel investments, a group of 11 MPs and two Lords have warned.
The trustees of the Parliamentary Contributory Pension Fund were challenged last year by the group, which include Green party MP Caroline Lucas, to shift its investments from oil and coal companies because of widespread fears that they are overvalued.
Heavyweight figures, including the governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney, have endorsed the idea that investors face a "carbon bubble" because the market value of big players in the fossil fuel industry is based on carbon reserves that cannot be burnt without the world experiencing dangerous climate change.
A growing number of institutions - including the Rockefeller Brothers fund, Stanford University and Glasgow University - have signed up to a global divestment campaign urging investors to pull their money out of the fossil fuel industry.
But the chair of the MPs' pension fund board of trustees, Labour MP Brian Donohoe, rejected the idea, saying the trustees' lawyers had advised that for the trustees to exclude a sector would be incompatible with their "legal and fiduciary duties of investment". He added that as MPs held a wide range of views, it would be impossible they "would share a moral view viewpoint in one area of investment".
Now the MPs and Lords have accused Donohoe of failing to understand the economic dimension of their case, and of putting MPs' pensions at financial risk.
"As we stated in our [original] letter [sent in October 2014], climate change has significant financial implications for pension funds. It is not merely a matter of morals or ethics. Accordingly, we remain concerned that a failure to acknowledge the risks of continued investment in fossil fuel industries would in fact be to the financial detriment of the scheme," they write.
The letter, signed by Labour, Liberal Democrat, Green and SNP MPs but no Conservatives, adds: "We are concerned that the trustees, in regarding climate change and fossil fuel exposure as a moral issue, have not undertaken a proper evaluation of the financial impact these risks may have on the fund."
Donohoe told the Guardian that the letter had been sent on to the trustee's lawyers and investment managers for their views, which he would defer to. "I have to go on the basis of advice I'm given by investment managers who are saying to the contrary [to what Lucas argues]. Other trustees are similarly minded, to go on the advice of our lawyers."
On his personal view of fossil fuel divestment, he said: "I suspect I would be the majority view, that I don't necessarily go with the whole concept which her and her colleagues go by. If you follow it to the conclusion, we will go and live back in a cave. I don't know how she would commute back and forwards from her constituency other than by walking as she wouldn't even be able to have a bike [without fossil fuels]."
Among the other nine trustees is Conservative MP Peter Lilley, an outspoken critic of climate change action and renewable energy.
Lucas has also tabled an Early Day Motion, signed by 16 MPs, calling for MPs to show leadership on climate change and for the trustees of the pension fund to quantify and review its investments in fossil fuels. The fund does not disclose how much is invested in oil, coal and gas - a figure the MPs and Lords request in their new letter.
Related: Fossil fuel divestment: a brief history
Last week the California senate called on two state pension funds to pull their combined $500bn (£325) portfolio from fossil fuels, and there was a coordinated global day of events backing the divestment campaign.
Energy and climate secretary Ed Davey added his voice at UN climate talks in Lima last year, saying that pensions faced future risks from fossil fuel investments. He warned that financial authorities must examine the risks posed by what he called "the sub-prime assets of the future."
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The New York Times
February 17, 2015 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final
Verbal Warming: Labels in the Climate Debate
BYLINE: By JUSTIN GILLIS
SECTION: Section D; Column 0; Science Desk; BY DEGREES; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1220 words
The words are hurled around like epithets.
People who reject the findings of climate science are dismissed as ''deniers'' and ''disinformers.'' Those who accept the science are attacked as ''alarmists'' or ''warmistas. '' The second term, evoking the Sandinista revolutionaries of Nicaragua, is perhaps meant to suggest that the science is part of some socialist plot.
In the long-running political battles over climate change, the fight about what to call the various factions has been going on for a long time. Recently, though, the issue has taken a turn, with a public appeal that has garnered 22,000 signatures and counting.
The petition asks the news media to abandon the most frequently used term for people who question climate science, ''skeptics,'' and call them ''climate deniers'' instead.
Climate scientists are among the most vocal critics of using the term ''climate skeptic'' to describe people who flatly reject their findings. They point out that skepticism is the very foundation of the scientific method. The modern consensus about the risks of climate change, they say, is based on evidence that has piled up over the course of decades and has been subjected to critical scrutiny every step of the way.
Drop into any climate science convention, in fact, and you will hear vigorous debate about the details of the latest studies. While they may disagree over the fine points, those researchers are virtually unanimous in warning that society is running extraordinary risks by continuing to pump huge quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
In other words, the climate scientists see themselves as the true skeptics, having arrived at a durable consensus about emissions simply because the evidence of risk has become overwhelming. And in this view, people who reject the evidence are phony skeptics, arguing their case by cherry-picking studies, manipulating data and refusing to weigh the evidence as a whole.
The petition asking the news media to drop the ''climate skeptic'' label began with Mark B. Boslough, a physicist in New Mexico who grew increasingly annoyed by the term over several years. The phrase is wrong, he said, because ''these people do not embrace the scientific method.''
Dr. Boslough is active in a group called the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, which has long battled pseudoscience in all its forms. Late last year, he wrote a public letter on the issue, and dozens of scientists and science advocates associated with the committee quickly signed it. They include Bill Nye, of ''Science Guy'' fame, and Lawrence M. Krauss, a physicist and best-selling author.
A climate advocacy organization, Forecast the Facts, picked up on the letter and turned it into a petition. Once the signatures reach 25,000, the group intends to present a formal request to major news organizations to alter their terminology.
All of which raises an obvious question: If not ''skeptic,'' what should the opponents of climate science be called?
As a first step, it helps to understand why they so vigorously denounce the science. The opposition is coming from a certain faction of the political right. Many of these conservatives understand that because greenhouse emissions are caused by virtually every economic activity of modern society, they are likely to be reduced only by extensive government intervention in the market.
So casting doubt on the science is a way to ward off such regulation. This movement is mainly rooted in ideology, but much of the money to disseminate its writings comes from companies that profit from fossil fuels.
Despite their shared goal of opposing regulation, however, these opponents of climate science are not all of one mind in other respects, and thus no term really fits them all.
Some make scientifically ludicrous claims, such as denying that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas or rejecting the idea that humans are responsible for its increase in the atmosphere. Others deny that Earth is actually warming, despite overwhelming evidence that it is, including the rapid melting of billions of tons of land ice all over the planet.
Yet the critics of established climate science also include a handful of people with credentials in atmospheric physics and track records of publishing in the field. They acknowledge the heat-trapping powers of greenhouse gases, and they distance themselves from people who deny such basic points.
''For God's sake, I can't be lumped in with that crowd,'' said Patrick J. Michaels, a former University of Virginia scientist employed by the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington.
Contrarian scientists like Dr. Michaels tend to argue that the warming will be limited, or will occur so gradually that people will cope with it successfully, or that technology will come along to save the day -- or all of the above.
The contrarian scientists like to present these upbeat scenarios as the only plausible outcomes from runaway emissions growth. Mainstream scientists see them as being the low end of a range of possible outcomes that includes an alarming high end, and they say the only way to reduce the risks is to reduce emissions.
The dissenting scientists have been called ''lukewarmers'' by some, for their view that Earth will warm only a little. That is a term Dr. Michaels embraces. ''I think it's wonderful!'' he said. He is working on a book, ''The Lukewarmers' Manifesto.''
When they publish in scientific journals, presenting data and arguments to support their views, these contrarians are practicing science, and perhaps the ''skeptic'' label is applicable. But not all of them are eager to embrace it.
''As far as I can tell, skepticism involves doubts about a plausible proposition,'' another of these scientists, Richard S. Lindzen, told an audience a few years ago. ''I think current global warming alarm does not represent a plausible proposition.''
Papers by Dr. Lindzen and others disputing the risks of global warming have fared poorly in scientific literature, with mainstream scientists pointing out what they see as fatal errors. Nonetheless, these contrarian scientists testify before Congress and make statements inconsistent with the vast bulk of the scientific evidence, claiming near certainty that society is not running any risk worth worrying about.
It is perhaps no surprise that many environmentalists have started to call them deniers.
The scientific dissenters object to that word, claiming it is a deliberate attempt to link them to Holocaust denial. Some academics sharply dispute having any such intention, but others have started using the slightly softer word ''denialist'' to make the same point without stirring complaints about evoking the Holocaust.
Scientific denialism has crept into other aspects of modern life, of course, manifesting itself as creationism, anti-vaccine ideology and the opposition to genetically modified crops, among other doctrines.
To groups holding such views, ''evidence just doesn't matter anymore,'' said Riley E. Dunlap, a sociologist at Oklahoma State University. ''It becomes possible to create an alternate reality.''
But Dr. Dunlap pointed out that the stakes with most of these issues are not as high as with climate-change denial, for the simple reason that the fate of the planet may hang in the balance.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/17/science/earth/in-climate-change-whats-in-a-name.html
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The Guardian
February 16, 2015 Monday 5:43 PM GMT
Can the CIA weaponise the weather?;
A leading climate-change scientist has warned that the US secret service's interest in geoengineering technology may not be benign. But it's not the first time a government has tried to control weather patterns
BYLINE: Patrick Barkham
SECTION: US NEWS
LENGTH: 472 words
Using the weather as a weapon to subjugate the globe sounds like the modus operandi of a James Bond villain, but a senior climate scientist has expressed concern over the US intelligence services' apparent interest in geoengineering.
Geoengineering seeks to combat climate change by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or by increasing the reflectivity of the earth - with clouds or even space dust - to reduce the sun's warmth.
It is criticised by many environmental activists, including Naomi Klein, for suggesting that a simple techno-fix for global warming is just around the corner but geoengineering may have a more sinister side.
Alan Robock, who studied the potential impact of a nuclear winter in the 1980s, raised alarm over CIA's part-funding of a National Academy of Sciences report on different approaches to combating climate change, and the fact that the CIA hasn't explained its interest in geoengineering.
Weaponising the weather is nothing new. UK government documents showed that, 99 years ago, one of six trials at the experimental military station of Orford Ness in Suffolk sought to produce artificial clouds, which, it was hoped would bamboozle German flying machines during the first world war.
Related: Spy agencies fund climate research in hunt for weather weapon, scientist fears
Like so many military experiments, these trials failed but cloud seeding became a reality in 1967/8 when the US's Operation Popeye increased rainfall by an estimated 30% over parts of Vietnam in an attempt to reduce the movement of soldiers and resources into South Vietnam.
In recent years, the US military's HAARP research programme has sown a blizzard of theories about how this secretive Alaskan facility has manipulated weather patterns with its investigation of the ionosphere. If HAARP really was so successful, it would probably not be closing this year.
The argument that if we grasped how to control the climate then evildoers would already be doing it doesn't hold water with conspiratorial thought, however. Some believe the weather is already being shaped by "chemtrails" - aeroplane contrails deliberately laced with toxic chemicals - and mysterious weather warmongers are, for reasons unknown, making the eastern US unbearably chilly and California stricken by drought. Climate scientists dismiss such theories and evidence such as the long list of patents for climate-altering tools tends to demonstrate the boundless scope of the human imagination rather than the more limited reach of operational technology.
Robock is right to raise concerns over who will control any climate-shaping technologies that are proven to work but the omens from James Bond are good. Filming of the new Bond, Spectre, was disrupted earlier this month by strong winds in snowy Austria.
If there is a weather god, we aren't it, yet.
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The Guardian
February 16, 2015 Monday 4:24 PM GMT
Tony McMichael obituary;
Australian public health researcher who established the link between climate change and disease
BYLINE: Martin McKee and Colin Butler
SECTION: SOCIETY
LENGTH: 1180 words
The scope of epidemiology has expanded dramatically over the past 150 years, from its origins seeking to understand the causes of epidemic diseases, through the role of specific risk factors in non-communicable diseases, to the really big, and complex, questions facing humanity, and in some cases threatening its very survival. Tony McMichael, who has died aged 71, after complications of pneumonia, pioneered this third strand, showing how epidemiological techniques could be applied to global environmental change.
Although, by the 1980s, he had long been concerned about what he termed "planetary overload" (later the title of one of his bestselling books), whereby the Earth is no longer able to sustain its expanding population with its increasing desire to consume natural resources and degrade the environment, it was not obvious how the debate could be shifted from speculation to empirical evidence.
Tony developed conceptual models of the global ecosystem, refined the methods needed to understand it and analysed an array of data to quantify the effects on human health of climate change that many suspected but that could not yet be measured. These included the impact of changes in the seasonal variation of deaths among older people in temperate climates and the distribution of insect vectors of diseases, such as Ross River virus in his native Australia.
Although this emerging understanding of the complex links between global ecology and human health involved various academic and research institutions, Tony was the most senior health expert in the team and, by virtue of his personality, powers of persuasion and, especially, his highly respected status in epidemiology, he was able to legitimise this topic as a field of research.
He was an obvious choice to chair the committee assessing health risks for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change between 1993 and 1996, during which time he moved to the UK, becoming professor of epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 1994. In 2001 he returned to Australia to take over as head of the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at the Australian National University in Canberra. There, he added greatly to understanding of the complex interaction between climate and infectious disease, researching topics such as the association between the El Niño phenomenon and the pattern of dengue fever in Thailand.
This research subsequently informed the 2013 report of the World Health Organisation's tropical diseases research programme on the combined climatic, environmental, agricultural and nutritional influences on the emergence of infectious disease, which he chaired after stepping down as director of the centre in Canberra in 2007.
Although Tony's arguments were based on solid research, he also recognised that publications in peer-reviewed journals, of which he published more than 300, would not in themselves lead to action. He was on the board of several NGOs, was a tireless advocate for action on climate and health and, just before his death, was a lead author of an open letter to the Australian prime minister Tony Abbott, calling for climate change and health to be placed on the G20 agenda. Given the hostility to such a move among the few people who, for whatever reason, still refuse to accept the international consensus on the causes of climate change, he was amused when one accused him of being a scurrilous fascist, and another, a socialist lackey.
Born in Adelaide, South Australia, son of David McMichael, an architect, and Catherine Padman, Tony excelled at St Peter's college, an Anglican boys' school. Although there was no tradition of medicine in the family, he moved seamlessly to the medical school of the University of Adelaide. Even at that stage, his curiosity about the world was apparent and, in those days before low-cost international flights, he took slow boats to India - where his time in a leper colony exposed him to the unequal distribution of resources on this planet and the discrimination experienced by some of its most vulnerable inhabitants - and, later, to Papua New Guinea, where he met Judith Healy, whom he would marry in 1967, the year he graduated.
He then took a year away from medicine to become president of the National Union of Australian University Students. This was an exciting time to be a student leader and he made many valuable political connections that he was able to draw on later.
After a brief period in general practice, Tony enrolled as the first PhD student in epidemiology at Monash University, Melbourne, graduating in 1972. Correspondence with the microbiologist turned global health ecologist René Dubos led Tony to postdoctoral work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he demonstrated the importance of the "healthy worker effect", whereby those who are exposed to hazards at work may, paradoxically, have better outcomes than the general population, either because they are selected for employment, or because they self-select into certain occupations, on account of their better initial health.
Both there, and after his return to Australia, at the division of human nutrition at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation and later as the first holder of the foundation chair of occupational and environmental health at the University of Adelaide in 1986, Tony established his reputation as a first-class epidemiologist, generating knowledge on a diverse range of topics.
For years, the question of whether exposure to lead, then widespread in paints and water pipes, affected children's neurological development, remained unanswered. Tony led a study in Port Pirie, South Australia, home to the largest lead smelter in the southern hemisphere. He showed that exposure to lead varied greatly within the community, depending not only on the proximity of the child's home to the smelter but the concentration of lead in house dust and soil. The children were followed up with detailed developmental assessments until the age of 12. The results provided definitive evidence of the dangers of lead and were widely cited in the campaign to remove it from petrol.
Tony also chaired a working party for the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council that produced a seminal report on passive smoking, frequently cited in the campaign to ban smoking in public places. These achievements alone would have guaranteed him a place in the epidemiological hall of fame. However, it was his achievements from the late 1980s onwards for which he will be best remembered.
Tony received many awards, among them appointment as an officer of the Order of Australia and election to the UK Academy of Medical Sciences and the US National Academy of Sciences.
He is survived by Judith, a health policy researcher at the Australian National University, their two daughters, Anna and Celia, and his brothers, Philip and Robert. A sister, Alison, predeceased him.
· Anthony John McMichael, epidemiologist, born 3 October 1942; died 26 September 2014
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The Guardian
February 16, 2015 Monday 7:15 AM GMT
Alpine ski resorts gain boost from going green;
With climate change the number one environmental concern facing mountain communities, sustainable labelling schemes can help to attract tourists and preserve delicate landscapes
BYLINE: Simon Birch
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 995 words
Tourism manager Dominique Geissberger is looking out from her office in the small Swiss alpine ski resort of Villars at forests dusted with fresh snow and spectacular mountains dazzling in the winter sunshine. "This pristine landscape is what we all depend on," says Geissberger. "It's what tourists expect to find when they come here."
In an effort to protect the environment upon which the village's tourist trade relies, Villars has embarked on a comprehensive programme of sustainability initiatives ranging from introducing a fleet of hybrid buses that ferry skiers about, to low-energy snow-making systems.
Related: Why pictures of polar bears don't always tell the truth about climate change
In recognition of its pioneering environmental work, Villars has become the first ski resort in Switzerland and one of three resorts in the Alps to be awarded the Flocon Vert - the green snowflake - a sustainable certifying label run by Mountain Riders, a French group that campaigns for a more sustainable winter sports industry.
Exploring the use of labels as a way of encouraging and implementing sustainable development in mountain regions is a key goal for the Sustainable Mountain Tourism Alliance (SMTA), a global network of groups and organisations working for sustainability in alpine tourism that has recently been launched in Switzerland.
"Climate change is the number one environmental concern now facing mountain communities," says Dr Tobias Luthe, professor of sustainability science from the SMTA, speaking at its launch conference which was attended by representatives from the mountain-based tourism industry.
"Last year was the warmest on record and already this winter many alpine ski resorts have had an unusual lack of snow, leading to major economic losses. We urgently need new sustainable business models and labelling systems have an important role to play in promoting sustainable development in these mountain communities," says Luthe. "By quantifying different criteria such as energy use, transport and waste, labels can be used to communicate sustainability to a range of different markets and, crucially, encourage best practice in the sector."
The economic case for ensuring sustainable development in the Alps is compelling: about 80 million tourists visit the Alps every year, generating close to (EURO)50bn Euros, providing an estimated 10% of all jobs in the region.
Already this winter many alpine ski resorts have had an unusual lack of snow, leading to major economic losses
Dr Tobias Luthe
There are more than 50 different labels available for mountain-based resorts and hotels across Europe and they vary enormously in what they measure and the scale and scope of qualifying businesses. For example, with 42 different environmental and social criteria, the Flocon Vert is one of the most rigorous labelling schemes and applies to the whole operation of a ski resort, from its transport infrastructure to its use of renewable energy.
The Swiss-based Ibex Fairstay scheme meanwhile only certifies individual hotels and is a more entry-level scheme requiring relatively few environmental initiatives for businesses to qualify.
So what are the benefits of these labels? "The key benefit is that many labels require businesses to reduce their energy and water use which in turn can save them money," says Herbert Hamele, who chairs Ecotrans, the European network for sustainable tourism development. "The other key benefit is that businesses which have been awarded a label also have a marketing edge over their competition."
Related: Murky waters: the hidden environmental impacts of your cruise
Anne Dorte Carlson, who manages the Sustainable Destination Norway label, agrees with Hamele: "We've surveyed tour operators and 62% say that they would more likely be interested in a destination if it carries a sustainable or environmental label," says Carlson. "We believe that in the future this will give us a competitive advantage."
The commercial benefits of an environmental label have been confirmed by Trip Advisor, a colossus in the global tourist industry which is now rolling out its Green Leaders programme in Europe, having launched the scheme in North America in 2013.
"The Green Leaders programme is designed to help travellers book a greener trip by recognising hotels and B&Bs that engage in environmentally friendly practices ranging from recycling to energy use," says Trip Advisor's Tom Breckwoldt, speaking at the SMTA's launch conference. "Qualifying properties are then marked with a badge on their Trip Advisor home page."
Significantly, Breckwoldt revealed that Trip Advisor's own research has found that Green Leader businesses are 20% more likely to be booked compared with those that haven't signed up to the free scheme.
With more than 300 million people using Trip Advisor every month, many believe that this new initiative has the potential to be a game-changer in the push for more sustainable development in mountain regions. "Small groups such as Mountain Riders are doing great work but they don't reach the majority of people," says Luthe.
"Trip Advisor is a very powerful way of reaching a massive audience and if they implemented a combination of tools recommended by the SMTA then this could be really exciting."
Back in Villars, Geissberger is in no doubt about the importance of ensuring that the village heads in a more sustainable direction. "The environment is our future, it's how we earn our living," says Geissberger. "If we lose it, we'll lose our tourism and then we'll lose everything." The sustainable living hub is funded by Unilever. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled brought to you by. Find out morehere.
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The Guardian
February 16, 2015 Monday 4:34 AM GMT
We can no longer afford to give the benefit of the doubt. Just ask the PM;
On Sunday Tony Abbott revoked the benefit of the doubt for those who 'might be a threat to our country'. This isn't the first time he's been forced to take such action...
BYLINE: Adam Brereton
SECTION: COMMENT IS FREE
LENGTH: 850 words
"Throughout the western world we are living through a pandemic of doubt," Tony Abbott said in his 1994 maiden speech. Some of that doubt, however, is given as a benefit to deserving types who might need a bit of moral wriggle room. As of Sunday, this indulgence is something we can no longer afford. The Australian people, Abbott said, have been played for mugs :
It's clear to me, that for too long, we have given those who might be a threat to our country the benefit of the doubt. There's been the benefit of the doubt at our borders, the benefit of the doubt for residency, the benefit of the doubt for citizenship and the benefit of the doubt at Centrelink.
It's time to make some hard choices about who will receive the benefit of the doubt from now on. Nobody can be profligate, and that includes the prime minister; in these tough times we need to keep a tight rein on who gets it, and who doesn't.
Benefit of the doubt status, revoked: members of your own team
David Oldfield founded One Nation while working as a staffer for Tony Abbott. The party went on to capture a segment of the Coalition vote until John Howard absorbed much of Hanson's platform. But how did Oldfield get away with it?
"My inclination was always to assume that the aggressive right wing views were out of character, not in character; that was my inclination," Abbott told the ABC in 2010.
"You always give members of your own team the benefit of the doubt. In retrospect I was wrong."
Benefit of the doubt status, revoked: Australia's national character, as exemplified by supporters of the Liberal party
"As Liberals, we stand for the people who work hard, pay their taxes, volunteer in their local community and save for their retirement," Abbott said on the 70th anniversary of the Liberal party.
"Because you embody what's best in our national character; helping neighbours, giving people the benefit of the doubt, welcoming strangers, and 'having a go' at making everyone's life better."
Benefit of the doubt status, revoked: Julian Assange
"... I guess even people who've done the wrong thing have to be given the benefit of the doubt, the presumption of innocence and there doesn't appear to have been an enormous amount of that from the [Gillard] government."
Benefit of the doubt status, revoked: prime ministers of Australia
In his magnum opus, Battlelines, Abbott lamented that "Politicians live on a public stage but without the leeway that is sometimes extended to celebrities. Occasionally, when a politician is on a roll, faults are explained away. More often, though, no benefit of the doubt is given."
Abbott was himself prepared to graciously extend it to his political rivals. In 2013 he noted the indulgence had been extended to Kevin Rudd over border control:
The Australian people in their goodness and decency are prepared to give even Mr Rudd the benefit of the doubt for a time... [but] tell us what you're going to do to stop the boats.
Later, he was happy to show the same goodwill to Julia Gillard over the AWU "scandal" that eventually became a royal commission:
Now, the point I keep making is that I'm more than ready to give the prime minister the benefit of the doubt but in order to give her the benefit of the doubt, we've got to hear her side of the story and all we've had from the prime minister so far are increasingly shrill stonewallings, increasingly shrill denials.
Abbott himself has been the beneficiary of the benefit of the doubt too. From a 2011 interview on Sydney's 2UE:
To his credit, Mr Abbott is with me this morning. He was in the parliament like the rest of them until a quarter to three so he hasn't had much sleep so we'll give him the benefit of the doubt during the conversation here. Mr Abbott, good morning.
But, sometimes it's just too much to ask. As Fairfax journalist Judith Ireland tweeted in the wake of Abbott's infamous wink :
Why aren't people prepared to give Tony Abbott the benefit of the doubt on that wink? Is it the 'woman problem' again (sic)
Should Abbott revoke his own ability to claim the benefit? As we wait to see whether he can ride out the wobbles in his own leadership, his comments in the months before the 2013 election are, perhaps, worth reflecting on:
Look, the Australian people at the moment are relieved to see the back of a prime minister [Julia Gillard] they didn't like. They are prepared to give the newcomer [Kevin Rudd], even though he is really a recycled newcomer, the benefit of the doubt but what they expect from him is real change...
Benefit of the doubt status, revoked: the whole planet
In 2007, Rupert Murdoch said the planet "deserved the benefit of the doubt" on climate change. Abbott followed suit:
Now, all of us are concerned about climate change, all of us want to do the right thing by our planet. We all want to give the planet the benefit of the doubt but we've got to have smart policies, not dumb policies to do that...
Climate change is, of course, no threat whatsoever to Australia. That's lucky - in today's economy, with all the threats we face, how could we extend the benefit of the doubt to a whole planet?
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The Guardian
February 16, 2015 Monday 4:34 AM GMT
Nobel laureate asks Australia to follow UK example on bipartisan climate deal;
Brian Schmidt calls on Australia's political parties to emulate Britain's joint pledge, signed by main political leaders, to urgently tackle climate change
BYLINE: Oliver Milman
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 1114 words
Nobel laureate Brian Schmidt has called on Australia's political parties to follow Britain's example by striking a joint pledge to urgently tackle climate change.
On Saturday, the British prime minister, David Cameron (Conservative), the opposition leader, Ed Miliband (Labour), and the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg (Liberal Democrats), agreed to work together to combat climate change, whatever the outcome of May's general election.
Related: Cameron, Clegg and Miliband sign joint climate pledge
Schmidt, who won the 2011 Nobel prize for physics and is a councillor at the Australian Academy of Science, said he would be keen to help broker a similar deal between the Coalition, Labor and the Greens in Australia.
"We should be inspired by what the three major parties in the UK have done, so soon before an election," he told Guardian Australia. "I'd like to see the major parties do this in Australia, to come out with an accord to provide certainty.
"I'd be keen for someone to step up to help the process and if political parties think I'm right, I'd be happy to do so, as it's such an important issue. All the major parties say they believe climate change is occurring, but the average Australian voter thinks they don't agree on anything in this space.
"I'd say they don't have to agree on everything, but let's push Australia along as a global deal on climate change is inevitable and Australia should act, if only for its own economic self-interest. Its economy will be in ruins if it continues to be carbon-based."
The joint statement in Britain cited climate change as one of the most serious threats facing the world.
"Acting on climate change is an opportunity for the UK to grow a stronger economy, more efficient and more resilient to risks ahead," it said.
The parties pledged to seek a "fair, strong, legally binding" global climate deal in Paris later this year that would ensure temperatures did not rise more than 2C above pre-industrial times. The statement promised an accelerated transition to a "low-carbon economy" and to end the use of coal plants that don't use technology to capture their carbon emissions.
Schmidt said Australia's parties were "probably not ready yet" to commit to ending unabated coal use - about 75% of Australia's energy comes from coal compared with about a third in the UK - but that a general statement of intent was critical.
"I don't know what they hold in common, so I'd be looking for them to put a line in the sand as to what they'd like to say," he said.
"I don't think there's any clarity in the political sphere, no party has articulated a strategy of what Australia should do and why it's important for a big global effort. No one has said 'we are cutting emissions because of these reasons', which makes it look to the public like we're cutting for no reason at all. There needs to be a more sophisticated debate around this."
Greg Hunt, the environment minister, said: "We believe clearly and categorically in the science and are committed to and will achieve our targets.
"We're investing $2.55bn to reduce Australia's emissions. This is in stark contrast with Labor which gave Australia the worst of both worlds with higher electricity prices and an utterly failed emissions policy."
Mark Butler, Labor's environment spokesman, said: "Labor would welcome a bipartisan approach to climate action in Australia, particularly around renewable energy and restoring a legal cap on carbon pollution, but the Abbott government is simply not interested in taking meaningful action to address climate change."
The chief executive of the Climate Institute, John Connor, said the British agreement was a "historic move" that would improve the country's investment environment.
"It's a stark contrast to the situation in Australia, where political divisions have caused severe damage to the investment environment for climate and clean energy, leaving us sliding backward as the rest of the world charges ahead," he said.
The Coalition, Labor and the Greens have all officially stated that they support the mainstream scientific position that human activity is influencing the climate. The Coalition and Labor both support a minimum 5% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, based on 2000 levels.
However, prominent media commentators, Coalition MPs and the prime minister's top business adviser, Maurice Newman, have repeatedly questioned the validity of climate science. Newman has, in stark contrast to the world's major scientific bodies, warned that the world is in danger of cooling, rather than warming.
On Monday, the Australian Academy of Science released its latest update on the state of climate science. The publication aims to "counter confusion and misinformation" on the topic.
The guide, compiled by a panel of nine experts, poses questions such as "What is climate change?" and "Are human activities causing climate change?"
Schmidt said: "The purpose of this is to emphasise to citizens and policymakers that it's time to stop talking about the science. To my mind, people who are non-experts should be called into question if they go against the entire academy on this. How can they be taken seriously if they do that?
"The media has a propensity to give airtime to people who are not experts, people like Maurice Newman. He's entitled to his own opinion but I don't understand why it should be given air. I could talk about the finances of Australia, but I wouldn't expect those views to be aired."
Prof Andrew Holmes, the president of the Australian Academy of Science, said: "The evidence is clear: climate change, caused by human activities, is real. The vast majority of scientists and scientific organisations in this field are in agreement on this. And yet there continues to be a gap between public understanding and the science of climate change.
"Climate change is not something happening in the far off future, it's happening now - 2014 was the hottest year on record, and 14 of the 15 warmest years on record have occurred during the first 15 years of this century."
Related: Climate change will hit Australia harder than rest of world, study shows
While 2014 was the warmest year on record globally, it was the third warmest on record in Australia. Recent analysis by the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology stressed that Australia was on track for a temperature rise of up to 5.1C by the end of the century if emissions were not drastically cut.
Even a more moderate amount of warming is likely to have serious ramifications for Australia's agriculture, public health and coastal infrastructure. The Great Barrier Reef faces the threat of being hugely diminished due to rising sea temperatures and ocean acidification.
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The Guardian
February 16, 2015 Monday 1:02 AM GMT
Fossil fuel industry must take stranded assets seriously, says Tim Yeo;
Tory MP counters position of Shell's boss, Ben van Beurden, that those who say fossil fuels should be left in the ground are misguided
BYLINE: Terry Macalister and Kai Steemers
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 778 words
The chairman of parliament's energy and climate change committee has joined those warning the fossil fuel industry to take the threat of stranded assets seriously, and believes Shell is wrong to write off critics as naive.
Tim Yeo, a veteran Conservative MP and nuclear enthusiast, also expressed alarm at the latest delays at the new Hinkley Point building project in Somerset, saying he hoped they would not lead to eventual cancellation.
Shell's chief executive, Ben van Beurden, told a dinner of the international petroleum industry last week that those who argued fossil fuels should be kept in the ground were misguided in a world of rising energy demand.
Yeo, however, said the company should be wary: "I do believe the problem of stranded assets [where fossil fuels are rendered worthless because they cannot be burned in a world threatened by global warming] is a real one now.
"Investors are starting to think by 2030 the world will be in such a panic about climate change that either by law or by price it will be very hard to burn fossil fuels on anything like the scale we are doing at the moment."
Catherine Mitchell, professor of energy policy at Exeter University, said it was disingenuous of Van Beurden to accuse industry critics of being naive given the UN's intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) had warned about the dangers of a carbon bubble.
"We have to recognise those realities, but its disingenuous to attack critics over stranded assets given the findings of the IPCC. Shell's comments are also undermined by its commitment to drilling in wilderness areas."
The Green MP Caroline Lucas said that the IPCC's evidence made clear that 80% of proven fossil fuel reserves must stay in the ground.
"Shell has given evidence to MPs on the environmental audit committee several times now, on each occasion demonstrating a shocking disregard for climate science and for the wider environmental risks of their reckless oil drilling plans - notably in the Arctic.
"His peddling of a 'moral' justification for perpetuating fossil fuel dependence in developing countries is hypercritical and ill-informed. Not only are the world's poorest communities the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, developing countries themselves recognise the value of renewable, sustainable energy and are investing heavily in it - with growing success.
"Nobody's saying we will end fossil fuel use overnight, but Shell is clearly in denial about the urgency and feasibility of a rapid transition to a zero carbon energy system. With the costs of renewables falling dramatically, clean energy is fast becoming the best economic as well as environmental option."
Craig Bennett, the director of policy and campaigns at Friends of the Earth, said
the phasing out of fossil fuels had already started and oil companies were concerned.
"Shell has got to move into the 21st century or see its business model go the way of Kodak and Blockbuster Video."
The campaign against burning fossil fuels was highlighted by new calls on pension funds and others to dump their involvement in miners and oil companies as part of a global disinvestment day on Saturday.
Yeo believes fossil fuel companies must prepare themselves for a different kind of low carbon world.
"There may well be national [carbon] performance standards. There may well be caps everywhere. We now have a nuclear non-proliferation treaty, we may have then a coa-fired power station non-proliferation treaty and you can monitor these things externally.
"Or we may have a carbon price at $50 and investors think ahead so they think the world will have to be a low carbon one in the 2030s and pension funds with 25 year time horizons must take this into account. So the oil companies and the gas companies have to recognise this."
Yeo, who is stepping down at the forthcoming election after being deselected by his local South Suffolk party, says he hopes to play a continuing role in energy campaigning.
He was recently made chairman of the newly-created New Nuclear Watch Europe lobby group, backed by a variety of operators and supply companies. He has also in the past taken paid roles at low carbon companies which at one stage forced him to temporarily stand down from the chairmanship of the energy select committee.
The tacit admission last Thursday by EDF that it was struggling to meet its own deadline for a final investment decision to be made at Hinkley is seen by Yeo as very serious, especially if it were to lead to the project being shelved.
"If there is going to be a serious setback at Hinkley with EDF then what happens next given everything else (other new nuclear projects) is several years behind?"
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The Guardian
February 15, 2015 Sunday 9:30 PM GMT
Weatherwatch: There will be trouble ahead
BYLINE: Paul Brown
SECTION: NEWS
LENGTH: 259 words
Local authorities were slow to react to the problems that climate change would cause them. The prime example of this was the persistence of planners in granting permission for housing estates on flood plains despite warnings from the Environment Agency. The developers walked away with the profits, leaving the householders and the local authorities to cope when, some years down the line, the rivers overflowed.
Research 12 years ago showed that part of the reason for this was that officials and councillors had difficulty translating complex climate science into an understanding of what might happen in their locality. There followed an effort by government to simplify the message and prepare for heatwaves and floods.
A new report shows that this has been successful and that the need for simple changes, like larger capacity drains and balancing lakes to cope with heavier rain, is fully understood. But now there is a snag. Government cuts have meant that many of the officials whose job it was to factor climate change into local policies have lost their jobs, and in any case there is no money to take action on adaptation. Local government is barely able to finance its core statutory duties, without thinking ahead to the effects of climate change. So no long term planning is possible.
The only exceptions are local authorities that have "rebranded" climate adaptation and called it resilience to severe weather - in other words an emergency that might happen at any moment. That is the only way to get climate change back into this year's budget.
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The Guardian
February 15, 2015 Sunday 11:04 AM GMT
Spy agencies fund climate research in hunt for weather weapon, scientist fears;
US expert Alan Robock raises concern over who would control climate-altering technologies if research is paid for by intelligence agencies
BYLINE: Ian Sample, science editor, in San Jose
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 647 words
A senior US scientist has expressed concern that the intelligence services are funding climate change research to learn if new technologies could be used as potential weapons.
Alan Robock, a climate scientist at Rutgers University in New Jersey, has called on secretive government agencies to be open about their interest in radical work that explores how to alter the world's climate.
Robock, who has contributed to reports for the intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC), uses computer models to study how stratospheric aerosols can cool the planet in the way massive volcanic eruptions do.
But he was worried about who would control such climate-altering technologies should they prove effective, he told the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Jose.
?Last week, the National Academy of Sciences published a two-volume report on different approaches to tackling climate change. One focused on means to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, the other on ways to change clouds or the Earth's surface to make them reflect more sunlight out to space.
Related: Is geoengineering a bad idea? | Karl Mathiesen
The report concluded that while small-scale research projects were needed, the technologies were so far from being ready that reducing carbon emissions remained the most viable approach to curbing the worst extremes of climate change. A report by the Royal Society in 2009 made similar recommendations.
The $600,000 report was part-funded by the US intelligence services, but Robock said the CIA and other agencies had not fully explained their interest in the work. "The CIA was a major funder of the National Academies report so that makes me really worried who is going to be in control," he said. Other funders included Nasa, the US Department of Energy, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The CIA established the Center on Climate Change and National Security in 2009, a decision that drew fierce criticism from some Republicans who viewed it as a distraction from more pressing terrorist concerns. The center was closed down in 2012, though the agency said it would continue to monitor the humanitarian consequences of climate change and the impact on US economic security, albeit not from a dedicated office.
Robock said he became suspicious about the intelligence agencies' involvement in climate change science after receiving a call from two men who claimed to be CIA consultants ?three years ago. "They said: 'We are working for the CIA and we'd like to know if some other country was controlling our climate, would we be able to detect it?' I think they were also thinking in the back of their minds: 'If we wanted to control somebody else's climate could they detect it?'"
He replied that if a country wanted to create a stratospheric cloud large enough to change the climate, it would be visible with satellites and ground-based instruments. The use of the weather as a weapon was banned in 1978 ?under the Environmental Modification Convention (Enmod).
Asked how he felt ?about the call, Robock said he was scared. "I'd learned of lots of other things the CIA had done that didn't follow the rules. I thought that wasn't how my tax money was spent," he said. The CIA did not respond to requests for comment over the weekend.
The US dabbled in weather modification before Enmod was introduced. In the early 1960s, researchers on Project Storm Fury seeded thunderstorms with various particles in the hope of diminishing their destructive power. A similar process was adopted during the Vietnam war, with clouds seeded over the Ho Chi Minh trail in a bid to make the major supply route for North Vietnamese foot soldiers too muddy to pass.
"I think this research should be out in the open and it has to be international so there won't be any question that this technology will used for hostile purposes," Robock said.
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The New York Times
February 15, 2015 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
A Voluntary, and Effective, Climate Treaty
BYLINE: By MICHAEL GREENSTONE.
Michael Greenstone, the Milton Friedman professor of economics at the University of Chicago, runs the Energy Policy Institute there. He was the chief economist of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers from 2009 to 2010.
SECTION: Section BU; Column 0; Money and Business/Financial Desk; ECONOMIC VIEW; Pg. 7
LENGTH: 971 words
Negotiators around the world are deliberating proposals for an international climate change treaty that will contain a glaring loophole: It won't be binding.
That's less than ideal, but it's still worthwhile for several important reasons.
First, all treaties are essentially voluntary, short of violators being placed under severe sanctions or the threat of war. Second, the more binding the language of the treaty seems, the less likely it is that countries will make any commitment to act. And third, the only previous international treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions was surprisingly successful. For these reasons, the treaty to limit greenhouse gas emissions that may emerge from the December conference that is to take place in Paris -- binding or not -- is an important step forward in confronting climate change.
But we can't count on it alone.
Countries will comply only if they judge it to be in their interest, and this will require public support in the years ahead.
Let's explore further what ''internationally binding'' emissions agreements really are. The 1997 Kyoto Protocol is perhaps the most salient example. It required countries to have mandatory greenhouse gas emissions reduction requirements. The United Nations then monitored those requirements to determine whether countries met their commitments, but it couldn't force compliance. Thus, the Kyoto Protocol was ultimately a political agreement that countries could later change their minds about. In this sense, even internationally binding agreements are voluntary.
Moreover, the ''binding'' nature can do more harm than good by possibly deterring some countries from joining. That was the case when the United States refused to ratify the Kyoto agreement. And although China and India -- now the world's other top emitters -- did sign the Kyoto agreement, the move was largely symbolic: They were not required to make any emissions cuts because under Kyoto they were designated ''Non-Annex I'' or ''developing'' nations.
That said, countries' commitments from Kyoto -- a treaty that was binding in writing and voluntary in nature -- produced surprising results. Most countries met and even exceeded their pledged reduction targets for greenhouse gas emissions from 2008 to 2012. Over all, the world reduced emissions 25 percent more than had been pledged in the treaty.
Country-level analyses lend more texture. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia and Ukraine had the greatest drop in emissions, which measured 52 percent below their Kyoto commitment. This can largely be explained by the economic troubles those regions experienced after the fall of communism. But even excluding Russia and these former Soviet republics, the world reduced emissions by 10 percent more than the Kyoto pledges.
Among countries besides Russia and these former Soviet republics, some have been more successful than others in reducing emissions because they were proactive. For example, the European Union reduced its emissions by 11 percent more than it had pledged. This was largely because of the creation of an innovative market that allowed emitters to trade permits for the rights to emit the greenhouse gases that cause climate change, a decision inspired -- but not required -- by the Kyoto commitment. The European Union leaders were surely motivated by their electorates' vocal support for climate policy.
Canada, on the other hand, is 31 percent away from meeting its commitment. Recognizing its shortcomings, Canada withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol in 2011. During that same period, the country's economy grew with the discovery of tar sands and a boom in oil production. Because the economy and so many jobs rely on carbon-intensive industries, the Canadian government decided that it made less sense to enact emission reduction policies, despite its pledge in Kyoto. The internationally binding treaty did not stop it from leaving.
It is apparent from these examples that an international climate treaty -- voluntary or not -- depends on the motivations of each participating country. Ultimately, domestic measures -- laws, policies and regulations -- are necessary to meet the international commitment. Many factors affect these national decisions, including each country's unique natural resources and economic and cultural circumstances, as well as the degree of its desire to be viewed as a responsible international actor. And as I've written, in China and, perhaps, in India as well, growing awareness that people are being exposed to deadly air pollution is playing an important role in the formulation of policy on greenhouse gases. More broadly, all over the world national decisions are being swayed by evidence of damage caused by climate events, and, of course, by the varied responses of the local political system and citizens.
What does this mean for the coming Paris negotiations? It is tempting to long for an internationally binding treaty that guarantees emissions reductions. However, except under extraordinary circumstances, all treaties are ultimately voluntary. Further, any benefits that could come with a more binding commitment must be weighed against the possibility that they could deter some countries from setting goals for emissions reductions.
If history is a guide, whether this treaty's goals are met will depend on the extent to which countries make mitigation of climate change a domestic priority. This means that even after the hard work of negotiating the Paris treaty is completed, the hardest work will still be in front of us, wherever we live.
The Upshot provides news, analysis and graphics about politics, policy and everyday life. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Sign up for our weekly newsletter.
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/upshot/surprisingly-a-voluntary-climate-treaty-could-actually-work.html
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The New York Times
February 15, 2015 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
A Voluntary, and Effective, Climate Treaty
BYLINE: By MICHAEL GREENSTONE.
Michael Greenstone, the Milton Friedman professor of economics at the University of Chicago, runs the Energy Policy Institute there. He was the chief economist of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers from 2009 to 2010.
SECTION: Section BU; Column 0; Money and Business/Financial Desk; ECONOMIC VIEW; Pg. 7
LENGTH: 971 words
Negotiators around the world are deliberating proposals for an international climate change treaty that will contain a glaring loophole: It won't be binding.
That's less than ideal, but it's still worthwhile for several important reasons.
First, all treaties are essentially voluntary, short of violators being placed under severe sanctions or the threat of war. Second, the more binding the language of the treaty seems, the less likely it is that countries will make any commitment to act. And third, the only previous international treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions was surprisingly successful. For these reasons, the treaty to limit greenhouse gas emissions that may emerge from the December conference that is to take place in Paris -- binding or not -- is an important step forward in confronting climate change.
But we can't count on it alone.
Countries will comply only if they judge it to be in their interest, and this will require public support in the years ahead.
Let's explore further what ''internationally binding'' emissions agreements really are. The 1997 Kyoto Protocol is perhaps the most salient example. It required countries to have mandatory greenhouse gas emissions reduction requirements. The United Nations then monitored those requirements to determine whether countries met their commitments, but it couldn't force compliance. Thus, the Kyoto Protocol was ultimately a political agreement that countries could later change their minds about. In this sense, even internationally binding agreements are voluntary.
Moreover, the ''binding'' nature can do more harm than good by possibly deterring some countries from joining. That was the case when the United States refused to ratify the Kyoto agreement. And although China and India -- now the world's other top emitters -- did sign the Kyoto agreement, the move was largely symbolic: They were not required to make any emissions cuts because under Kyoto they were designated ''Non-Annex I'' or ''developing'' nations.
That said, countries' commitments from Kyoto -- a treaty that was binding in writing and voluntary in nature -- produced surprising results. Most countries met and even exceeded their pledged reduction targets for greenhouse gas emissions from 2008 to 2012. Over all, the world reduced emissions 25 percent more than had been pledged in the treaty.
Country-level analyses lend more texture. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia and Ukraine had the greatest drop in emissions, which measured 52 percent below their Kyoto commitment. This can largely be explained by the economic troubles those regions experienced after the fall of communism. But even excluding Russia and these former Soviet republics, the world reduced emissions by 10 percent more than the Kyoto pledges.
Among countries besides Russia and these former Soviet republics, some have been more successful than others in reducing emissions because they were proactive. For example, the European Union reduced its emissions by 11 percent more than it had pledged. This was largely because of the creation of an innovative market that allowed emitters to trade permits for the rights to emit the greenhouse gases that cause climate change, a decision inspired -- but not required -- by the Kyoto commitment. The European Union leaders were surely motivated by their electorates' vocal support for climate policy.
Canada, on the other hand, is 31 percent away from meeting its commitment. Recognizing its shortcomings, Canada withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol in 2011. During that same period, the country's economy grew with the discovery of tar sands and a boom in oil production. Because the economy and so many jobs rely on carbon-intensive industries, the Canadian government decided that it made less sense to enact emission reduction policies, despite its pledge in Kyoto. The internationally binding treaty did not stop it from leaving.
It is apparent from these examples that an international climate treaty -- voluntary or not -- depends on the motivations of each participating country. Ultimately, domestic measures -- laws, policies and regulations -- are necessary to meet the international commitment. Many factors affect these national decisions, including each country's unique natural resources and economic and cultural circumstances, as well as the degree of its desire to be viewed as a responsible international actor. And as I've written, in China and, perhaps, in India as well, growing awareness that people are being exposed to deadly air pollution is playing an important role in the formulation of policy on greenhouse gases. More broadly, all over the world national decisions are being swayed by evidence of damage caused by climate events, and, of course, by the varied responses of the local political system and citizens.
What does this mean for the coming Paris negotiations? It is tempting to long for an internationally binding treaty that guarantees emissions reductions. However, except under extraordinary circumstances, all treaties are ultimately voluntary. Further, any benefits that could come with a more binding commitment must be weighed against the possibility that they could deter some countries from setting goals for emissions reductions.
If history is a guide, whether this treaty's goals are met will depend on the extent to which countries make mitigation of climate change a domestic priority. This means that even after the hard work of negotiating the Paris treaty is completed, the hardest work will still be in front of us, wherever we live.
The Upshot provides news, analysis and graphics about politics, policy and everyday life. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Sign up for our weekly newsletter.
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/upshot/surprisingly-a-voluntary-climate-treaty-could-actually-work.html
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The Guardian
February 14, 2015 Saturday 6:01 AM GMT
Cameron, Clegg and Miliband sign joint climate pledge;
Three party leaders make cross-party declaration to tackle climate change in a rare show of unity in the runup to the general election
BYLINE: Damian Carrington
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 775 words
David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband have signed a joint pledge to tackle climate change, which they say will protect the UK's national security and economic prosperity.
The agreement of the three party leaders is highly unusual and comes amid a general election campaign that is becoming increasingly bitter.
The prime minister, deputy prime minister and leader of the opposition have all clashed over green issues, but the joint declaration states: "Climate change is one of the most serious threats facing the world today. It is not just a threat to the environment, but also to our national and global security, to poverty eradication and economic prosperity."
"Acting on climate change is also an opportunity for the UK to grow a stronger economy, which is more efficient and more resilient to the risks ahead," the joint statement says. "It is in our national interest to act and ensure others act with us." A senior UK military commander has warned previously that climate change poses as grave a threat to the UK's security and economic resilience as terrorism.
The declaration was hailed as "inspiring leadership" by Al Gore, former US vice president and by multinational business leaders as a clear message that the UK is a good place for climate-friendly investment. The cross-party agreement in the UK contrasts sharply with the US, Australia and Canada, where right-of-centre politicians argue against the need to act on global warming.
The world's governments have pledged to tackle climate change and have set a UN summit in Paris in December as the deadline for a global deal. The Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Labour leaders have pledged "to seek a fair, strong, legally binding, global climate deal which limits temperature rises to below 2C", the level seen as the threshold of dangerous global warming.
The leaders have also pledged "to work together, across party lines, to agree [UK] carbon budgets", which are required by law but which caused serious cabinet clashes in 2011.
The leaders' third pledge is "to accelerate the transition to a competitive, energy-efficient low-carbon economy and to end the use of unabated coal for power generation." The UK green economy has grown strongly, even during the years after the global economic crisis in 2008, and employs about a million people, but has been hit by political uncertainty due to rows over wind farms and solar power.
"This agreement represents inspiring leadership and true statesmanship by all three men," said Gore. "The political courage it represents on all sides is exactly what our world most needs in order to solve the climate crisis."
Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever, said: "The importance of this pledge cannot be overstated. In this critical year, this sets a terrific example for other countries to follow." Polman warned in an article for the Guardian this week that "powerful vested interests in high-carbon businesses are desperately opposing these changes".
Juergen Maier, CEO of Siemens, which started building on a £310m wind turbine factory in Hull in January, said: "The low-carbon transition represents a major economic opportunity and this demonstration of cross-party support sends a clear message that the UK remains a good place for global companies to do low-carbon business."
The joint statement, brokered by the Green Alliance and other NGOs, was released on Saturday, the same day that the Go Fossil Free movement persuading investors to dump their fossil fuel stocks is holding a global day of action, with events in over 50 countries. The fast-growing divestment campaign has already seen 180 institutions worth a combined $50bn get rid of their fossil fuel investments, including local governments, universities, churches and health-care providers.
A series of analyses have shown that the coal, oil and gas industry already have three times more fossil fuels ready to be extracted than can be burned, if the pledge by the world's governments to keep global warming under 2C is to be kept. The campaigners argue that the fossil fuel industry is therefore not just a threat to the climate, but also to investors' money, as trillions of dollars is being spent exploring for fossil fuels that will be worthless if climate change is tackled. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, told the Guardian in 2014: "We need an apartheid-style boycott to save the planet."
Banks that fund fossil fuel investments are also being targeted on the day of action in the UK, South Africa and Australia. In the UK, at least 1,400 people will switch their accounts away from the big five banking groups in protest at the £66bn they invested in fossil fuel extraction in 2012 alone.
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The New York Times
February 14, 2015 Saturday
Late Edition - Final
Conservative Politicians Abroad Seem More Accepting of Evolution
BYLINE: By MARK OPPENHEIMER.
mark.e.oppenheimer@gmail .com; twitter: @markopp1
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; BELIEFS; Pg. 15
LENGTH: 1110 words
On Wednesday, in an interview in London, Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, a potential Republican presidential candidate, sidestepped the question of whether he believed in evolution.
''I'm going to punt on that one,'' he said to an audience at a research organization in London, which he was visiting for a trade mission. ''I'm here to talk about trade, not to pontificate on other issues. I love the evolution of trade in Wisconsin.''
Mr. Walker's response was not all that surprising -- evolution is a sensitive issue for the evangelical Christian base of the Republican Party and presidential candidates have had to tread carefully around it.
The theory of evolution may be supported by a consensus of scientists, but none of the likely Republican candidates for 2016 seem to be convinced. Former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida said it should not be taught in schools. Former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas is an outright skeptic. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas will not talk about it. When asked, in 2001, what he thought of the theory, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey said, ''None of your business.''
After Mr. Walker's response, the interviewer in London, an incredulous Justin Webb of the BBC, said to the governor: ''Any British politician, right or left wing, would laugh and say, 'Yes, of course evolution is true.' ''
Unlike the United States, where Republicans and conservative Christians are more likely to deny evolution and climate change, most conservative politicians in other countries, as well as other branches of Christianity, see Darwin more favorably. The BBC reporter's response to Mr. Walker could serve as a reminder that American evangelicals, and the Republicans who woo them, are the exception, not the rule.
Britain, for example, has its Darwin skeptics, and its climate-change deniers, said the historian David N. Hempton, the dean of Harvard Divinity School, who is from Northern Ireland. ''But the proportions are different,'' he said, with British residents and evangelicals more likely to be comfortable with Darwin and climate science than their American counterparts.
He attributed the difference in part to Britain's more unified national culture. ''You can get school boards in the U.S. that will try to prevent the teaching of evolution in schools,'' Professor Hempton said. ''That's almost impossible to do in Britain, because school curricula are set more nationally.''
American evangelicals and fundamentalists can secede into their own churches and Christian schools, and read magazines and watch television aimed at them, he said. But that is harder to do across the Atlantic, ''where things like the BBC have a kind of generic influence over the whole culture.''
In the United States, a widespread theological opposition to Darwin is found mainly among conservative Protestants. Many Orthodox Jews believe that evolution is compatible with the teachings of the Hebrew Bible, and Islamic scholars have, with some exceptions, generally supported the theory.
Roman Catholics in the last half-century have only become more accepting of Darwin. In 1950, Pope Pius XII said that evolution was not at odds with Catholic teaching, an opinion reiterated by Pope John Paul II in 1996. Pope Francis thrilled science teachers, and large numbers of Catholics in October, by saying that God was not a ''magician, with a magic wand,'' but rather worked through principles like evolution.
''Evolution in nature is not inconsistent with the notion of creation, because evolution requires the creation of beings that evolve,'' Francis said.
Ilia Delio, a scientist and theologian, and a Catholic nun, who teaches at Georgetown, said that Catholic theology, because it had always been based on more than just the Bible, had more freedom to accept science than conservative Protestantism does.
''Protestantism places a much greater emphasis on Scripture alone,'' Sister Delio said. The literal reading of Genesis favored by conservative evangelicals, who infer from it that ''the earth was created less than 10 thousand years ago,'' is ''very problematic from a Catholic perspective,'' with its more enthusiastic embrace of modern science.
As Molly Worthen, who teaches Christian history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, put it, ''Catholics are not biblical literalists.'' They acknowledge that the Bible does not interpret itself, ''and they place the final authority for that interpretation in the pope and the bishops.''
While non-Catholics might stereotype the papacy as a conservative institution, it paradoxically ''gives Catholics an orderly method for revising church teaching and hedging the 'literal' meaning of scripture,'' Professor Worthen said, ''without feeling that they've given away the cornerstone of their faith.'' Popes favor evolution, giving other Catholics permission to.
By contrast, evangelicals' commitment to the Bible -- for many, the 17th-century King James Version -- can come between them and new scientific learning.
But all of this theological discourse assumes that Governor Walker, or anyone else, actually understands what evolution is. Edward Humes, author of the 2007 book ''Monkey Girl,'' about the court battle over anti-evolution ''intelligent design'' theory in Dover, Pa., schools, said that many evangelicals did not really understand evolution.
''When the people on the school board were asked to explain in Dover what they took the theory of evolution to be, they couldn't,'' Mr. Humes said. ''Nor could they explain the intelligent design theory they were embracing.''
For example, Mr. Hume said, some evangelicals believe that evolution is a theory of how life began. In fact, he said, ''it explains the diversity of life on our planet, and why so many have become extinct and others have risen to prominence.''
Many Christians do not understand, he said, that they can believe that life forms evolved via natural selection, while still believing in a divine origin of the first life forms.
Sister Delio, from Georgetown, agreed that much of the controversy over Darwin was ill-informed, and not just among evangelicals.
''A lot of people just don't know science,'' she said. ''They don't even know basic science. They don't read anything from science, not even popular science magazines.'' For many Protestants and Catholics alike, she said, ''it's a half-brained understanding of things.''
Mr. Walker, as it happens, has backpedaled on his anti-evolution stance -- sort of.
''Both science & my faith dictate my belief that we are created by God,'' he wrote on Twitter, later on Wednesday. ''I believe faith & science are compatible, & go hand in hand.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/14/us/conservative-christians-abroad-seem-more-accepting-of-evolution.html
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GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin addressed a research group in London this week on a trade mission. Asked whether he believed in evolution, he said, ''I'm going to punt on that one.'' (PHOTOGRAPH BY LEFTERIS PITARAKIS/ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The Guardian
February 13, 2015 Friday 9:28 PM GMT
The readers' editor on ... when a joke in a comment thread goes beyond mere tastelessness;
An anonymous reader posted on Times columnist Matt Ridley's views on climate change a suggestion that no one would mourn if he were beheaded
BYLINE: Chris Elliott
SECTION: COMMENT IS FREE
LENGTH: 857 words
There are few more entrenched areas of debate than climate change. A blogpost by Dana Nuccitelli on January 21, " Matt Ridley wants to gamble the earth's future because he won't learn from the past ", garnered 514 comments. The post criticised Lord Ridley's views as expressed in an article in the Times.
The opening paragraph said: "Have you ever watched a zombie movie and wondered if the protagonists will grow physically tired from having to repeatedly kill zombies that inevitably rise once again from the dead? That's how people often feel when confronted with climate change myths that were debunked years ago. These myths never seem to stay dead, inevitably being revived by climate contrarians no matter how conclusively and repeatedly they've been debunked." The blogpost used the zombie analogy to discuss Lord Ridley's views, illustrated by a photograph taken at a festival of someone carrying a dummy zombie head.
Among the comments were two from "Bluecloud", which elicited the following complaint from Lord Ridley: "Beneath the article appeared the following comment from 'Bluecloud': 'Should that not be Ridley's severed head in the photo?' 'Bluecloud' was challenged by another commenter with: 'Do you recommend that for all people that have a different world view than you?' 'Bluecloud' replied: 'We would actually solve a great deal of the world's problems by chopping off everyone's heads.
'Why are you deniers so touchy? Mere calls for a beheading evolve such a strong response in you people. Ask yourself a simple question: Would the world be a better place without Matt Ridley? Need I answer that question?'"
Lord Ridley went on to say that the repetition by "Bluecloud" showed he had not been "misunderstood in his death threat". He also pointed out that the comment was made a few days before the beheading of a Japanese hostage in Syria.
There was a further comment that identified "Bluecloud" as Gary Evans. The comment that "outed" him was removed by moderators but the two comments by him as "Bluecloud", which involved beheading, were not.
This lies at the heart of Lord Ridley's complaint. He wrote to me on 30 January: "Incredibly, this comment, outing Mr Evans, was then removed by the moderators, because apparently it was more offensive to the Guardian community than the recommendation that I be beheaded...Accordingly, I would like to lodge a formal complaint that the Guardian censored criticism of a Guardian contributor who twice made explicit death threats against a named individual, while not censoring the death threats themselves, and refused reasonable requests for redress."
Lord Ridley wanted a public apology.
The Guardian's moderation team oversee 50,000 comments a day. As I responded to Lord Ridley 11 days after his complaint with an apology for delay: "'Bluecloud''s beheading comment was posted on 22 January at 11.32am. The moderators didn't remove it immediately because it wasn't seen as a credible threat at that time; the tone and nature of the comment suggested that it wasn't serious and thus fell into the realms of bad taste rather than a genuine wish that you be harmed.
"However, a moderator took it down the next day (23) at 9.47pm because the story about the Isis hostages was now dominating the news agenda." The moderators felt this context made the comment cross into something beyond bad taste whatever the original intent. In total it was up for nearly 35 hours. The comment outing "Bluecloud" was removed because it is against the Guardian's community guidelines to identify any poster. However, a link in his Guardian profile goes back to his own blog, which identifies him although that was not immediately apparent when the comment was taken down.
I contacted Evans, who wrote one piece for the Guardian five years ago and is thoroughly contrite and apologised for his "stupid" comments: "I will not seek to defend them and I apologise for any trouble this may have caused to anyone involved. My first comment was made without thinking as a provocative response to the zombie image. The second was really inexcusable. It was too late for me to apologise on the thread by the time I had found the time to consider my actions."
The web and particularly the threads are a robust environment but I think we should have taken the beheading comment down as soon as it was reported, even though I agree with the moderators that it was an attempt at a joke rather than anything else. I think the "Bluecloud" comment falls squarely within rule 3 of the Community guidelines: "We understand that people often feel strongly about issues debated on the site, but we will consider removing any content that others might find extremely offensive or threatening."
When beheadings have been such a tragic part of the news agenda for so many months the choice of a severed head as the accompanying photograph was an error. It seems unlikely to me that the offending comments would have been made had the picture not been what it was. For that reason and the length of time it took to remove the comments, I think Lord Ridley deserves an apology, which I am happy to give on behalf of the Guardian.
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The Guardian
February 13, 2015 Friday 6:50 PM GMT
Fossil fuel divestment campaign grows as protesters target UK banks;
With Britain's big five banks investing £66bn in fossil fuel extraction, campaigners believe pressure is building on banks to sell off toxic assets
BYLINE: Damian Carrington
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 800 words
At least 1,400 UK customers are set to move their accounts in protest at their banks' multibillion-pound funding of the fossil fuel industry. The campaign, mirrored by actions in Australia and South Africa, is part of a global day of action by the fast-growing fossil fuel divestment movement.
The Go Fossil Free campaign has already persuaded 180 institutions, worth $50bn (£33bn) and including local authorities, universities and churches, to sell off their investments in coal, oil and gas. The campaign will stage a series of protests on Saturday, with hundreds other events planned in more than 50 countries.
A spokesman for the Move Your Money campaign, Fionn Travers-Smith, said: "Britain's biggest banks have been using people's money to fund fossil fuels and climate change for too long, and the public simply don't want to support these socially and environmentally catastrophic industries."
Related: Global Divestment Day: 'We are ready for urgent action on climate change'
The UK's big five banking groups put £66bn into fossil fuel extraction in 2012 alone, he said. "With a neverending slew of bank scandals and the divestment movement growing so rapidly, real people are taking a stand. Fossil fuel investments are toxic assets for the planet, and they are swiftly becoming toxic for bank reputations too."
The divestment movement asks investors to commit to selling their investments in the biggest 200 fossil fuel companies over five years. A series of analyses have shown that there are already three times more fossil fuels in accessible reserves than can be burned if catastrophic climate change is to be avoided, as world leaders have pledged.
The campaigners argue that companies spending trillions of dollars exploring for more fossil fuels that could not be burned if climate change is to be checked is a danger to both the environment and investors' capital. Divestment has been backed by the anti-apartheid campaigner Archbishop Desmond Tutu, while the heads of the Bank of England and the World Bank have both warned that action to cut carbon emissions would devalue fossil fuel investments.
The Move Your Money campaign is targeting HSBC, Barclays, Lloyds, Santander and the Royal Bank of Scotland, which also owns NatWest. Only HSBC responded to a request for comment. A spokesman said: "HSBC recognises climate change is a serious threat to the world [but] the shift to a low-carbon economy will take time and fossil fuels will be an important part of the global energy mix for the foreseeable future." He said HSBC policy "severely restricted" its financing of new coal-fired power plants.
Other UK divestment events this week included Bristol city council following Oxford in excluding fossil fuels from their investments and a protest at the Church of England's general synod. In Australia, people will be moving their money from banks looking to finance the world's largest coal port in the Great Barrier Reef world heritage site.
New divestment campaigns will be launched on Saturday in countries including France, Vietnam, Ukraine and Japan. In the US, where the campaign began, activists in California will demonstrate at the country's biggest pension fund, CalPERS, which is already the subject of a state bill requiring divestment. US students are also staging sit-ins at universities that have refused to divest, such as Harvard, which has a $36bn endowment fund.
"Divestment serves as a key tool in moving the world beyond fossil fuels and towards renewable energy," said Payal Parekh, global managing director for campaigners 350.org. "The divestment movement is modelling what governments need to be doing: withdrawing funds from the problem and investing in the solution."
Leading financial groups including Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Standard & Poor's have also warned of the risk posed to fossil fuel investments by action on climate change. A series of large funds have excluded coal and other highly polluting companies, including the world's largest sovereign wealth fund in Norway, which revealed it had shed dozens of coal companies on 5 February. In September, the Rockefellers, heirs to the fabled Standard Oil fortune, withdrew their funds from fossil fuel fuels.
"As a rule, money flows downwards, to ever lower moral levels," said Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany and a former chief adviser to Angela Merkel and the European commission president José Manuel Barroso. "Why? Because the return on investment is highest in the most unsustainable business cases.
"Divestment tries to invert this flow and to make the money move upwards again," he said. "Everyone can contribute, from huge institutional investors to each ordinary citizen with a bank account or a retirement scheme."
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The Guardian
February 13, 2015 Friday 9:27 AM GMT
Green news roundup: mega droughts, geoengineering and straw homes;
The week's top environment news stories and green events. If you're not already receiving this roundup, sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox
BYLINE: Environment editor
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 318 words
Environment news
US faces worst droughts in 1,000 years, predict scientists
Scientists urge global 'wake-up call' to deal with climate change
Coastal communities dumping 8m tonnes of plastic in oceans every year
Capita's takeover of Defra science agency needs scrutiny, say Labour
Fracking will be allowed under national parks, UK decides
US launches plan to halt decline of monarch butterfly
California calls on pension funds to divest from coal in climate change push
UK spent 300 times more on fossil fuels than clean energy despite green pledge
England's flood defence funding faces £600m shortfall, MPs warn
On the blogs
Peru planning highway through most biodiverse place on Earth
Indonesia winning battle to save world's richest reef system
Climate science denialists in tailspin over hottest years
Fossil fuel lobby goes on the attack against divestment movement
We can start leaving the oil in the ground right now - here's how
Multimedia
Satellite Eye on Earth: January 2015 - in pictures
The week in wildlife - in pictures
Wildlife under threat from Asia's poaching crisis - in pictures
Orange chemical cloud blankets Catalan towns after explosion at factory in Spain - video
Features and comment
The fight to save one of the world's oldest fish species
Paul Polman: World leaders should take advantage of low oil prices to ditch fossil fuel subsidies
Renewable energy: How wind is changing the fortunes of Lewis islanders
Is geoengineering a bad idea?
Observer Ethical Awards
The Observer Ethical Awards are back for their ten year anniversary. So tell us who you think is making the biggest difference in the fight for environmental and social justice. Browse the categories and nominate today
...And finally
First straw homes go on sale
The team behind the project insist that straw houses could help to meet housing demand in the UK sustainably - and are safe from huffing and puffing.
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The New York Times
February 13, 2015 Friday
Late Edition - Final
Starved for Energy, and Bracing for a Water Crisis
BYLINE: By SALMAN MASOOD; Declan Walsh contributed reporting from London.
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Foreign Desk; Pg. 12
LENGTH: 961 words
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Energy-starved Pakistanis, their economy battered by chronic fuel and electricity shortages, may soon have to contend with a new resource crisis: major water shortages, the Pakistani government warned this week.
A combination of global climate change and local waste and mismanagement have led to an alarmingly rapid depletion of Pakistan's water supply, said the minister for water and energy, Khawaja Muhammad Asif.
''Under the present situation, in the next six to seven years, Pakistan can be a water-starved country,'' Mr. Asif said in an interview, echoing a warning that he first issued at a news conference in Lahore this week.
The prospect of a major water crisis in Pakistan, even if several years distant, offers a stark reminder of a growing challenge in other poor and densely populated countries that are vulnerable to global climate change.
In Pakistan, it poses a further challenge to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, whose government has come under sharp criticism for failing to end the country's electricity crisis. In some rural areas, heavy rationing has meant that as little as four hours of electricity a day is available.
In the interview, Mr. Asif said the government had started to bring the electricity crisis under control, and predicted a return to a normal supply by 2017. But energy experts are less confident that such a turnaround is possible, given how long and complex the problem has proved to be.
Now the country's water supply looms as a resource challenge, intensified by Pakistan's enduring infrastructure and management problems.
Agriculture is a cornerstone of the Pakistani economy. The 2,000-mile-long Indus River, which rises in the Himalayas and spans the country, feeds a vast network of irrigation canals that line fields producing wheat, vegetables and cotton, all major sources of foreign currency. In the north, hydroelectric power stations are a cornerstone of the creaking power system.
A combination of melting glaciers, decreasing rainfall and chronic mismanagement by successive governments has put that water supply in danger, experts say.
In a report published in 2013, the Asian Development Bank described Pakistan as one of the most ''water-stressed'' countries in the world, with a water availability of 1,000 cubic meters per person per year -- a fivefold drop since independence in 1947, and about the same level as drought-stricken Ethiopia.
''It is a very serious situation,'' said Pervaiz Amir, country director for the Pakistan Water Partnership. ''I feel it is going to be more serious than the recent oil shortages.''
Shortages of resources have climbed to the top of the political agenda in recent years. Fuel shortages last month, for which government officials blamed mismanagement by the national oil company, caused lengthy lines outside fuel stations that embarrassed the government at a time of low global oil prices.
Mr. Sharif's government was already grappling with the seemingly intractable electricity crisis, which regularly causes blackouts of 10 hours a day even in major cities. And Mr. Sharif has been visibly distracted by grueling political duels, with the opposition politician Imran Khan, who accuses him of stealing the 2013 election, and with powerful military leaders who have undermined his authority in key areas.
Mr. Asif, the water and energy minister, said the government had started to turn the corner. But he acknowledged that the country's resource problems were, to a large degree, endemic. ''There is a national habit of extravagance,'' he said, noting that it extended across resource areas, whether gas, electricity or water.
''I will be very careful not to use the word 'drought,' but we are water stressed right now, and slowly, we are moving to be a water-starved country,'' he said.
Evidence of chronic water shortages have been painfully evident in some parts of Pakistan in recent years. A drought caused by erratic rainfall in Tharparkar, a desert area in southern Sindh Province, caused a humanitarian emergency in the region last year.
''The frequency of monsoon rains has decreased but their intensity has increased,'' said Mr. Amir of the Pakistan Water Partnership. ''That means more water stress, particularly in winters.''
Water is also tied to nationalist, even jihadist, politics in Pakistan. For years, religious conservatives and Islamist militants have accused rival India, where the Indus River system rises, of constricting Pakistan's water supply.
Hafiz Saeed, the leader of the militant group that carried out the 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India, Lashkar-e-Taiba, regularly rails against Indian ''water terrorism'' during public rallies.
Mr. Asif said that contrary to such claims, India was not building reservoirs on rivers that flow into Pakistan. ''We will never let it happen,'' he said, citing the Indus Water Treaty, an agreement between the two countries that was brokered by the World Bank and signed in the 1960s.
One major culprit in Pakistan's looming water crisis, experts say, is the country's inadequate water storage facilities. In India, about one-third of the water supply is stored in reservoirs, compared with just 9 percent in Pakistan, Mr. Amir said.
''We built our last dam 46 years ago,'' he said. ''India has built 4,000 dams, with another 150 in the pipeline.''
Experts say the country's chaotic policies are hurting its image in the eyes of Western donors who could help alleviate the mounting resource crises.
''The biggest looming crisis is of governance, not water -- which could make this country unlivable in the next few years,'' said Arshad H. Abbasi, a water and energy expert with the Sustainable Development and Policy Institute, a research group based in Islamabad.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/13/world/asia/pakistan-braces-for-major-water-shortages.html
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GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: Afghan refugees pumped water by hand in a slum of Islamabad, Pakistan. An official warned that Pakistan could become ''a water-starved country.''
Arshad Massi, a 34-year-old laborer, showered under an outdoor pipe in Islamabad. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY MUHAMMED MUHEISEN/ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The Guardian
February 12, 2015 Thursday 10:33 PM GMT
US faces worst droughts in 1,000 years, predict scientists;
Climate change is likely to cause decade-long mega-droughts across US south-west and Great Plains, new study shows
BYLINE: Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 529 words
The US south-west and the Great Plains will face decade-long droughts far worse than any experienced over the last 1,000 years because of climate change, researchers said on Thursday.
The coming drought age - caused by higher temperatures under climate change - will make it nearly impossible to carry on with current life-as-normal conditions across a vast swathe of the country.
The droughts will be far worse than the one in California - or those seen in ancient times, such as the calamity that led to the decline of the Anasazi civilizations in the 13 thcentury, the researchers said.
"The 21 st-century projections make the [previous] mega-droughts seem like quaint walks through the garden of Eden," said Jason Smerdon, a co-author and climate scientist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
Researchers have long known that the south-west and Great Plains will dry out over the second half of the 21 stcentury because of rising temperatures under climate change.
But this was the first time researchers found those droughts would be far worse even than those seen over the millennia.
The years since 2000 give only a small indication of the punishment ahead. In parts of Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas, 11 of those years have been drought years.
As many as 64 million people were affected by those droughts, according to Nasa projections.
Those conditions have produced lasting consequences. In California, now undergoing its fourth year of drought - and the worst dry spell in 1,200 years, farmers have sold off herds. Growers have abandoned fields. Cities have imposed water rationing.
But future droughts could be even more disruptive, because they will likely drag on for decades, not years.
"We haven't seen this kind of prolonged drought even certainly in modern US history," Smerdon said. "What this study has shown is the likelihood that multi-decadal events comprising year after year after year of extreme dry events could be something in our future."
The study, Unprecedented 21 st-Century Drought Risk in the American Southwest and Central Plains, was published in a new online journal Science Advances.
The researchers said the effects of drought would likely be exacerbated by population growth in the south-west and rising demands for water.
Already current demands for water - for agriculture and for daily life - have drastically reduced groundwater sources in California and across the south-west.
Under the current warming trajectory, the south-west and Great Plains could expect to see chronic water shortages, making it impossible to carry out farming and ranching under current methods.
"Given the likelihood of a much drier future and increasing water resources demand, groundwater loss and higher temperatures will likely exacerbate the impacts of future droughts, presenting a major adaptation challenge," the paper said.
The researchers used data derived from tree rings, whose growth patterns show the effects of dry and wet years, sampled across North America, and soil moisture, rainfall and evaporation records, and 17 climate models to study the effects of future temperature rise on the region.
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The Guardian
February 12, 2015 Thursday 7:33 PM GMT
Oil firms must think beyond shareholders
SECTION: BUSINESS
LENGTH: 429 words
The difference between Shell's boss, Ben van Beurden, and his critics is that when he argues for the continued extraction of fossil fuels he has his shareholders in mind, while those in favour of renewable technologies are concerned about the future of the planet ( Shell boss launches counterattack against naive critics of fossil fuels, 12 February). Calling environmentalists "naive and impractical" does not wash, given the considerable body of research that links climate change to carbon emissions caused by the burning of fossil fuels. Of course, the transition to a sustainable energy future will take time but in the process we must not be swayed by industry chiefs concerned primarily with the bottom line. Let's hope that the negotiators at the crucial climate change talks in Paris later this year take the long-term view and put planet before profits. Fiona CarnieBath
· Ben van Beurden may be right when he says "a sudden death of fossil fuels isn't a plausible option". But he seems to recognise that scientists are right that fossil fuels are slowly heating up the Earth with disastrous climate changes. So surely oil companies should be preparing a 10-year plan for switching from fossil fuel exploitation to renewable energy systems and announcing that by 2025 all their oil wells will be sealed off. In that context Shell should now abandon drilling in the Arctic and investment in Canadian tar sands. Michael BasseyAuthor, Convivial Policies for the Inevitable
· The common assumption is that oil companies are awash with cash, but it is common to enter into ventures with partners to help fund projects in return for a share in the ultimate revenue. It is also common to borrow money while making assumptions on retained profit from already productive assets. As a result, oil companies need to run a tight cash flow. However, when the oil price changes dramatically, as it has over the past six months, all plans go out of the window. Few oil companies have the reserves to continue with current spending plans if the price of oil remains low for extended periods of time.
The levers they have at their disposal range from stopping production from no longer economically viable assets, to borrowing more. But how do they actually get a handle on how they are spending their money and how can they be sure of the impact of borrowing more or shutting down operations? Any oil and gas company that finds itself in this quandary will struggle to remain liquid if the oil price remains low. Tristan ColgateHead of energy and natural resources, Bluefin Solutions
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The Guardian
February 12, 2015 Thursday 4:05 PM GMT
Fracking will be allowed under national parks, UK decides;
Amendments to infrastructure bill unpick earlier protections, meaning companies just outside parks will be able to drill horizontally below them
BYLINE: Damian Carrington
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 872 words
Fracking companies will be allowed to drill horizontally under national parks and other protected areas if the wells start just outside their boundaries, after the government rowed back on its earlier acceptance of new environmental protections.
Ministers were forced to accept a series of new regulations from Labour on 26 January after facing defeat by concerned backbenchers, but the final amendments passed by MPs on Monday unpicked many of them. Green Party MP Caroline Lucas accusing ministers of "doing the dirty work of fracking companies for them", but the government move was welcomed by the nascent shale gas industry.
The Labour amendments had ruled out fracking for shale gas in national parks, areas of outstanding natural beauty (AONBs), sites of special scientific interest and groundwater source protection zones (SPZs). A Guardian analysis revealed that this measure ruled out 40% of the large area of England being offered by the government for future shale gas exploration.
But energy and climate change minister Amber Rudd told MPs on Wednesday: "In the case of AONBs and national parks, given their size and dispersion, it might not be practical to guarantee that fracking will not take place under them in all cases without unduly constraining the industry."
Rudd also deferred the definition of "protected areas", potentially leaving most groundwater SPZs without any protection at all. These make up a quarter of the 40% ruled out by Labour's measures, according to the Guardian analysis.
What a mockery this is making of legitimate public concerns on fracking, and indeed of the democratic process
Caroline Lucas
Rudd said: "We must not rush this now, because we would risk putting in place restrictions in areas in a way that does not achieve the intended aim, or that goes beyond it and needlessly damages the potential development of the shale industry."
David Cameron has said the government is " going all out " for shale gas in the UK, claiming it would create thousands of jobs and cut reliance on imports. But opponents argue that high-pressure fracturing of rocks to release gas risks health and environmental impacts and will undermine the country's climate change goals.
Labour's shadow energy minister Tom Greatrex said allowing fracking under protected areas could lead them to be "ringed by shale gas operators." He said: "The range of protections [accepted by the government in January] cannot be cherry-picked. It is vital for groundwater, and sources of drinking water, to be properly protected."
Greatrex also accused ministers of going back on a commitment that Health and Safety Executive inspections of drilling sites would be unannounced. Labour says it will push its measures through if it wins the general election in May.
"What a mockery this is making of legitimate public concerns on fracking, and indeed of the democratic process," said Lucas, criticising the limited time the government made available for the debate.
Other changes reversed on Monday included residents being notified on an individual basis of shale gas operations in their area, gas leaks other than methane being recorded and a legal requirement for environmental impact assessments at sites.
The chief executive of trade body UK Onshore Oil and Gas, Ken Cronin, welcomed the passing of the government's bill: "The industry can get on with finding out the extent of the recoverable reserves of natural gas below our feet. Many of the issues raised in the amendments are already complied with by the industry voluntarily." He said the industry looked forward to clarification of the rules covering protected areas.
But Greenpeace energy campaigner Simon Clydesdale said: "The government has backtracked to weaken fracking regulations, including those that should protect our vital drinking water supplies, [which] simply proves that we need a moratorium on fracking. Despite Labour's efforts to strengthen them, the regulations passed today are so full of loopholes that they cannot be trusted to protect our water, countryside or climate."
Nick Clack, senior energy campaigner at the Campaign to Protect Rural England, said: "The government claimed to have introduced strong legal safeguards on fracking to protect the countryside and communities. Now ministers have undermined that claim and further eroded public confidence."
One controversial measure not opposed by Labour was the change to trespass laws to allow fracking companies to drill beneath people's homes without their permission. "This ignores the public interest in pursuit of the vested interests of a few," said Lucas. However, Conservative MP Peter Lilley, said: "I urge [MPs] not to be frightened by those who are trying to scare us into failing to exploit a resource that is potentially of immense value to this country."
Labour has backed the fracking moratoriums declared by the Scottish parliament and Welsh assembly. But the party did not back a move in Westminster for a moratorium in England. A nationwide moratorium had been supported by a cross-party select committee of MPs, including former Conservative environment secretary Caroline Spelman.
The LibDems did not respond to a request to set out their position on the fracking regulations.
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The Guardian
February 12, 2015 Thursday 3:45 PM GMT
'Public alienation undermines scientific efforts to improve human lives';
Deepening gulf between public and scientific views is the greatest problem facing scientists, says Alan Leshner, chief executive of American Association for the Advancement of Science
BYLINE: Ian Sample, science editor, in San Jose
SECTION: SCIENCE
LENGTH: 749 words
Public tensions over the progress of modern science are at their most intense for decades and threaten to undermine efforts to better human lives, warns one of the most senior scientists in the US.
A raft of issues have left much of the public alienated from the latest scientific thinking and fuelled the rise of groups that misrepresent science to push their own agendas, said Alan Leshner, chief executive of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world's largest general scientific society.
The deepening gulf between public and scientific viewpoints lies behind some of the most visible clashes in society, from the blanket rejection of genetically modified organisms, the growth of anti-vaccine campaigns, confrontations between scientists and Creationists, and the dismissal of climate change research.
Speaking to the Guardian ahead of the AAAS annual meeting in San Jose on Thursday, Leshner said that the disconnect between the public and mainstream scientists was the greatest problem the research community faced.
"This plays out in multiple ways, from the public support of science, which is falling off in the US, to the appropriate use of science in policy and personal life, and in making decisions based on rational grounds," he said. "It is already a big deal. The tension is greater than it has ever been before."
Before leading the AAAS, Leshner served as director of the US National Institute on Drug Abuse. He was appointed to the National Science Board by George W Bush in 2004 and re-appointed by Barack Obama in 2011. Leshner steps down as chief executive of the AAAS this year, and will be replaced by the former Congressman Rush Holt, who trained as a physicist.
Rather than blame the public for their unease over science, Leshner points to three factors that have driven a wedge between the thinking of mainstream scientists and that of the broader population. The first is that scientific advances, in fields as diverse as stem cells, genetics, evolution, and the origins of the universe, are encroaching ever more on people's religious beliefs, common intuitions, and core values. The second is that science is moving so fast, people find it difficult to keep up. Third, more publicity is now given to cases of scientific misconduct and problems with reproducing research results, which together undermine public trust in science.
The combined effect, according to Leshner, is greater public tension over scientific findings and their implications. The lack of confidence in the process plays into the hands of people who distort science to promote their own causes, he said.
"When this happens, science becomes an easy target for deniers, whether that's around GMOs, climate change, evolution or anything else. It gives them ammunition and fuel," said Leshner, who said many anti-science voices often find a willing platform in media outlets. "People have been playing fast and loose with scientific information, especially in the past decade. Famous columnists are writing absurd columns that show a lack of understanding that frankly scares me."
In January, a survey by the AAAS and the Pew Research Center in Washington DC found that 55% of the US public believed that humans had either not evolved during their time on Earth, or had only changed under the guidance of a supreme being. More than half, 57%, considered GM foods unsafe to eat. Only half of the population agreed with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change view that climate change was largely driven by human activity, such as the burning of fossil fuels.
Last year, Sir Paul Nurse, Britain's most senior scientist, launched a stinging attack on politicians and other influential figures who distorted scientific evidence to support their own agendas. Nurse, the president of the Royal Society, said offenders should be called out in the media and challenged in the strongest way possible. "When they are serial offenders they should be crushed and buried," he added. Those in his sights ranged from politicians and NGOs to religious leaders and charities.
In what amounts to a call to arms, Leshner urged scientists to make a priority of explaining their work to the public, so that discussions around modern research and its implications for society were not misinformed.
"Anything that diminishes the public trust or confidence in science gets in the way of science doing its job, and that is the betterment of humankind. Ultimately, that is what it's all about," he said.
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The Guardian
February 12, 2015 Thursday 3:18 PM GMT
Geoengineering: it could be a money-making opportunity for business;
The longer we take to tackle climate change, the more likely we are to need climate intervention technologies. That may yet be a viable business opportunity, says Ken Caldeira
BYLINE: Ken Caldeira
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 993 words
The CIA was one of the funders behind yesterday's National Research Council (NRC) reports on geoengineering, or so the rumours have it. If the intelligence community feels it is important to learn more about "climate intervention", might not the same be true for the business community? In other words, is there money to be made here?
The NRC, the major body in the US providing scientific and technical information to policymakers, released two reports. They show two very different approaches to reducing climate change from greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide (CO2) removal and albedo modification.
Related: Scientists urge global 'wake-up call' to deal with climate change
Removing carbon dioxide
The gases in power plant smokestacks contain typically 10% or more CO2, whereas the atmosphere contains only 0.04% CO2. Why would anyone want to try to capture CO2 from a more dilute gas when more concentrated gases are all too readily available?
Small start-up companies, such as Carbon Engineering and Climeworks, are attempting to develop technologies that could remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in centralised facilities. Since the price of CO2 on available carbon markets is less than what it costs to remove CO2 from the atmosphere using these technologies, existing carbon markets are probably insufficient to drive widespread deployment. However, there is demand for carbon dioxide for use in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) operations, and many of these operations are far from suitable sources of CO2. Enhanced oil recovery operations therefore represent a possible market for these technologies.
It has even been suggested that if CO2 could be captured from air on a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the nuclear power could be used to split CO2 and water molecules, and the carbon and hydrogen could be combined in a chemical processing facility to produce aviation fuels. The military, therefore, is another potential market for CO2 air capture technologies.
Reflecting sunlight
Albedo modification technologies aim to cool the Earth by causing more sunlight to be reflected to outer space. With less sunlight absorbed by Earth, the planet will cool. One leading approach for doing this involves emulating the effects of large volcanoes. Large volcanoes cool the Earth by injecting large amounts of very fine particles into the stratosphere that reflect sunlight back to space, so the Earth absorbs less sunlight.
It is thought that a single fire hose constantly releasing materials into the stratosphere would be enough to offset all warming anticipated for the rest of this century. In practice, it would likely be most efficient to do this with a fleet of airplanes shuttling material up to the stratosphere. It has been estimated that the total direct cost would be about $10bn (£6.5bn) per year and require a scale of effort that would be about 1% the scale of today's commercial aviation industry.
Since no one is likely to do this soon, and there are no existing commercial drivers of this activity, it is hard to see how to make much money from these ideas. Nevertheless, there has been some activity in this area by for-profit corporations. For example, Intellectual Ventures has applied for a patent on a balloon-based system to release materials into the stratosphere - although it is unclear whether there is a direct way for the company to profit from this patent.
Another way to reflect sunlight to space might be to brighten clouds over the ocean, for example by making a very fine mist of seawater. Armand Neukermans, who was part of the team that developed ink jet printers for Hewlett Packard, has recently produced a nozzle that can produce a fine enough spray to make the tiny particles needed to make clouds brighter. Neukermans knows a lot about nozzle design in a profit-driven environment, but his motives for developing this nozzle are, I believe, altruistic. While there is no market for brightening marine clouds, could this extraordinary nozzle technology find commercial applications in high-tech industrial processes?
Related: Climate science: can geoengineering save the world?
Making money from climate intervention
In an economically efficient world, carbon prices would equal the damage caused by the release of an equivalent amount of carbon into the atmosphere. If carbon prices get high enough and the cost of carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere could be made low enough, there may be potential for profit in the business of removing carbon dioxide. In contrast, it is hard to see how substantial profits can be made from global-scale albedo modification efforts. However, both of types of climate intervention research and development could potentially create important spin-off technologies. Insofar as these approaches can reduce the risk of dangerous climate change, they should affect prices in economically efficient carbon markets.
If we think society will get serious about the climate problem soon, then investing in near-zero emission energy technologies could be the winning ticket. Unfortunately, the global community is not terribly serious about reducing emissions, and much venture capital has been lost on creative new start-ups in the energy sector. The longer we take to transform our energy system so it no longer uses the sky as a waste dump, the more likely that we will have to rely on climate intervention technologies. Perhaps then there will be greater potential to profit from investments in these technologies.
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The Guardian
February 12, 2015 Thursday 11:10 AM GMT
Shell boss calls fossil fuel critics 'naive' but admits Big Oil has 'credibility issue';
Ben van Beurden urges oil industry to be more assertive, arguing that debate is about balancing moral obligation of energy access for all with fighting climate change
BYLINE: Terry Macalister
SECTION: BUSINESS
LENGTH: 683 words
The head of Shell has launched a stinging attack on increasingly vocal critics who are calling for fossil fuels to be left in the ground, accusing them of peddling naive and impractical solutions to climate change.
Ben van Beurden urged fellow industry leaders meeting in London to be "more assertive" in debates over the future of energy. But Shell's chief executive admitted that the oil sector had its own credibility problem, enhanced by the fact that too many energy industrialists had been slow to acknowledge global warming.
In a speech to be delivered on Thursday night to the International Petroleum Week annual dinner, Van Beurden will warn his colleagues that they must be prepared for ever more intense public discussion about the role of fossil fuels in the runup to the UN climate change conference in Paris later this year.
"The outcome of the political process is uncertain, but the trends behind it are unmistakeable. Even more than the oil price, these trends will shape the future of the industry over the coming decades. For a sustainable energy future, we need a more balanced debate. 'Fossil fuels out, renewables in' - too often, that's what it boils down to. Yet in my view, that's simply naive," he argues.
"Yes, climate change is real. And yes, renewables are an indispensable part of the future energy mix. But no, provoking a sudden death of fossil fuels isn't a plausible plan," he adds.
The Shell boss's comments are likely to be welcomed by those political leaders who feel pressurised by environmentalists over the green agenda but they are likely to lead to criticism over the company's own record, particularly with regard to its drilling in the Arctic and investments into carbon-heavy tar sands of Canada.
The comments from Van Beurden indicate that the oil industry is beginning to become rattled by those talking about a "carbon bubble" of oil and gas reserves that should be left in the ground, and moves by the Church of England and universities to remove their investments from the large oil and coal extractors.
The Dutchman was due to tell his audience that three billion people still lack access to the modern energy that many in the west take for granted. This is not just about having a television set, he will say, but about the difference between poverty and prosperity.
He will warn that demand is growing with more people on the planet, more people living in cities and more people rising out of poverty. "The issue is how to balance one moral obligation, energy access for all, against the other: fighting climate change. We still need fossil fuels for a lower carbon, higher energy future," he argues.
The debate over climate change is being run by forces opposed to the fossil fuel industry so that it is unbalanced and this needs to be addressed by the oil companies becoming more involved, argues van Beurden.
"Our industry should be less aloof, more assertive. We have to make sure that our voice is heard by members of government, by civil society and the general public. I'm well aware that the industry's credibility is an issue. Stereotypes that fail to see the benefits our industry brings to the world are short-sighted. But we must also take a critical look at ourselves.
"You cannot talk credibly about lowering emissions globally if, for example, you are slow to acknowledge climate change; if you undermine calls for an effective carbon price; and if you always descend into the 'jobs v environment' argument in the public debate."
Van Beurden, recognised as one of the more articulate energy executives, has only been in the top job at Shell for a little over 12 months and after a relatively low-profile start has begun to emerge as a significant public performer.
His rival Bob Dudley, the chief executive of BP, is preoccupied with the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon accident, while Rex Tillerson at ExxonMobil tends to avoid the limelight.
This article has been corrected to make clear that Ben van Beurden is delivering his speech at the International Petroleum Week annual dinner on Thursday evening, not on Wednesday as originally stated.
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The Guardian
February 12, 2015 Thursday 9:41 AM GMT
Chinese leader's US visit is 'more symbolic than substantive', say experts;
Presidents Obama and Xi Jinping will talk about Ebola, climate change, North Korea and the fall of Nazism - an agenda too sprawling to accomplish much
BYLINE: Jonathan Kaiman in Beijing
SECTION: US NEWS
LENGTH: 588 words
When Chinese leader Xi Jinping makes his first state visit to the US in September, his list of talking points might be longer than some of his talks. Accepting Barack Obama's invitation in a Tuesday night phone call, Xi said that the US and China should "broaden cooperation in economy and trade, military, energy, environmental protection, infrastructure and law enforcement", the state newswire Xinhua reported on Wednesday.
Xi will urge Washington to "loosen restrictions on export of high-tech products to China and take actions to facilitate Chinese investments in the United States," Xinhua said.
During the call, the two leaders also discussed cybersecurity, climate change, global development, public-health hazards (including Ebola), people-to-people exchange, North Korea, Iran's nuclear program and "the 70th anniversary of the victory over Fascism", the newswire continued.
Analysts say that the sprawling agenda suggests that neither side has settled on its priorities. "Since Obama and Xi came to power, there was this arrangement that they would be meeting on an annual basis," said Steve Tsang, an expert on Chinese politics at the University of Nottingham. In 2013, the two met at the Sunnylands estate in Rancho Mirage, California; last year, Obama visited Beijing. Now, it's once again Xi's turn to travel.
"A lot of things will happen between now and [September]," Tsang continued. "Right now it's more important that the Chinese announce the visit as a way of signaling that they're developing a relationship with Obama - and that they are, in a sense, driving it. They haven't yet set a destination as to where it goes. But at the end of the day, they can't really set the destination without agreement from the Americans. I see this all as more symbolic than substantive."
The US-China relationship has been strained in recent years by repeated cyber-attacks, conflicting positions on human rights and freedom of speech, and Beijing's aggressive territorial claims over disputed areas of the South and East China seas.
Xi and Obama exchanged new year's greetings during their phone call on Wednesday. "Over the past year, we have had a series of in-depth talks, reaching important consensus on China-US ties as well as significant issues concerning regional and international peace and development," the Chinese president said, according to the newswire.
Yet both leaders made note of their concerns. Obama called for "swift work" to improve cooperation on cybersecurity, Reuters reported - for years, Washington has accused Chinese hackers of repeatedly targeting US institutions. Xi warned the US against "unfavorable interference" on the issues of Tibet and Taiwan, two perennial sticking points in the relationship.
During the Sunnylands meeting, Xi spoke about a "new type of great power relations" between the United States and China, implying that the two countries should regard one another as equals. Since then, the term has become a regular fixture in official speeches and in the state-run press. Obama, while meeting with Xi in November 2014, did not publicly mention the term once.
"One thing that will always be important here is the state of the Chinese economy compared to the state of the US economy," Tsang said. "If the Chinese economy weakens, and the US economy continues on a robust trajectory, the conversation is going to be slightly different than if the US economy is slowing and the Chinese economy is strengthening. We'll have to see where things go in the next seven or eight months."
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The Guardian
February 12, 2015 Thursday 7:04 AM GMT
Climate science denialists in tailspin over hottest years;
Tony Abbott's top business advisor Maurice Newman wrongly claimed a UK charity had blamed the deaths of elderly people on renewable energy policies
BYLINE: Graham Readfearn
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 1689 words
All the recent declarations that 2014 was the hottest year on record seems to have prompted a spate of panic denial among climate change contrarians, denialists and ideologues.
We've had a declaration of one of the "most extraordinary scandals of our time" from UK climate science manglers Christopher Booker and James Delingpole.
The accusation is that climate scientists have been "fiddling" the world's temperature data with the express motivation of showing the world is warmer than it really is.
This was sparked by a blog from a retired accountant and climate sceptic who "discovered" that data from three temperature stations in Paraguay had been altered when NASA compiled its global temperature record.
Fellow Guardian blogger Dana Nuccitelli has a rundown.
But more on this in a bit, because I'd like to turn to the button-down mind of Maurice Newman, Tony Abbott's handpicked chief business advisor.
Newman, who thinks human-caused climate change is a "myth" and a "delusion", also bought into the great new conspiracy that climate scientists are fiddling temperature data.
But Newman also decided he would try and pin the deaths of thousands of British pensioners at the feet of renewable energy policies and "political elites" who back action to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Writing in The Australian (where else?), Newman claimed:
It is a fact, according to British charity Age UK, 3.5 million elderly Britons are at risk from winter cold. It is estimated 25,000 "excess winter deaths" across Britain will result from the inability of the poor to afford power because renewable energy policies have driven it beyond reach. ... Back in the real world, the poor are dying of the cold while the political elites and their friends bask in the warmth of cosy conferences, taxpayer subsidies and research grants.
Did Age UK really say those excess winter deaths would result from "the inability of the poor to afford power because renewable energy policies have driven it beyond reach", as Newman claimed?
I sent Newman's article to Age UK and asked them about this claim. They sent me a statement from the charity's director Caroline Abrahams. She said:
The sad fact is that many of these deaths could have been prevented. Cold homes, caused by a number of factors including poor insulation and high energy costs, are a major cause of excess winter deaths. In the short term we would urge all older people to claim the benefits they're entitled to so they can afford to turn the heating up and stay warm. However the only long-term solution to this problem is an ambitious government-led programme to bring all our housing up to a high energy efficiency standard.
Notice there's no mention of "renewable energy policies" which Newman claimed the charity had blamed for driving energy prices higher.
In fact, the charity says the key to reducing the risk of death from cold among pensioners is to improve the energy efficiency of their homes.
Newman is not only misrepresenting the charity's position, he appears to be making up positions that the charity simply does not hold.
But what about those high energy prices in the UK mentioned by the charity?
Research from the UK's government-backed Committee on Climate Change found that between 2004 and 2011 the average annual energy bill in the UK went up from £610 to £970.
Only £30 of that £360 increase was due to costs related to low-carbon power generation.
Most of the increase, the analysis said, was down to higher gas prices and network costs (maintaining poles and wires).
In my view, Newman's attempt to pin the blame for the deaths of UK pensioners on renewable energy policies is either disgustingly dishonest or pathetically sloppy.
Of course this isn't the first time Maurice Newman has misrepresented research to service his paranoia and conspiracy theories over climate change.
We've played this game of whack-a-mole before.
Hottest years and warming trends
In January, analysis of global temperature data from NASA found that 2014 was likely the hottest year on record, although the fine print shows that statistically it tied for first place with 2010 and 2005.
Tying for NASA's fourth hottest year were 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009 and 2013.
According to NASA's analysis, the 15 warmest years on record have all occurred from 1998 onwards (the year at which many 'sceptics' claim, wrongly, that global warming stopped).
The UK's MetOffice also put 2014 as a tie for the warmest year on record.
The Japanese Meteorological Agency had 2014 as outright warmest, as did the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (there's a good explainer on different measures of global temperature at NASA's Earth Matters blog).
Analysis of satellite measurements of the lower troposphere also had 2014 in the top ten warmest years.
As the World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Michael Jarraud pointed out, the ranking of any individual year isn't as important as the longer term trend.
Fourteen of the fifteen hottest years have all been this century. We expect global warming to continue, given that rising levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the increasing heat content of the oceans are committing us to a warmer future.
Conspiracy time
All this talk of hottest years put the climate denialist community into a tailspin, with Booker, Delingpole, Newman and others claiming the whole thing was a scam.
Again I'd refer you to Dana Nuccitelli 's analysis. But let's be absolutely crystal clear about what is being alleged.
The allegation is that climate scientists in agencies across the world are altering temperature data taken by some thermometers and that this alteration is motivated entirely to make it look as though the world has been warming more than it really has.
There is not a shred of evidence for this global conspiracy. There is no secret tape of climate scientists and meteorologists huddled together agreeing how this elaborate scam will be pulled off. No email trail where scientists discuss the records they'll choose. No grand scam hidden in the methodology.
At the same time, there is more than ample information in the public domain - where it has been for many years - showing how global temperature records are put together from the millions of pieces of data generated by thermometers across the planet on land and floating in oceans.
Neither do these so called 'sceptics' (generally they are not sceptics ) mention the rapid and accelerating melting of ice sheets at both poles, the heat build up in the world's oceans or the rising sea levels - all of which are clear signals of a warming planet before you've even shot a glance at a thermometer.
What some conservative commentators and bloggers are doing is denying or discarding this information and replacing it with innuendo and a conspiracy theory for which they have no evidence.
The reason there's no evidence for it is because this conspiracy theory is pathetic and embarrassing bunk.
In August 2014 we saw this exact same evidence-free conspiracy theory play out after Australia experienced its hottest year in the Bureau of Meteorology's record going back to 1910
The claim then was the same - that scientists had been selectively employing a technique with the deliberate aim of making things appear warmer
Again, it is not a secret that some temperature readings do undergo changes - and those changes can return higher or lower values.
As a NASA spokesperson explained to Media Matters, "the largest adjustment in the global surface temperature record occurs over the oceans" and this "actually lowers global temperature trends".
Why change data?
But why would you selectively change some data collected by thermometers when you analyse it?
When networks of weather stations were set up around the world, they were not designed to be a long-term record of the climate. Rather, they were there to record the weather from one day to the next.
Let's say that you have a record of temperature readings from a weather station at, oh I don't know, Denierville (not an actual place).
In Denierville, temperature readings are written down every day for decades, with only the occasional missing day.
For that temperature to give a true reflection of Denierville's climate over the decades, you need to know a few things.
For example, was the temperature taken at the same time each day? Was the thermometer always in the same place, or was it moved across town or around the corner in a shadier spot? Have trees or buildings popped up around the thermometer, or have they been taken down?
How about if your thermometer was out in the open air in full sun but sometime ago was placed inside a box or a piece of standard equipment (like a Stevenson Screen), biasing the new temperatures low? Would you allow for that?
What if you want your Denierville temperatures to be part of a network of climate records? Were your thermometers calibrated and checked in the same way as all the others?
Unless you make allowances for things like this, then the raw data you plot on a graph becomes unreliable as a consistent record of Denierville's climate over time.
What if you plot all the temperatures and notice a jump in the data where things suddenly get hotter or colder?
Do you ignore that, or do you check to see if the thermometer was changed or moved or if other temperature stations in the region also show the same jumps around the same time?
If the other temperature stations don't show the same jumps, suggesting its not a natural change but something else, what do you do then?
Should scientists just ignore all of this or make an allowance for it?
If you decide to allow for changes like this, are you part of a global conspiracy, or are you just doing solid science?
As climate scientist Professor Neville Nicholls explained to me last year :
A scientist can't ignore those effects. It's not science to just go ahead and plot that raw data.
But what if you did plot the raw data anyway?
A member of the team of global temperature analysts at Berkeley Earth, Zeke Hausfather, was curious.
Does it confirm the suspicions of the climate science denialists? I'll let you decide.
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The New York Times
February 12, 2015 Thursday
Late Edition - Final
House Passes Bill Approving the Keystone Pipeline, but a Veto Is Expected
BYLINE: By CORAL DAVENPORT
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 19
LENGTH: 1040 words
WASHINGTON -- The House on Wednesday passed a bill approving construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, setting up a confrontation with President Obama, who has vowed to veto the measure.
The bill, which passed the Senate last month, headed to Mr. Obama's desk Wednesday night.
Mr. Obama's expected veto of the bill will not represent a rejection of the pipeline itself. Because the pipeline crosses an international border -- with Canada -- the president retains the authority to make the final decision on whether to build it.
Congressional Republicans chose the Keystone bill as the first measure to send to Mr. Obama this year in order to use his expected rejection of it as a political weapon against Democrats.
''Instead of listening to the people, the president is standing with a bunch of left-fringe extremists and anarchists,'' Speaker John A. Boehner said. ''The president needs to listen to the American people and say 'yes, let's build the Keystone pipeline.' ''
The president has a 10-day window to act on the bill, which passed the House by a vote of 270 to 152. Twenty-nine Democrats voted with Republicans in favor of the measure.
While it drew bipartisan support, it is not expected to draw the two-thirds majority necessary to override a veto.
The clash over Keystone is expected to continue for some time.
The proposed 1,179-mile pipeline, which would carry heavily polluting petroleum from the oil sands of Alberta to ports and refineries on the Gulf Coast, has emerged as a symbol for Democrats' and Republicans' fierce fight over energy, climate change and the economy.
Republicans and the oil industry say the project would create jobs and provide economic growth. Environmental activists have fought the project for years, saying it would harm the environment and could contribute to climate change.
Despite the debate over the pipeline, and its potency as a symbol of energy and environmental policy, experts have said repeatedly that the symbolism vastly outweighs its substance.
A State Department environmental review last year concluded that construction of the pipeline would not lead to a significant increase of carbon pollution into the atmosphere, and the number of jobs created by construction of the pipeline represents less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the total economy.
Still, environmentalists who have spent years marching and rallying to protest the pipeline say they would take Mr. Obama's expected veto as a sign that he will eventually reject the project.
''We are very encouraged that the president will veto this bill, and we are more confident than ever that he will soon reject this dirty and dangerous pipeline once and for all,'' said Gene Karpinski, the president of the League of Conservation Voters.
The approval process for the pipeline has dragged on for years, but advocates on both sides of the fight are urging the president to make a final decision soon.
Mr. Obama has said that a key criterion for him in deciding on the pipeline will be whether its construction will contribute to climate change. He has put off his decision so a series of reviews can be completed, including the environmental impact review by the State Department and reviews by the heads of eight other agencies. The last of those reviews was completed last week.
People on both sides of the debate say that the president's final decision on whether to build the pipeline could come soon.
''Merits of the pipeline aside, the timing for a veto is about perfect from the White House perspective, especially given their recent decision to open up the Atlantic to offshore drilling, which they contend shows they are pro-U.S. supply development,'' said Paul Bledsoe, a former Clinton administration energy and climate aide, now with the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
Both sides are increasing their lobbying of the administration.
On Wednesday, a group of more than 90 leading scientists and economists, including a Nobel Prize honoree in economics, a Nobel Prize laureate in physics and lead authors of reports written by the Nobel Prize recipients of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, sent a letter to Mr. Obama, urging him to reject the project on the grounds that it could contribute to new development in the Canadian oil sands, thus unlocking more fossil fuels.
While the State Department's environmental review of the project concluded that it would not significantly increase the rate of planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, an Environmental Protection Agency letter to the State Department last week emphasized that the recent drop in global oil prices might mean that construction of the pipeline could spur increased development of the Canadian oil sands -- and thus increase such emissions.
The E.P.A. said that given lower oil prices, companies might be less likely to develop in the oil sands, because it would be costly for them to ship the oil by rail. But the presence of the pipeline, which offers an inexpensive way to move the oil to market, could increase the likelihood that companies would extract from the oil sands even when prices are low.
On Tuesday, the Canadian ambassador to the United States, Gary Doer, sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry, questioning the E.P.A.'s findings.
''One is left with the conclusion that there has been significant distortion and omission to arrive at E.P.A.'s conclusions,'' he wrote. ''As compared to rail, Keystone represents lower greenhouse gas emissions as well as lower environmental and safety risks.''
Some lawmakers have begun expressing frustration that Congress has spent nearly a month debating a bill that they know will be dead on arrival when it reaches the president.
Representative Bobby L. Rush, Democrat of Illinois, said angrily that while the House took the time to debate the Keystone bill, the Department of Homeland Security is set to run out of money, as lawmakers are at an impasse over how to fund the agency.
''In just two weeks, the Department of Homeland Security will run out of money, putting all of the American people, our entire nation, at risk. Where are your priorities?'' Mr. Rush said. ''Why are we wasting time on this?''
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The New York Times
February 12, 2015 Thursday
Late Edition - Final
The Risks of Climate Engineering
BYLINE: By CLIVE HAMILTON.
Clive Hamilton is a professor of public ethics at Charles Sturt University in Australia and the author, most recently, of ''Earthmasters: The Dawn of the Age of Climate Engineering.''
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Editorial Desk; OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR; Pg. 29
LENGTH: 924 words
THE Republican Party has long resisted action on climate change, but now that much of the electorate wants something done, it needs to find a way out of the hole it has dug for itself. A committee appointed by the National Research Council may just have handed the party a ladder.
In a two-volume report, the council is recommending that the federal government fund a research program into geoengineering as a response to a warming globe. The study could be a watershed moment because reports from the council, an arm of the National Academies that provides advice on science and technology, are often an impetus for new scientific research programs.
Sometimes known as ''Plan B,'' geoengineering covers a variety of technologies aimed at deliberate, large-scale intervention in the climate system to counter global warming.
Despairing at global foot-dragging, some climate scientists now believe that a turn to Plan B is inevitable. They see it as inscribed in the logic of the situation. The council's study begins with the assertion that the ''likelihood of eventually considering last-ditch efforts'' to address climate destabilization grows every year.
The report is balanced in its assessment of the science. Yet by bringing geoengineering from the fringes of the climate debate into the mainstream, it legitimizes a dangerous approach.
Beneath the identifiable risks is not only a gut reaction to the hubris of it all -- the idea that humans could set out to regulate the Earth system, perhaps in perpetuity -- but also to what it says about where we are today. As the committee's chairwoman, Marcia McNutt, told The Associated Press: The public should read this report ''and say, 'This is downright scary.' And they should say, 'If this is our Hail Mary, what a scary, scary place we are in.' ''
Even scarier is the fact that, while most geoengineering boosters see these technologies as a means of buying time for the world to get its act together, others promote them as a substitute for cutting emissions. In 2008, Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, later Republican presidential candidate and an early backer of geoengineering, said: ''Instead of penalizing ordinary Americans, we would have an option to address global warming by rewarding scientific invention,'' adding: ''Bring on the American ingenuity.''
The report, considerably more cautious, describes geoengineering as one element of a ''portfolio of responses'' to climate change and examines the prospects of two approaches -- removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and enveloping the planet in a layer of sulfate particles to reduce the amount of solar radiation reaching the Earth's surface.
At the same time, the council makes clear that there is ''no substitute for dramatic reductions in the emissions'' of greenhouse gases to slow global warming and acidifying oceans.
The lowest-risk strategies for removing carbon dioxide are ''currently limited by cost and at present cannot achieve the desired result of removing climatically important amounts,'' the report said. On the second approach, the council said that at present it was ''opposed to climate-altering deployment'' of technologies to reflect radiation back into space.
Still, the council called for research programs to fill the gaps in our knowledge on both approaches, evoking a belief that we can understand enough about how the Earth system operates in order to take control of it.
Expressing interest in geoengineering has been taboo for politicians worried about climate change for fear they would be accused of shirking their responsibility to cut carbon emissions. Yet in some congressional offices, interest in geoengineering is strong. And Congress isn't the only place where there is interest. Russia in 2013 unsuccessfully sought to insert a pro-geoengineering statement into the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Early work on geoengineering has given rise to one of the strangest paradoxes in American politics: enthusiasm for geoengineering from some who have attacked the idea of human-caused global warming. The Heartland Institute, infamous for its billboard comparing those who support climate science to the Unabomber, Theodore J. Kaczynski, featured an article in one of its newsletters from 2007 describing geoengineering as a ''practical, cost-effective global warming strategy.''
Some scholars associated with conservative think tanks like the Hoover Institution and the Hudson Institute have written optimistically about geoengineering.
Oil companies, too, have dipped their toes into the geoengineering waters with Shell, for instance, having funded research into a scheme to put lime into seawater so it absorbs more carbon dioxide.
With half of Republican voters favoring government action to tackle global warming, any Republican administration would be tempted by the technofix to beat all technofixes.
For some, instead of global warming's being proof of human failure, engineering the climate would represent the triumph of human ingenuity. While climate change threatens to destabilize the system, geoengineering promises to protect it. If there is such a thing as a right-wing technology, geoengineering is it.
President Obama has been working assiduously to persuade the world that the United States is at last serious about Plan A -- winding back its greenhouse gas emissions. The suspicions of much of the world would be reignited if the United States were the first major power to invest heavily in Plan B.
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The New York Times Blogs
(Dot Earth)
February 12, 2015 Thursday
Why Hacking the Atmosphere Won't Happen Any Time Soon
BYLINE: ANDREW C. REVKIN
SECTION: OPINION
LENGTH: 1202 words
HIGHLIGHT: More on the “barking mad” idea of blocking sunlight to counter the greenhouse effect.
It's worth spending some more time on the National Academy of Sciences reports on geoengineering prospects and concerns - the concerns mainly being about adding sun-blocking particles to the atmosphere to counteract global warming driven by the buildup of heat-trapping greenhouse gases.
I loved what the climate scientist Raymond Pierrehumbert had to say in Slate yesterday. His views are particularly notable not only because he was one of the report's authors but also because of his unbridled language in describing the process and his conclusions:
The nearly two years' worth of reading and animated discussions that went into this study have convinced me more than ever that the idea of "fixing" the climate by hacking the Earth's reflection of sunlight is wildly, utterly, howlingly barking mad. In fact, though the report is couched in language more nuanced than what I myself would prefer, there is really nothing in it that is inconsistent with my earlier appraisals.
Even the terminology used in the report signals a palpable change in the framing of the discussion. The actions discussed for the most part are referred to as "climate intervention," rather than "climate engineering" (or the common but confusing term geoengineering). Engineering is something you do to a system you understand very well, where you can try out new techniques thoroughly at a small scale before staking peoples' lives on them. Hacking the climate is different-we have only one planet to live on, and can't afford any big mistakes.
In case you missed it, I covered the release of the report and its main findings here.
Clive Hamilton, the Australian ethics professor who wrote "Earth Masters," a manifesto against geoengineering, came away from the report with a deeper, darker concern, saying that its call for more research essentially legitimizes the basic idea. Hamilton, who is listed as a reviewer of the Academy report, put his thesis this way in an Op-Ed article today in The Times:
The report is balanced in its assessment of the science. Yet by bringing geoengineering from the fringes of the climate debate into the mainstream, it legitimizes a dangerous approach.
He stresses how some Republicans have embraced the idea, writing:
With half of Republican voters favoring government action to tackle global warming, any Republican administration would be tempted by the technofix to beat all technofixes.
Given that the Central Intelligence Agency was one of the main sponsors of the Academy report on atmospheric intervention and a companion volume on carbon dioxide removal from air, there's plenty of room for conspiracy theories.
But jump to what Eli Kintisch wrote yesterday in Science, and you'll see what a tiny arena this has been:
Since 2006, when Nobel Prize-winning geochemist Paul Crutzen called for climate engineering research, scientific societies, a number of high-level panels and prominent lawmakers have endorsed federal funding for the field. But the United States has never established a formal mechanism to support studies of either type of geoengineering, and agencies have distributed just a few million dollars to researchers. The biggest funder of geoengineering research has been a nonprofit fund supported by billionaire Bill Gates, which has disbursed some $8.5 million for research and meetings since 2007.
Personally, I see value in further research on both sides of the intervention question - on ways to draw CO2 from the air and on sun-blocking options, many of which can be tested at small scale. I don't see the research legitimizing climate interventions and, in fact, the reports demonstrate that such studies help clarify why it's a very bad idea.
Pierrehumbert's prime concern (there are plenty more, all legitimate) is that any sun-blocking intervention done at climate scale would have to continue unabated for millenniums, or until CO2 removal was in high gear - or risk climatic whiplash if veils of reflective materials dissipated.
That should be enough to deter any countries from going global with such efforts.
But I've long seen plenty of other reasons why this is almost assuredly a nonstarter in any case. The main one is diplomatic, not technological. Who sets the thermostat
Here's how I summarized that issue :
It's been hard enough figuring out how to slow an unintended human-induced warming. How hard will it be to agree on strategies for an engineered cooling?
If you see any scenario that would result in a lone actor hacking the sky, let me now. Otherwise, I stand by a bet I proposed on Facebook today (and have made many times before):
I'd bet $1,000 that no country initiates atmospheric geo-engineering beyond the small-research scale in my lifetime.
I know. I'm pushing 60, so that's not necessarily a very long span, but you get the idea.
With aging in mind, I'll conclude with a little "same as it ever was" reflection.
I can't believe it, but this is my 30th year reporting on sun-blocking substances and human-driven climate change.
One of the first conversations I had about adding sulfur to the atmosphere to counteract global warming was, appropriately, with Edward Teller - yes, the physicist and hydrogen bomb pioneer who was one of the inspirations for Stanley Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove."
I first interviewed him in 1985 for a Science Digest cover story I was writing on another type of climate intervention by humans - the hypothesized "nuclear winter" that could follow a nuclear war. (Read the article in full here.) Around that time, he had already noted rough estimates of how many jumbo jets full of sulfur compounds would be required each year to counteract global warming. (In 1997he wrote on that idea in The Wall Street Journal.)
In the end, here's how I described this question in "Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast," my first book on climate change:
Some economists, scientists, and planners look at the historical record and conclude that our ingenuity will get us through any coming climate change, and that the immediate cost of preventing - or at least slowing - any man-made change is unacceptably high. Moreover, they say, there is always the possibility that the models are wrong, and that the world is actually going to warm only moderately. More research is needed before costly changes are made. Much more research.
Others say there is no need to worry now. There will always be a technological fix. We can fertilize the ocean around Antarctica, for instance, and vast plankton blooms will pull excess carbon dioxide from the air. We can blast CFC's from the sky with specially-tuned lasers. We can fill the stratosphere with plane-loads of sulfur dioxide, which will form tiny droplets of sulfuric acid that will reflect away excess sunlight and counter the warming.
But given our current lack of understanding of the existing global system, most scientists say that the last thing we should consider is adding another variable to the equation. More nasty surprises would surely be in store.
Same as it ever was, indeed.
For a bit more explication, and a chuckle, here's a great student-created primer on the geoengineering basics that I wrote about in 2008 (as with everything, there's room for improvement; find the fun misspelling):
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February 11, 2015 Wednesday 11:24 PM GMT
Keystone pipeline passes House vote as Republicans defy Obama veto threat;
House of Representatives approves Senate bill to build controversial pipeline 270 to 152 with a White House veto almost guaranteed
BYLINE: Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 622 words
Republicans in Congress challenged Barack Obama to drop his veto threat and sign a newly passed Keystone XL bill into law on Wednesday - or risk seeing the measure attached to other pieces of legislation.
In a 270-152 vote, the House of Representatives voted to approve construction of the contentious pipeline - a direct challenge to Obama who has said repeatedly he will veto the bill.
The measure will be sent to the White House on Friday. Obama has 10 days after that to render his decision - but Republicans said they were braced for a veto.
"Right now he has indicated he is going to veto," John Hoeven, the Republican Senator from North Dakota who was the architect of the Keystone XL bill, said.
He acknowledged that Republicans do not have the votes now to overcome a veto but said that the party leadership intended to attach Keystone measures on to other pieces of legislation. "We can attach it to other bills - energy, appropriations, the highway bill," he said.
Twenty-nine Democrats voted with Republicans in favour of the bill, only one Republican, Justin Amash of Michigan, was opposed.
The bill also contains an implicit endorsement that climate change is real and not a hoax - an important symbolic shift for Republicans.
If Obama blocks the Keystone bill - as the White House has threatened repeatedly - it will be his third veto in his six years in the White House.
The house bill is identical to that passed by the Senate last month which means that Republicans - a majority of whom deny the existence of climate change - were now accepting it as a reality.
"Climate change exists. You're saying that implicitly when you vote for the bill," Peter DeFazio, a Democratic congressman from Oregon, pointed out.
However, the Senate bill acknowledging climate change is real and not a hoax does not say it is caused by human activity. The Senate voted down that proposal.
The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, appealed to Obama to reverse the veto threat. However, the House speaker, John Boehner, cast conciliatory gestures aside, accusing Obama of siding with a leftwing fringe against the broader American interest.
"Instead of listening to the people, the president is standing with a bunch of left-fringe extremists and anarchists," Boehner told reporters on Wednesday. "The president needs to listen to the American people and say: 'Yes, let's build a Keystone pipeline.'"
Keystone XL, a project designed to transport crude from the tar sands of Alberta to refineries on the Texas Gulf coast, has morphed over the years into a broader fight about climate change.
The bill before the House of Representatives was approved by the Senate late last month as the first order of business under Republican control. The pipeline is still undergoing administrative review, a process overseen by the State Department that is now in its seventh year.
Obama has said repeatedly he would veto any measures seeking to short-circuit that process.
However, an end may be in sight. Last week, the State Department received comments from eight different government agencies - including the EPA - on whether the project is in the national interest.
The State Department has refused to make those reports public.
But in a letter released last week, the EPA suggested the State Department revisit its assumptions that the Keystone XL pipeline would not worsen climate change in light of falling oil prices.
The thinking behind the EPA review was that the cheap transport costs afforded by the pipeline - over tankers and oil trains - would make it easier for oil companies to operate in reduced profit margins of cheap oil.
It's not known, however, how the EPA ruled on the broader question of the Keystone XL and the national interest.
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February 11, 2015 Wednesday 8:39 PM GMT
Tony Abbott denies China's carbon trading plan shows he is out of step;
'More and more countries are going down the direct action path,' prime minister says of grants aimed at lowering emissions
BYLINE: Oliver Milman
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 593 words
Tony Abbott has denied that China's plan to launch a national carbon trading market shows he is out of step internationally on climate change, claiming his Direct Action policy is getting "more and more support" in Australia and abroad.
On Wednesday a Chinese government official said a national carbon market was likely to be launched by the middle of next year, along with an emissions cap for six sectors: power generation, metallurgical, nonferrous metal, building materials, chemicals and aviation.
"We hope to kick off the national market in summer of 2016, starting with a three-year trading phase before the market becomes fully functional in 2019," said Jiang Zhaoli, a senior official within the National Development and Reform Commission's climate change department.
But Abbott dismissed the suggestion that China's actions showed the Coalition decision to dump Australia's carbon pricing scheme in favour of his Direct Action plan ran against the tide of international efforts to reduce emissions.
"In fact, more and more countries are going down the direct action path," the prime minister said in Melbourne on Friday. "Direct action has more and more support, here and abroad.
"Don't underestimate what we are actually doing. By 2020 we will have reduced emissions by 12% on 2005 levels, on a per capita basis they are down 30% - this is amongst the world's best outcomes.
"Sure, other countries talk about what they might do down the track, but we are actually delivering lower emissions for a better environment."
Abbott was in suburban Melbourne to tour a woodfiller business he said had benefited from the repeal of Australia's carbon price last year through lower power costs.
The Direct Action plan that replaced carbon pricing involves the distribution of voluntary grants to businesses that wish to lower their emissions. The government insists this policy will easily achieve Australia's target of a 5% reduction on emissions by 2020, on 2000 levels, although severalbodies have questioned this confidence.
China, by comparison, has launched seven regional carbon markets since 2013, with Qingdao, a city of 9 million people, planning to join the scheme. It is estimated the pilot carbon markets cover around a third of China's overall emissions, although the lack of a unified national system has led to variations in each of the markets.
The plan to introduce a national scheme will unify these regional markets, subject to approval by Chinese state authorities. The national market would eclipse the EU's emissions trading scheme, which is now the world's largest.
In September China put its name to a list of 73 countries that signalled support for putting a price on carbon. This list includes Germany, France, Britain, South Africa and New Zealand. It also includes US states such as California and Massachusetts, as well as more than 1,000 businesses.
Australia, which was the first country in the world to repeal a carbon price, is now working out its position on emissions cuts beyond 2020. Crunch UN climate talks in Paris this year will set out a new global deal on lowering emissions, with the aim of avoiding more than 2C of warming compared with pre-industrial times.
Analysis conducted by the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology states that Australia could warm by up to 5.1C by 2100 unless action is taken to curb emissions. This level of warming would have major ramifications for agriculture, human health owing to increased heatwaves, and coastal infrastructure owing to rising sea levels and extreme weather events.
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February 11, 2015 Wednesday 6:18 PM GMT
Fossil fuel lobby goes on the attack against divestment movement;
The speed at which the fossil fuel divestment campaign is growing seems to have rattled its opponents in the coal and oil lobbies
BYLINE: Damian Carrington
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 899 words
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you," said Mahatma Ghandi. The climate change campaign to divest from fossil fuels seems to be moving through those stages at express speed, with a sudden barrage of attacks from the coal and oil lobbies ahead of its global divestment day on Valentine's day.
The speed is appropriate given that the campaign, which argues the fossil fuel industry is a danger to both the climate and investors' capital, is the fastest growing divestment campaign yet seen, moving quicker than those against tobacco and apartheid. It's moving fast in the financial world too, with one finance executive calling it "one of the fastest-moving debates I think I've seen in my 30 years in markets".
Let's take the "laugh at you first". This unintentionally hilarious cartoon, from a front group for a well-known anti-environmental PR firm, suggests that divestment will kill your "love affair" with fossil fuels, basically leaving you living in a dark cave.
The suggestion that divestment is about ending all fossil fuel use tomorrow is a complete fantasy. The actual demand is for investors to stop purchasing new stock and rebalance their portfolios out of fossil fuels over five years.
The justification is that there is already three times more fossil fuels ready to be extracted than can be burned, if the pledge by the world's governments to keep global warming under 2C is to be kept. Yet the fossil fuel industry spent $670bn in 2013 exploring for more coal, oil and gas reserves that will be worthless if climate change is tackled.
In a similar vein, but closer to fighting than laughing, is the claim that coal is "the bedrock of modern life" from the American Energy Alliance, a group with links to the fossil fuel industry.
"We have a moral imperative to make sure that people can refrigerate their food and medicines, grow crops and plants with fertilizer, and keep their homes lit at night and warm during winter," write the straight-faced AEA analysts. "All of this is what divestment activists are asking us to divest from - the bedrock of modern life."
About 80% of all coal reserves are going to have to stay in the ground to tackle global warming, so it's worth noting at this point that the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, backed by 194 governments, recently concluded that doing so was both affordable and essential to alleviating global poverty.
A further attack on the divestment campaign came directly from the oil industry on Wednesday. The new report commissioned by the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA) - ignoring the key investment caveat that the past is an unreliable guide to the future - goes back half a century to conclude that if all US universities divested from fossil fuels, they could lose up to $3.2bn a year.
The work, conducted by retired Chicago Law School professor Daniel R Fischel, looked at the performance of portfolios with and without energy stocks over the last 50 years."Every bit of economic evidence available to us today demonstrates that fossil-fuel divestment is a bad idea," said Prof Fischel. "The costs of divestment are clearly substantial and stand to have real financial impacts on the returns generated by endowment funds."
Barry Russell, president and CEO of IPAA, weighed in too: "This first-of-its-kind study confirms that the costs associated with divestment are real and enormous."
It appears Fischel and Russell have their heads stuck firmly in the oil sands.
The overwhelming majority of the economic evidence I have seen shows the exact opposite. Here are some studies, not funded by the oil industry, which indicate recent divestment would, if anything, have had a positive impact on returns and can reduce investment risk: MSCI, Advisor Partners, Impax, Aperio, S&P Capital IQ and BNEF. I have seen one report, from Mercer, that said "divestment is likely to have up-front and recurring costs".
But investors need to look forward. "It is completely wrong to assume the drivers of stock performance in the last 50 years will be same for the next 50 years," says Ben Caldecott, at the University of Oxford's Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment.
The AEA's attack also ignores this by delving back into history not 50 years, but 500: "Coal solved the first energy crisis," it crows. "In the late 1500s and early 1600s, the English faced what was possibly the world's first energy crisis-they were running out of wood."
Returning to the modern day, and reality, every nation on the planet has pledged to tackle climate change, meaning the long-term prospects for the fossil fuel industry look uncertain at the very least. But don't take my word for it, the president of the World Bank and the governor of the Bank of England have among others warned of the risk posed to fossil fuel assets by climate change action.
The divestment movement does not seek to financially bankrupt the vastly wealthy fossil fuel industry. Instead, the campaign is aiming for moral bankruptcy and is supported by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who testifies to the power of divestment in helping defeat apartheid in South Africa.
With their opponents now taking the threat of divestment seriously, the campaigners will be hoping to they are another step closer to the final stage of Ghandi's analysis: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
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February 11, 2015 Wednesday 4:45 PM GMT
Guardian Live: To frack or not to frack?;
Should Britain go all out for shale? To debate the issue, Guardian Members and an expert panel from both sides of the argument gathered at a Guardian Live event to discuss Britain's fracking future
BYLINE: Mischa Wilmers
SECTION: MEMBERSHIP
LENGTH: 1030 words
Despite warnings from across the political spectrum that fracking will harm efforts to tackle climate change, an obstinate David Cameron insisted last year that his government was "going all out for shale". But this week, just days after the Scottish government declared a moratorium, came the news that fracking is set to be banned from 40% of British shale areas, dealing a heavy blow to the fledgling industry.
This set the backdrop for a lively discussion on the merits and dangers of fracking, chaired by the Guardian's head of environment, Damian Carrington, in front of an audience at Manchester's Friends' Meeting House. Natalie Bennett, the leader of the Green Party, and Tony Bosworth, national energy campaigner for Friends of the Earth, debated the case for a total ban on UK fracking with Michael Bradshaw, professor of global energy at Warwick Business School and Nick Riley, director of Carboniferous.
Meeting the UK's climate targets
It didn't take long for global warming to become one of the central themes of the discussion. Bradshaw began by reminding the audience that both the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) have advocated a limited role for natural gas as part of a transition to a low-carbon energy system, though he stopped short of saying fracking should be the method used to extract it in the UK.
Make no mistake, the right to peaceful protest in this country is under threat. It's being restricted.
Natalie Bennett
Riley, a chartered geologist and strong advocate of fracking, stepped in, describing the CCC's targets for decarbonising the UK's electricity supply by 2030 as "naive" and arguing that shale gas could be a realistic option to help the UK meet its future energy needs. "If climate change is going to be a central part of this debate we need to be extremely careful and have a holistic view."
But Bennett, who claims the Greens are the only UK-wide party opposed to fracking, was unconvinced, laying out her main objective to fracking in clear terms: "It's a fossil fuel and we have to get away from fossil fuels." She urged the self-titled "greenest government ever" to invest in energy conservation and renewable sources instead, adding that "once you've created an industry it's very hard to use it for a little while and then shut it down".
Several members of the audience echoed her sentiments. "Do the panel accept that we need to avoid two-degrees warming or risk runaway climate change?" asked one woman. "It's like saying we'll go in an aeroplane but it's OK since we only have 50% chance of crashing."
Is fracking safe?
Throughout the event Bosworth declared his unequivocal opposition to fracking. "It's a risk that we don't need to take," he insisted, citing a recent study from the New York State Department of Health that concluded the health risks of hydraulic fracturing are "inestimable". On the strength of this evidence New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, decided to ban hydraulic fracturing in the state.
One former resident of Balcombe - the Sussex village where British energy firm Cuadrilla abandoned its fracking plans following a public backlash last year - also raised concerns about US studies that have reportedly shown a link between fracking and birth defects in surrounding areas.
How are we going to learn more if we don't try it within the context of our own geology in the UK?
Nick Riley
But Riley countered that scientists were unable to conduct the necessary research into the safety and viability of shale gas unless they are first allowed to frack. "Calling for a moratorium on the basis that we need to learn more is a bit daft because how are we going to learn more if we don't try it within the context of our own geology in the UK?" he said. "Let's get on with it and learn."
Threat to democracy
By this point the distribution of applause suggested the majority of the audience strongly opposed fracking, leading one participant to question the threat to democracy posed by having the technology imposed on communities without their consent. "When are the people going to have a say?" she asked.
"Make no mistake, the right to peaceful protest in this country is under threat. It's being restricted", replied Natalie Bennett, drawing reference to the strong police presence in Balcombe last year. "People are being terrified away from exercising their right to peaceful protest."
Bradshaw agreed there were problems with the way energy companies have been allowed to develop plans without consulting communities first. However, he also highlighted the tensions that exist in communities where opposition to fracking isn't universal: "If you talk to some residents in Balcombe the biggest problem for them was the campaigners."
Riley appeared less concerned. "Those who oppose fracking can vote for Natalie," he quipped to enthusiastic cheers from sections of the audience.
For and against
Before concluding the event the four panellists were asked to briefly summarise their positions.
Riley warned that the public should not be deceived by anti-fracking "hype". "My biggest fear is misinformation in terms of making the public fearful around health, water contamination and impact on the landscape."
Bennett, meanwhile, recalled a meeting she recently attended at which people from a variety of political affiliations were asked whether they thought fracking should form part of Britain's energy future: "Not a single person raised their hands," she said.
"It's a mistake for the government to say they want to go all out for shale," said Bradshaw. "In a sense that's undemocratic because it's not giving us the choice to decide whether we want to go all out for shale or not."
Bosworth ended the event with a quote from John Ashton, a former special representative on climate change for the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office: "You can be in favour of exploiting shale gas or you can be in favour of tackling climate change but you can't be in favour of both at the same time."
This Guardian Live event took place at the Manchester Friends' Meeting House on 10 February. Find out about upcoming events and how to sign up as a Guardian member.
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February 11, 2015 Wednesday 12:51 PM GMT
Live Q&A: Poverty and climate change, will we get it right in 2015?;
2015 is a crucial year for tackling poverty and climate change. Join our panel from 1-3pm GMT on Wednesday 11 February to discuss how to make changes happen
BYLINE: Eliza Anyangwe
SECTION: GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT PROFESSIONALS NETWORK
LENGTH: 787 words
2015 is a critical year. National elections in Greece, the UK, Nigeria, Israel and other countries will focus international media interest. But the next ten months will also be notable for crucial decisions on the way forward for global governance and climate change.
The negotiations will be complex. Environmentalists and negotiators are still learning lessons from the fail that was the 2009 climate change conference in Copenhagen. In the years that have followed, neither hunger strikes nor sleepless nights spent negotiating have brought the world closer to a climate deal at the annual COP meetings. At the end of last year's climate talks in Lima, Yvo de Boer, former UN climate chief, quipped : "If so much blood flows negotiating the prenuptial, what does that mean for the marriage?"
The sustainable development goals have, for their part, not lacked gumption. The proposed 17 goals and 169 targets emerged out of worldwide consultations and working groups, opening up the technocratic process like never before. But the new development agenda has been said to lack at best, a clear vision and at worst, a grip on reality. Considering the likely impact of the SDGs, economist Charles Kenny wrote : "It would be hard to write a more generous wishlist for Santa Claus."
So how do we make change happen in 2015? It is often said that we need innovative models of financing, partnership and delivery but what might those actually look like? And in a world so often marked by competition for visibility and resources, how will anyone foster the kind of collaboration needed to get things done?
Join our panel at 1pm GMT on Wednesday 11 February to discuss these questions and many more.
The panel
Nelson Muffuh, head of outreach, United Nations post-2015 development planning team, New York. @nmuffuh In his current role Nelson is responsible for stakeholder outreach, partnerships and communications coordination. Prior to that, he was senior regional coordinator for the Millennium Campaign in Africa.
Yeb Sano, climate commissioner for the Philippines, Manila. @yebsano Yeb is the climate commissioner of the Philippines who became the face of the 2013 UN climate talks in Poland when he went on hunger strike calling for action on climate change.
Linda McAvan, member of the European Parliament, Brussels. @LindaMcAvanMEP Linda is a British politician and chair of the European Parliament's committee on development
Amitabh Behar, executive director, National Foundation for India, New Delhi. Amitabh heads the NFI but is also co-chair of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty. For five years was the convener of the Wada Na Todo Abhiyaan (Don't Break Your Promises Campaign) in India.
Given Edward, head of research and information, Tanzania Youth Vision Association, Dar es Salaam. @givenality Given is a youth activist and in 2015 was one of the recipients of the Queen's Young Leaders Awards, recognising young people from across the Commonwealth who are changing their communities.
Mithika Mwenda, secretary general, Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance, Nairobi. @mithika_mwenda Mithika is an environmentalist and human rights activist who has worked in climate change policy advocacy for 7 years, representing African CSOs in several inter-governmental agencies.
Linda Scott, chair for entrepreneurship and innovation, Oxford University, Oxford. @ProfLindaScott Professor Linda Scott is a leader in the movement to empower women economically. She has conducted landmark studies, especially among the poorest women in developing countries, and advises major institutions, public and private, on their efforts to help women become economically viable.
Aaron Atteridge, research fellow, Stockholm Environment Institute, Stockholm. @SEIresearch Aaron works on climate policy and financ , energy issues, and the linkages between the climate and development agendas.
Helen Morton, post-2015 lead, Save the Children, New York. @SavetheChildren Helen leads Save the Children's global advocacy on Post 2015 and has been active in international development advocacy for the past decade.
The live chat is not video or audio-enabled but will take place in the comments section (below). Get in touch via globaldevpros@theguardian.com or @GuardianGDP on Twitter to recommend someone for our expert panel. Follow the discussion using the hashtag #globaldevlive.
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February 11, 2015 Wednesday 11:37 AM GMT
Utopia or reality: can South America lead a fossil-free future?;
Proponents of the South American philosophy of Buen Vivir have proposed an action plan for moving towards a more sustainable, more balanced economy
BYLINE: Oliver Balch
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 1030 words
Business, as a rule, doesn't do utopia. The reason is simple: as the French author and philosopher Albert Camus put it, "utopia is that which is in contradiction with reality." And reality, as far as conventional capitalism sees it, is about the no-nonsense pursuit of financial profit.
On the face of it, therefore, an abstract philosophy based around indigenous Andean precepts of harmony between humans and nature has little to say to rational, money-minded economists and business executives in the twenty-first century.
Yet proponents of the South American philosophy of Buen Vivir (literally, "living well") beg to differ. To prove it, proponents of the belief system have laid out a series of tangible policy steps that they say portend a shift towards a more sustainable, more balanced economy. Manifesto for 'living well'
We realise that you can't do this from one day to the next, so the proposal promotes the notion of 'transition'
Eduardo Gudynas
Central to the 54-page manifesto (pdf) entitled 'Climate Change and Transitions to Buen Vivir ', circulated during the UN climate conference in Lima last year, is a transition away from fossil-fuel dependency. Top of the list, therefore, is an immediate moratorium on all oil and gas projects that cause environmental harm. As for those hydrocarbons that remain, these should only be traded within the Andean bloc and sales revenues should be used to fund investment in renewables. "When these countries run out of hydrocarbons, they won't have the likes of wind or solar to replace them," says the report's co-author and leading Buen Vivir writer and activist Eduardo Gudynas, who warns of a pending energy crisis on top of the very real threat of severe climate change impacts.
A second, related goal is the cutting of greenhouse gas emissions. The manifesto calls for a massive investment in public transport (particularly buses in cities) and a phased transition away from private car ownership. The Colombian capital of Bogotá provides a model in its car-free day. Introducing mandatory green building regulations in major cities is also proposed.
Related: Oil company employees should consider quitting their jobs | Jonathon Porritt
A third focus of the proposal is around agriculture. Using fertile land to grow cash crops for export and then importing food from overseas "makes no sense", Uruguay-born Gudynas maintains. Ecuador's export-oriented fresh-flower industry serves as an archetypal example of the "strange" logic of exporting cash crops to earn dollars so as to import staple foods. "Ecuadorians don't eat flowers", he notes.
Instead, the Buen Vivir -inspired proposals suggest a return to more organic (or "agro-ecological") modes of agricultural production. There is food and job security in a post-oil society, the logic runs. Likewise there is no longer a dependency on fuel-thirsty machinery or expensive, petroleum-based chemicals. A more manual style of farming, meanwhile, will provide work for those formally employed in the extractive sectors and related industries. The proposals, which are aimed at the Andean countries and Amazon region primarily, are unashamedly utopian. "The specific objectives for this programme are zero poverty and zero extinction of the species," says Gudynas, who notes that one fifth of the Amazon biome has already been lost and one fifth seriously deteriorated. Urgent transition
A sense of urgency is also a feature of the manifesto. "Our message to the Andean regions is that they can't wait for a global change [in the economic system] because when that change comes it will be too late," states Gudynas. Why? "Because the impacts of climate change are already being felt in these countries. And secondly, because they are going to run out of oil soon."
Related: Can multinationals deliver selfless community projects?
For the best part of a decade, the resource-rich states of the Andes - Bolivia, Peru, Colombia and Ecuador - have seen sharp escalations in economic growth thanks to surging world demand for basic commodities. Not only is that external demand beginning to slow, but their capacity to keep pace with supply isn't infinite. Several of the Andean states are already facing " peak oil ", he argues. That may be up for debate, but what appears incontrovertible are the social and environmental costs of Latin America's current "extractivist" model. Nowhere is that clearer than in Ecuador. Despite enshrining the rights of the environment into in its constitution, the green light was given last year to extend oil exploration in the Amazon. For all his radicalism, Gudynas is not blind to life's realities. "We realise that you can't do this from one day to the next, and it's for this reason that the proposal promotes the notion of 'transition'", he states. That said, he doesn't buy the line that the Andean economies would collapse tomorrow without extractive export revenues. "Ten years of growth means that domestic consumption and sales taxes are now more important that duties or royalties," he states. Neither he nor his fellow proponents are under any illusion about the region's entrenched attachment to a neoliberal form of development. Even in Bolivia, whose national constitution also reflects elements of Buen Vivir thinking, the government is considering a nuclear power station to fuel industrial growth. "I mean, how much more anti-Pachamama can you get?", Gudynas asks, referring to the Mother Earth figure of indigenous belief. It may be too late in the day to stave off a climate crisis, Gudynas fears. But Buen Vivir -inspired policy measures represent the best defence against what lies down the road. Action cannot be delayed, however. That way, as Camus said, "some kind of future, if perhaps not the ideal one, will remain possible." The social impact hub is funded by Anglo American. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled 'brought to you by'. Find outmore here.
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The Guardian
February 11, 2015 Wednesday 11:29 AM GMT
David Harewood: Kenya's eternal summer drove home climate impact;
As the Homeland star joins fellow luminaries for a Shakespeare-themed climate campaign, he tells of the deep impression made by seeing dead cattle in Kenya
BYLINE: Sam Jones
SECTION: GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT
LENGTH: 384 words
A trip to northern Kenya six years ago convinced David Harewood of the realities of climate change.
"I can remember going to a village one day and walking through a field full of dead cattle, which had basically just starved," says the actor.
Related: GuardianWitness: Climate change on Valentine's Day - in pictures
"I walked for about five minutes through all these dead cattle. One of the guys there said, 'It's almost like a stock exchange crash. We don't just use the cows for milk and meat. We trade cattle and if we don't have any cattle, we don't have any money.'"
The Homeland star - who travelled to Kenya in his role as a Cafod ambassador - still remembers the heat and the lack of rain in Maralal. But it was the sight of the carcasses of cows and goats that made the deepest impression.
"It was a startling wake-up call for me," he says. "It wasn't just an economic catastrophe, it was a very visual reminder of how climate change is affecting people."
This year, Harewood has teamed up with fellow celebrities Stephen Fry, Alison Steadman, Deborah Meaden, Dermot O'Leary, Meera Syal, Raymond Blanc, Jarvis Cocker and Emilia Fox to support a Valentine's Day campaign launched by the Climate Coalition.
The coalition, which is made up of more than 100 UK organisations campaigning for action on climate change, is behind a new film in which the stars recite Shakespeare's sonnet 18, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"
In addition to the film, the Climate Coalition is asking people to show their love for the planet on Valentine's Day by sharing the video, wearing homemade green hearts and talking about what they would miss most if climate change is not tackled.
Harewood's own fear is that rising temperatures may mean his children never have the chance to enjoy Barbados, where his parents were born.
"I got married in Barbados a couple of years ago," he says. "I took my mum there and one day, when we were walking, she said to me, 'It never used to be this hot. It's unbearable'. You couldn't leave the house at midday. One of the things I would miss is if my kids never have the opportunity to go to Barbados and walk outside.
"I hope my kids can experience the seasons and a climate that's sustainable. The idea that things are going to be so very different for them is slightly scary."
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The Guardian
February 11, 2015 Wednesday 11:12 AM GMT
Is geoengineering a bad idea?;
Can technical fixes provide a viable solution to climate change or are they a high-risk, irresponsible distraction from the need to cut carbon emissions?
BYLINE: Karl Mathiesen
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 1578 words
In 2010, science writer Eli Kintisch called geoengineering "a bad idea whose time has come". It is considered by many to be the ultimate admission of our failure to curb carbon emissions - a tech-fix that excuses continued carbon gluttony in the industrialised world.
A report released on Tuesday by the US National Academies of Sciences (NAS) said tinkering with the global climate now would be "irrational and irresponsible" and climate change can only be avoided by cutting emissions.
But the influential group of 16 scientists who authored the report urged policy makers to commit to further research into some geoengineering techniques. Should there come a time when the world must consider more extreme interventions in the climate, asked Marcia McNutt, the chair of the committee: "Do we want those decisions to be kneejerk reactions? Or do we want them to be made with a wealth of information?"
Related: Scientists urge global 'wake-up call' to deal with climate change
The two-volume report separates geoengineering into two distinct classes. Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) techniques would suck the greenhouse gas out of the atmosphere and lock it away underground or in the oceans. Albedo modification (AM) involves increasing the reflectivity (albedo) of the earth so the warming effect from the sun is diminished.
A number of techniques have been proposed within these classes. These range from the sensible - replanting forests - to the outlandish - enclose the earth in a ring of space dust to block the sun's rays. In between lie dozens of technologies, most still theoretical, with the potential to ameliorate or reverse the effects of climate change.
In general the report finds that removing carbon from the atmosphere had the advantage of being less risky but more expensive and a long way off. Whereas tampering with the earth's reflectivity could be done now, at less cost but could have massive unintended consequences.
Stuart Haszeldine a professor of carbon capture and storage at the University of Edinburgh said: "The US National Academy report makes a smart distinction between slowly and deliberately putting carbon back underground, and tinkering with sunlight reflection and adjusting the atmosphere. The first is slower, do-able, visible, and controllable but will cost more. The second is cheaper in the short term, but is poorly understood, will create global regions who are losers, and also means that humans have to keep maintaining the earth's annual atmospheric injection."
If the global community were to engage in AM, the most likely way would be to send sulphur-burning planes into the stratosphere or within clouds. The compounds released, known as aerosols, absorb and scatter sunlight and affect the brightness of clouds. Modelling suggests that enough aerosols could have a substantive cooling effect. The NAS warned the side effects of such a programme were unpredictable and there could be far reaching human and environmental impacts, including further depletion of the ozone layer and changes to rainfall.
Aside from the scientific uncertainty, the deployment of AM would raise serious geopolitical questions. Because it is simple and relatively cheap, a single nation could decide to send sulphur into the atmosphere. Professor Steve Rayner, from Oxford University geoengineering programme and co-author of one of the most influential reports on the subject in 2009, said this type of unilateral action could lead to conflict.
"There are issues to do with the perceptions of the technology that make doing the stratospheric aerosol injection something that would be politically very dangerous to do without an international agreement... If you were to do it, any negative event that occurred would be attributed by some party or another to that intervention."
Levels of short-lived aerosols will need constant replenishment, locking the human race into a project of climate maintenance that could last hundreds of years. And in the end, spraying aerosols into the atmosphere does nothing to help the original problem - the accumulation of greenhouse gases that are warming the planet. It is a solution that requires another solution.
Nevertheless, the report calls for more research and even small-scale field trials of the technology. This would represent a significant step beyond the current science. One of the authors of the report, Raymond Pierrehumbert, told the Guardian that much of the research required into AM was useful, fundamental climate science. But given the large questions over the practicality of the technology further steps would be a mistake.
"What is the point? What is it actually good for? What is the point of actually investing in a research programme that is specifically targeted at some aspects of the technology of albedo modification that you wouldn't do for understanding climate in general. The report leaves the door open for doing some of those things... But my own feeling is that albedo modification really is a distraction from the main job of keeping the carbon dioxide emissions down."
The other proposed climate intervention is the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Designs for this range from assisting natural processes that lock carbon away - reforestation, planting crops that replenish soil carbon and fertilising the oceans with iron - to technologies that remove carbon from the air and then store it underground - bioenergy and carbon capture and storage (Beccs).
The fertilisation of oceans would create a bloom of marine plants that store carbon, die and sink to the sea floor. However, like albedo modification, this would be an experiment that would occur in the global commons and could have unintended, border-crossing consequences.
"On the other hand... you could build the CDR [Beccs] technology within national territories, without the need for an international agreement to do this," says Rayner.
In the most significant and comprehensive report on climate change to date, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) noted that almost all pathways towards a safe climate involved the deployment of Beccs. Power stations that burn plants for energy would be fitted with devices to capture the carbon released. This would be pumped underground and stored for eternity.
Beccs would actually reduce atmospheric carbon levels, allowing the world to overshoot its carbon budget (which looks increasingly likely). There's only one problem - there is currently no such technology. A few pilots have been tested but Beccs is still largely being done on paper.
"You have to build an industry that is essentially reverse engineering two hundred years of the fossil fuel industry on a global scale," says Rayner. "There are real problems there with the length of time it would take to ramp up an industry on a scale that is actually going to make a difference to the atmosphere."
The NAS authors stress that geoengineering is a poor alternative to reducing the carbon emissions that cause climate change (known as mitigation). But they go on to say: "Mitigation, although technologically feasible, has been difficult to achieve for political, economic, and social reasons that may persist well into the future... For that reason, it may be prudent to examine additional options for limiting the risks from climate change."
In other words, despite being more expensive, more dangerous and less likely to work, geoengineering technologies should be considered because they do not conflict with the interests of the world's most powerful and influential companies and countries.
Clive Hamilton, a professor of public ethics at Charles Sturt University in New South Wales, Australia, believes this could have serious implications for the politics of climate change.
"The report treats as only a theoretical concern the possibility that a major geoengineering research program would reduce political incentives to reduce carbon emissions. But anyone who has watched world leaders seize on carbon capture and storage as a means of having our cake and eating it can see what is coming. The world lost 10 years chasing the chimera of 'clean coal'."
In her recent book on climate change, social activist Naomi Klein devoted an entire chapter to geoengineering. She said geoengineering could be seen as a kind of Noah's ark, a last minute, supernatural intervention.
"If geoengineering has anything going for it, it is that it slots perfectly into our most hackneyed cultural narrative... It's the one that tells us that, at the very last minute, some of us (the ones that matter) are going to be saved."
Rachel Smolker of NGO BiofuelWatch goes further, suggesting that geoengineering research is being actively promoted by vested interests.
"The geoengineering clique is taking advantage of this situation to promote their planetary technological manipulations. Some of the most avid promoters of geoengineering have links to the fossil fuel industries and to institutions that have backed climate denial." These links have previously been reported by the Guardian.
Some geoengineering technologies are ill-contrived. Albedo modification is dangerous and does not address the initial problem of atmospheric carbon.
But removing some carbon from the atmosphere may buy us some time in the difficult transition ahead. Slowing climate change means saving lives and reducing suffering in the world's most vulnerable communities and, although it may look like failure, must be considered.
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The Guardian
February 11, 2015 Wednesday 8:15 AM GMT
How a children's playground protects Rotterdam from flooding;
Somewhere that's 80% below sea level has to be innovative in its struggle against the tides. But will the Dutch city succeed in being climate proof by 2025?
BYLINE: Jim Hall
SECTION: PUBLIC LEADERS NETWORK
LENGTH: 673 words
Rotterdam is no stranger to water. It sits in one of the lowest points in the Netherlands - 80% of the city is below sea level, by as much as 6.7 metres in places. With one of the largest ports in the world, Rotterdam trades via river links to Germany, France and even Switzerland, making it a key economic asset to the Netherlands.
However, as the city's setting has provided opportunities, it also presents a threat. Its coastal and tidal-riverside location makes Rotterdam particularly vulnerable to extreme weather events such as storm surges and sea level rise.
Rotterdam is protected by a series of dykes, dams and surge barriers, much of which was constructed as a response to the 1953 flood that devastated swaths of south-west Netherlands, inundating more than 165,000 hectares of land - about the same land mass as greater London - and killing 1,800 people.
Dutch predictions are for sea levels to climb as much as a metre by the end of the century. At risk of flooding is much of Rotterdam's economic infrastructure residing outside of the protective dykes - including power plants, railways and water purification plants.
The city is building larger dykes to keep sea water out. Dyke construction is expensive and the economic downturn badly hit the construction industry, making it harder to source finance. So the city introduced the concept of multi-functional terraced dykes - those which not only serve as water barriers but also as commercial platforms for road construction, landscaping and even building.
However, rather than just building more dykes, Rotterdam has resolved to work with the grain of its immediate environment. Instead of contesting an endless struggle against the tides, the city is using them to its advantage.
Part of Rotterdam's work focuses on storm water storage and its managed release into the drainage network - also referred to by local planners as the "sponge function". A number of the city's car parks have large storage tanks which intentionally flood during heavy rains, releasing excess water only later on when the drainage system can handle the glut. Similarly, dual-purpose water plazas act as children's playgrounds and basketball courts during dry spells, and temporarily hold storm water during heavy rains.
Related: Rotterdam: designing a flood-proof city to withstand climate change
A few neighbourhoods in Rotterdam have been piloted as occasional flood zones. Many homes within these zones have incorporated resilient features into their houses, such as rewiring electrics so that they sit above flood levels. This allows basements to flood safely without the electrics shorting out, so that daily life can continue somewhat normally. This model will be rolled out across the city.
These measures aim to help take the pressure off the city and retain normality during periods of high rain. They are "climate-proof" strategies that help Rotterham live with climate change, rather than just try to keep sea and rainwater out.
Our analysis at the Institution of Civil Engineers found the city's adaptation plans have done well to work in harmony with its geographical and economic composition. However, the city has pledged to become fully climate-proof by 2025, and it is unclear how this will be measured and verified.
Rotterdam's response to climate change has set the tone for many low-lying delta cities from around the world, particularly in Asia. We hope it can inspire others to be innovative in their response to climate change.
Jim Hall is a fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers and an author of Availability Infrastructure: Resilient Cities - analysis into resilience to climate change in Rotterdam, Vancouver and New York
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The New York Times
February 11, 2015 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
Panel Urges Research on Geoengineering as a Tool Against Climate Change
BYLINE: By HENRY FOUNTAIN
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 17
LENGTH: 1120 words
With the planet facing potentially severe impacts from global warming in coming decades, a government-sponsored scientific panel on Tuesday called for more research on geoengineering -- technologies to deliberately intervene in nature to counter climate change.
The panel said the research could include small-scale outdoor experiments, which many scientists say are necessary to better understand whether and how geoengineering would work.
Some environmental groups and others say that such projects could have unintended damaging effects, and could set society on an unstoppable path to full-scale deployment of the technologies.
But the National Academy of Sciences panel said that with proper governance, which it said needed to be developed, and other safeguards, such experiments should pose no significant risk.
In two widely anticipated reports, the panel -- which was supported by NASA and other federal agencies, including what the reports described as the ''U.S. intelligence community'' -- noted that drastically reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases was by far the best way to mitigate the effects of a warming planet.
But the panel, in making the case for more research into geoengineering, said, ''It may be prudent to examine additional options for limiting the risks from climate change.''
''The committee felt that the need for information at this point outweighs the need for shoving this topic under the rug,'' Marcia K. McNutt, chairwoman of the panel and the editor in chief of the journal Science, said at a news conference in Washington.
Geoengineering options generally fall into two categories: capturing and storing some of the carbon dioxide that has already been emitted so that the atmosphere traps less heat, or reflecting more sunlight away from the earth so there is less heat to start with. The panel issued separate reports on each.
The panel said that while the first option, called carbon dioxide removal, was relatively low risk, it was expensive, and that even if it was pursued on a planetwide scale, it would take many decades to have a significant impact on the climate. But the group said research was needed to develop efficient and effective methods to both remove the gas and store it so it remains out of the atmosphere indefinitely.
The second option, called solar radiation management, is far more controversial. Most discussions of the concept focus on the idea of dispersing sulfates or other chemicals high in the atmosphere, where they would reflect sunlight, in some ways mimicking the effect of a large volcanic eruption.
The process would be relatively inexpensive and should quickly lower temperatures, but it would have to be repeated indefinitely and would do nothing about another carbon dioxide-related problem: the acidification of oceans.
This approach might also have unintended effects on weather patterns around the world -- bringing drought to once-fertile regions, for example. Or it might be used unilaterally as a weapon by governments or even extremely wealthy individuals.
Opponents of geoengineering have long argued that even conducting research on the subject presents a moral hazard that could distract society from the necessary task of reducing the emissions that are causing warming in the first place.
''A geoengineering 'technofix' would take us in the wrong direction,'' Lisa Archer, food and technology program director of the environmental group Friends of the Earth, said in a statement. ''Real climate justice requires dealing with root causes of climate change, not launching risky, unproven and unjust schemes.''
But the panel said that society had ''reached a point where the severity of the potential risks from climate change appears to outweigh the potential risks from the moral hazard'' of conducting research.
Ken Caldeira, a geoengineering researcher at the Carnegie Institution for Science and a member of the committee, said that while the panel felt that it was premature to deploy any sunlight-reflecting technologies today, ''it's worth knowing more about them,'' including any problems that might make them unworkable.
''If there's a real showstopper, we should know about it now,'' Dr. Caldeira said, rather than discovering it later when society might be facing a climate emergency and desperate for a solution.
Dr. Caldeira is part of a small community of scientists who have researched solar radiation management concepts. Almost all of the research has been done on computers, simulating the effects of the technique on the climate. One attempt in Britain in 2011 to conduct an outdoor test of some of the engineering concepts provoked a public outcry. The experiment was eventually canceled.
David Keith, a researcher at Harvard University who reviewed the reports before they were released, said in an interview, ''I think it's terrific that they made a stronger call than I expected for research, including field research.'' Along with other researchers, Dr. Keith has proposed a field experiment to test the effect of sulfate chemicals on atmospheric ozone.
Unlike some European countries, the United States has never had a separate geoengineering research program. Dr. Caldeira said establishing a separate program was unlikely, especially given the dysfunction in Congress. But he said that because many geoengineering research proposals might also help in general understanding of the climate, agencies that fund climate research might start to look favorably upon them.
Dr. Keith agreed, adding that he hoped the new reports would ''break the logjam'' and ''give program managers the confidence they need to begin funding.''
At the news conference, Waleed Abdalati, a member of the panel and a professor at the University of Colorado, said that geoengineering research would have to be subject to governance that took into account not just the science, ''but the human ramifications, as well.''
Dr. Abdalati said that, in general, the governance needed to precede the research. ''A framework that addresses what kinds of activities would require governance is a necessary first step,'' he said.
Raymond Pierrehumbert, a geophysicist at the University of Chicago and a member of the panel, said in an interview that while he thought that a research program that allowed outdoor experiments was potentially dangerous, ''the report allows for enough flexibility in the process to follow that it could be decided that we shouldn't have a program that goes beyond modeling.''
Above all, he said, ''it's really necessary to have some kind of discussion among broader stakeholders, including the public, to set guidelines for an allowable zone for experimentation.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/11/science/panel-urges-more-research-on-geoengineering-as-a-tool-against-climate-change.html
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GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: Piles at a CCI Energy Solutions coal handling plant in Shelbiana, Ky. Left, a device being developed by the company Global Thermostat to capture carbon dioxide from the air, one of two ways that geoengineering would work. The other involves reflecting sunlight away from the earth. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY LUKE SHARRETT/GETTY IMAGES
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The New York Times
February 11, 2015 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
A Biofuel Debate: Will Cutting Trees Cut Carbon?
BYLINE: By EDUARDO PORTER.
Email: eporter@nytimes.com; Twitter: @portereduardo
SECTION: Section B; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; ECONOMIC SCENE; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1280 words
Does combating climate change require burning the world's forests and crops for fuel?
It certainly looks that way, judging from the aggressive mandates governments around the globe have set to incorporate bioenergy into their transportation fuels in the hope of limiting the world's overwhelming dependence on gasoline and diesel to move people and goods.
While biofuels account for only about 2.5 percent today, the European Union expects renewable energy -- mostly biofuels -- to account for 10 percent of its transportation fuel by 2020. In the United States, the biofuel goal is about 12 percent by early in the next decade. The International Energy Agency envisions using biofuels to supply as much of 27 percent of the world's transportation needs by midcentury.
The reasons for such ambitions are clear: It is nearly impossible under current technology to run cars, trucks, ships and jet planes on energy generated from wind or sun.
What is more, bioenergy is now being drafted to make electricity. Last November, officials at the Environmental Protection Agency issued a policy memo widely seen as encouraging the harvest of forests to produce power by treating it as a carbon-free source.
There is a big problem with this strategy, though. An economist would say that it ignores the ''opportunity costs'' of deploying vegetation as a source of energy. Others call it double counting.
''Dedicating land to bioenergy always comes at a cost because that land cannot produce plants for other purposes,'' said Timothy Searchinger, a researcher at Princeton and the World Resources Institute and a co-writer of a recent report that calls for a rollback of crops dedicated to biofuels.
In a nutshell, says Mr. Searchinger, the energy from forests and fields is not, in fact, carbon-free.
The argument for aggressive deployment of bioenergy assumes that it is carbon-neutral because plants pull CO2 back from the air when they grow, offsetting the carbon emitted from burning them as fuel. But diverting a cornfield or a forest to produce energy requires not using it to make food or, just as important, to store carbon.
''Burning biomass instead of fossil fuels does not reduce the carbon emitted by power plants,'' a group of 78 scientists wrote on Monday to Gina McCarthy, the E.P.A.'s director, warning against the new power plant policy. ''Burning biomass, such as trees, that would otherwise continue to absorb and store carbon comes at the expense of reduced carbon storage.''
If the critics are right, the hunt for biomass on a large scale could vastly change the world's land use, food supply and ecosystems while helping little to prevent climate change.
The argument for caution has so far mostly fallen on deaf ears. The reason is that policy makers see little choice.
Last year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change rendered its latest assessment of scientists' collective understanding of how to slow the pace of global warming. Riddled with the usual uncertainties of science, it seemed pretty certain of one thing: Doing it without biofuels would be much harder.
Absent a big increase in bioenergy supplies, the climate change panel's analysis reported, it would cost about two-thirds more, on average, to prevent the earth's temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, generally considered the tipping point for climatic upheaval.
The availability of biofuels makes more difference to the ultimate price tag, the panel concluded, than whether electricity generation can be harnessed successfully to the sun and wind. Only carbon capture and storage technology is more important.
In most of the climate change panel's models that bring temperatures back under the 2-degree ceiling by the end of the century, biofuels are assumed to produce about 250 to 350 exajoules of energy a year.
To put that in context, 300 exajoules is over half the world's current energy consumption. Today, the energy content of all the biomass harvested for food, fodder and everything else amounts to about 220 exajoules.
The question is, Where will the land to produce all this additional vegetation come from?
As a committee of the European Environmental Agency noted, to reduce the amount of CO2 in the air, bioenergy production ''must increase the total amount of plant growth, making more plants available for energy use while preserving other benefits.''
André Faaij, an expert on energy systems at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and author of many important assessments used by the panel on the potential for bioenergy, argues that it is definitely feasible.
The world could feed 35 billion people (the earth's current population is seven billion) if only the productivity of agriculture and livestock in the developing world were brought to developed country standards, he said. ''Mozambique could feed all of Africa if it just increased its productivity to that of the Netherlands.''
That could free up a lot of land. Deploying just 10 percent of the world's five billion hectares currently used for crops and pastures to grow biofuels could generate 100 to 150 exajoules by the end of the century. An additional 60 to 70 could be had from planting biofuels on currently degraded land. The rest could come from better harvesting of forests and the use of organic waste.
In a recent research article, Professor Faaij and colleagues calculated that it would be technically possible to get about 100 exajoules by 2050 from what they call ''surplus forest growth,'' meaning the bits of forest that are neither protected nor already exploited for wood, and wood waste.
This sort of calculation drives Mr. Searchinger up the wall. ''Surplus forest growth'' he said, is already pulling CO2 from the air. Harvesting it for energy will provide no further benefit for climate change. The same could be said of idled agricultural land, where forest usually starts regrowing soon, capturing carbon from the air.
''In many contexts, allowing a forest to grow will do more to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for decades than producing bioenergy,'' he told me.
And he finds the estimates of future agricultural productivity unbelievable when applied to any reasonable understanding of the real world. Indeed, it will be hard to maintain the productivity growth of the last several decades, he says, let alone substantially increase it.
''Because the world needs to produce 70 percent more of virtually all the products of land -- crops, grasses and wood -- by 2050, there is no additional room for bioenergy, and any capacity to increase crop yields and to make better use of any underutilized land is already needed for these other purposes,'' Mr. Searchinger said.
Professor Faaij says the skeptics are wrong, arguing that the alternatives to a huge increase in biofuel production would be even more difficult to achieve.
But it could be possible to produce the zero-carbon energy the world will need without incurring such steep opportunity costs. Much of the transport fleet could be electrified, reducing demand for liquid fuels. Solar power could be used to produce hydrogen to burn in fuel cells.
There is probably a limited role for biofuels from waste products. But the biofuels juggernaut -- which has helped garner the support of agribusiness in the battle against climate change -- could end up doing more harm than good.
The United States used to rely heavily on bioenergy for transport: 100 years ago, tens of millions of acres were devoted to growing feed for pack animals. Since then, much of this land has reverted to forest. Razing it again for fuel is not the best idea.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/11/business/economy/a-biofuel-debate-will-cutting-trees-cut-carbon.html
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GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: Sugar cane is a source of biofuel. The hunt for biomass could change the world's land use. (PHOTOGRAPH BY JAN SOCHOR/LATINCONTENT/GETTY IMAGES) (B1)
Used cooking oil can be collected from restaurants, above, to be recycled into biofuels. Dried distillers grains, right, are a byproduct of the making of ethanol. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES
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The Guardian
February 10, 2015 Tuesday 11:27 PM GMT
Rethinking the unthinkable;
A new report from the US National Academies looks at the 'wildly, utterly, howlingly barking mad' idea of geoengineering the climate. Jack Stilgoe, a sociologist who has spent the last three years working with geoengineering researchers, takes an early look
BYLINE: Jack Stilgoe
SECTION: SCIENCE
LENGTH: 1192 words
Earlier today, the American National Academies published their much-anticipated report on geoengineering. I am about to publish a book about the emergence of geoengineering as everyone's new best bad idea. So you'll understand that I take a greater-than-usual interest in such arcane reports, especially since my book contains a chapter that explains what was going on behind the scenes at the Royal Society, the UK's equivalent of the National Academy of Sciences, as they staged a similar thing six years ago.
The NAS study began life with fevered excitement at its sponsorship by the CIA. "Conspiracy theorists rejoice!" said Mother Jones as imaginations of James Bond plots involving spies controlling the weather ran away. The reality was more mundane. This was merely the US science policy nexus responding to growing pressure on both sides to speak out on an issue that seemed to have had a taboo lifted. In many ways, the report mirrors that of the Royal Society, but its differences are important. (I confess that this post is based on an early scan).
The report's story is familiar: society's inability to deal with climate change has forced us, all of us, to confront the possibility of engineering our way out of climate change by sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere or reflecting sunlight with stratospheric dust shields. Indeed, given how seductive these technofixes seem it is inevitable that someone, somewhere will want to try them. As scientists invested in the cause of climate change mitigation, the story goes, this is hurting us more than it hurts you.
This time, the message is delivered with an American twang and an obligatory sporting simile from chair Marcia McNutt :
"To use football analogy, [geoengineering] would be similar to a Hail Mary with only 2 seconds on the clock. We hope our quarterback and coaches never put us in that place... What's sad is that there isn't even an opposing team. We can walk into the end zone right now with mitigation and adaptation."
The Climate Central piece that contains this quote also repeats a familiar narrative of inevitability: geoengineering is likely to become a normal part of climate policy, so we may as well understand it, if not learn to love it.
The NAS report refers to 'climate intervention', a phrase that joins 'climate engineering' and 'climate remediation' as recent attempts to rebrand geoengineering. But at least with this new phrase there is recognition of the almost complete absence of engineering in geoengineering. The rapid growth of geoengineering as a form of magical thinking makes it easy to forget that the technologies are largely imaginary. Scientists talk as though we could cool the planet tomorrow. The truth is that our technologies are no closer to being able to do this than they were at the end of world war two. We may pretend towards certainty but when it comes to geoengineering, it is tempting to conclude that, as William Goldman said about Hollywood, "nobody knows anything".
The NAS have split their report in two, finalising a division that many in the geoengineering community have wanted to make for years. One report deals with Carbon Dioxide Removal. The other deals with Solar Radiation Management, or what they call 'albedo modification' (simply put, making the planet reflect more sunlight). The assumption is that these are different categories raising different issues, and that they should never have been lumped together. Report author Ken Caldeira tweeted a table in which the two were juxtaposed according to whether they, for example "produce novel global risks" or "could be done unilaterally".
I am not so sure. If we take the scientific claims at face value, I can understand how these things look very different, but there are sociological overlaps that we might want to hang onto. And some CDR proposals, such as the idea of fertilising the oceans with iron to produce vast blooms of algae, which the report gives short shrift, would seem to "produce novel global risks", as indeed would reforesting a vast proportion of the planet. Emphasising the outlandish, otherworldly qualities of SRM domesticates CDR, which is in the interests of some within the geoengineering research community.
The report's other major point of debate is on research and experimentation. The report argues for more research. All reports from national academies argue for more research. Margaret Atwood says that asking scientists for this sort of recommendation is like asking ants what you should have in your backyard: "Of course they would say 'more ants'". But in this case, the call for more research is not straightforward. Many people - scientists, social scientists, philosophers and others - have argued that geoengineering researchers should not rush to take their experiments further. The worry is that research programmes may themselves contribute to the overhyping of geoengineering as a possible alternative to conventional approaches to climate change.
Some have spun the report to suggest that it provides support for the idea of active experimentation. According to Lynn Russell, an atmospheric chemist with previous involvement in outdoor climate experiments, "We won't know if it's a good solution until we've done more research... Previous reports have not been willing to say that." But, to its credit, the report does not fall into the trap of suggesting that this is fight between 'research' and 'no research'. The report identifies an urgent need to deliberate on new forms of governance that might steer research, let alone the eventual use of technologies. There are plenty within the geoengineering community who have been arguing that research should continue and that, if it poses no risk it should continue unfettered. The report rejects this frame by stating that '"Governance" is not a synonym for "regulation."' Scientists should not see governance as a threat; it includes the norms and cultures that shape their research every day.
The NAS group that prepared the report was, following the model established by the Royal Society, more diverse than in many such studies. Historian James Fleming, author of the wonderful Fixing the Sky joined Steven Hamburg from the Environmental Defense Fund and others who have criticised geoengineering. Reviewers included not just geoengineering cheerleaders such as David Keith but also critics like the philosopher Clive Hamilton. Raymond Pierrehumbert, a climate scientist who has been an outspoken critic of geoengineering, was a member of the group, and wrote in Slate that such ideas remained, "wildly, utterly, howlingly barking mad".
The NAS report, like the Royal Society's before it, has much to recommend it. But, perhaps it emerges from a scientific institution, it can't resist imagining the questions and answers as scientific ones. Geoengineering and research into it is not just about winners and losers, risks and benefits. It is not just a set of empirical questions. It is a profound social experiment.
Jack Stilgoe's book, Experiment Earth: Responsible Innovation in Geoengineering, will be published at the end of the month by Routledge-Earthscan.
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February 10, 2015 Tuesday 7:06 PM GMT
Ecotricity gives £250,000 to Labour amid 'existential threat' from Tories;
Founder of renewable energy firm accuses David Cameron of abandoning green policies to placate Ukip
BYLINE: Jennifer Rankin
SECTION: BUSINESS
LENGTH: 676 words
The renewable energy company Ecotricity is giving £250,000 to the Labour party, and has accused the government of being deceitful on climate and energy policy.
Dale Vince, founder of Ecotricity, said he felt compelled to act because there was "an existential threat from a second-term Tory government". He said it was a myth that Labour was anti-business and praised the party's leader, Ed Miliband, for standing up for renewables and taking a "pro-people" approach to banking and energy markets reform.
Ecotricity is priceless and I would never consider selling it
Dale Vince
"We've watched the coalition government systematically undermine not just the renewable energy industry in Britain but the whole green economy and, by default, efforts to combat climate change. We feel compelled to act and to speak out," he said. "One of the biggest deceits of this government was the claim that green energy support was at the root of high and rising energy bills - the claim behind David Cameron's infamous 'cut the green crap' quote."
This phrase was attributed to Cameron by a senior Tory source in 2013 and triggered a furious reaction from campaigners, who accused the prime minister of ditching his promise to run the greenest government ever. Downing Street said at the time it did not recognise the phrase, but never explicitly denied it.
Vince accused Cameron of abandoning his green policies to placate Ukip and said the prime minister was also putting party politics ahead of the country on the UK's EU membership. "It would be a disaster for Britain to leave Europe. We face not just that possibility but the consequential break up of the UK. It's a nightmare scenario."
He said the next election was the most important of his lifetime. "It was really the starkness of the choice," he told the Guardian. "We were all filled with hope when Cameron promised the greenest government ever," he said. "But he [Cameron] has done great harm to renewable energy and the fight against climate change."
Ecotricity is also giving £20,000 to the re-election campaign of the UK's only Green MP, Caroline Lucas, and is considering giving money to other Green candidates in constituencies where the party is likely to have a chance of winning.
Ecotricity has given the Greens £50,000 in recent years, but until now has not money to Labour. It has never made a donation to the Conservatives.
The company shares are owned by Vince, who launched the wind turbine business in 1996. Ecotricity has 155,000 customers, almost double the number it had a year ago, as consumers abandoned the big six providers amid a political storm over energy prices.
According to the Sunday Times rich list, Vince is worth about £100m. But he said all the wealth was in the company and claimed he did not know how much it was worth. "To me it is priceless and I would never consider selling it," he said.
The £250,000 will be a welcome boost to the cash-strapped Labour party, which has faced accusations of being anti-business, after Stefano Pessina, the Italian billionaire who is the acting boss of Boots pharmacy chain, said it would be "a catastrophe" if Labour got into government.
Vince said: "I don't know where they [critics] are coming from. The Boots guy didn't mention anything, it was just a sweeping attack."
The decision to give money to Labour provoked some criticism on social media. One Twitter user said: "As Ecotricity have billed me extra to foolishly fund the Labour party, I shall now be needing a new energy supplier - recommendations?"
At an event in Manchester on Tuesday night the Green party leader, Natalie Bennett, was expected to attack Labour for not supporting a blanket ban on fracking. "We see a Labour party which says they want to protect our environment, yet fail to stand up to a law which allows fracking firms to drill beneath our homes without permission. They say they worry about climate change, yet they abstain on a proposed ban on fracking."
Labour wants to strengthen regulation of the controversial drilling method but has not proposed a total ban.
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February 10, 2015 Tuesday 7:00 PM GMT
Oil company employees should consider quitting their jobs;
It is becoming morally unacceptable for well-paid employees of Shell and other fossil fuel companies to carry on in their jobs
BYLINE: Jonathon Porritt
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 1146 words
Back in January, the Guardian carried a story about Forum for the Future having decided to no longer work with Shell or BP. I explained the grounds on which we came to that decision, and while acknowledging "our failure" to turn what were once good working relationships with both those companies into anything resembling sustained traction, I also reminded readers that this experience had, if anything, reinforced our commitment to working with those companies in other sectors intent on bringing about real transformation.
Related: Business bosses should speak out against 'anti-sustainability rhetoric'
The response to the article has been illuminating - broadly supportive, apart from a number of hostile voices pointing out that we should have severed our ties with Shell and BP many years ago. But I've been particularly struck by the reaction from old colleagues either still working in the sector, or only recently out of it, reminding me yet again of the very personal dilemmas faced by many people working in "big oil" and other fossil fuel businesses.
First, an historical anecdote. Back in 1997, John Browne (BP's CEO at that time) made a bold decision to pull out of the Global Climate Coalition, the principal voice of climate denialism inside the industry in those days. Externally, the response was uniformly positive, apart from the other oil majors, who were vitriolic in their contempt.
Internally, this decision (and Browne's subsequent initiatives under the Beyond Petroleum rubric) was enthusiastically received. As Browne himself said at the time: "You need the will and the minds of the people inside a company to achieve anything." It went down particularly well when exposed to the "dog and duck test": among friends and families, BP employees noticed a marked uplift in warmth and positive reactions to their company. One of my BP colleagues at the time described it as the Beyond Pariah effect.
It is impossible for most BP and Shell employees not to have some kind of personal stake in the overall positioning of their companies on climate change. And that stake is all about the interface between science and personal morality.
As we all know, the science of climate change is highly dynamic. But almost without exception, most climate scientists would now agree that the evidence of accelerating, manmade climate change has got increasingly robust since the late 1980s, let alone since 1997. Teams of people inside these oil majors track the state of that science carefully, and as the consensus deepens around the threat of severe (and possibly irreversible) impacts of climate change on humankind, the personal moral dilemmas deepen proportionately.
For a few, it gets to the point where they can no longer justify working in the sector. For many, the level of discomfort may be somewhat amplified, but the pros of sticking in there continue to outweigh the cons, not just because of financial reasons, but because of loyalty to colleagues and (rather more rarely these days) a feeling that it may still be possible to turn their particular oil tanker around.
It's only fair to add, in my experience, that most employees do not spend a huge amount of time explicitly defining that discomfort threshold. After all, their companies have a clear and continuing licence to operate from governments, regulators and citizens alike, they do their best to stay the right side of the law, and many of them as individuals are as uncertain or complacent about the potential impacts of manmade climate change as the rest of society.
But once acquired, through proper application to the science, knowledge about causes and consequences cannot easily be put aside. Many Shell and BP employees are themselves scientists and engineers, and correspondingly uneasy about decision-making processes in society that may present themselves as evidence-based policy but are, in effect, exactly the opposite.
Related: Investors question forecasts from ExxonMobil and other oil companies
Let's personalise this for a moment. Imagine a relatively senior employee, perhaps in strategy, investor relations or upstream, diligently tracking the cut-and-thrust of the scientific debate, fully informed about the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and curious enough to track down the work of the outliers - both on the heading towards apocalypse end of the scale and those in the more sceptical or outright denialist camps. Then imagine that those inquiries led that person to the following unavoidable conclusions:
1. That climate change is indeed predominantly manmade. 2. Is already impacting the lives of hundreds of millions of people. 3. Is likely to get much worse, much faster. 4. Is giving rise to phenomena in the Antarctic and the Arctic that are already described by some scientists as potentially irreversible.
At that point, the personal moral dilemma may well become too onerous to bear. Or at least, too onerous if their company has shown no serious sign of transforming their role in the energy economy.
I'm trying to avoid being judgmental here, in some kind of absolutist way. It's always much more nuanced and complex than an article like this can ever do justice to - which means I have little time for the kind of extremist critics who describe all employees in fossil fuel companies as morally bankrupt. And though I'm a huge admirer of the eminent US economist and commentator Paul Krugman, I find it hard to buy into his idea that anyone who denies the evidence about climate change should be " punished in the afterlife " on the grounds that "this kind of denial ... is an almost inconceivable sin".
But neither am I prepared to condone those who think it's somehow OK to go on living out one's well-paid working life in a morality-free zone. No one has that right. And as the moral dimensions of accelerating climate change become more present in our debates, I suspect that more and more employees in the world of fossil fuels will find anxiety slowly turning to anguish.
Forum for the Future will be delving into sustainability issues from a rather different, more reflective perspective at the Reconnections at Findhorn course, taking place at the Findhorn Foundation from 26-30 April.
The leadership hub is funded by Xyntéo. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled 'brought to you by'. Find out more here .
Join the community of sustainability professionals and experts. Become a GSB member to get more stories like this direct to your inbox.
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February 10, 2015 Tuesday 6:13 PM GMT
California calls on pension funds to divest from coal in climate change push;
Senate bill to force two state pensions funds - largest in US - to ditch coal is part of effort to generate 50% of power from wind and solar and halve gasoline use
BYLINE: Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
SECTION: US NEWS
LENGTH: 722 words
America's biggest state pension funds came under rising pressure on Tuesday to dump coal companies from their combined $500bn portfolio, in a major escalation of the fossil fuel divestment campaign.
The California senate leader, Kevin de Leon, said he was introducing a bill on Tuesday calling on the two state funds - CalPERS, the public employees' pension fund and CalSTRS, the teachers' pension funds, drop all coal holdings.
The bill is part of a larger package of climate measures - endorsed by the governor, Jerry Brown - aimed at gearing up California's efforts to fight climate change.
The former vice-president and climate champion Al Gore spoke to the CalSTRS board in Sacramento last Friday. Gore has long argued that fossil fuels are a risky proposition as a long-term investment.
"Our state's largest pension funds also need to keep their eyes on the future," De Leon, a Democrat, said in an email. "With coal power in retreat, and the value of coal dropping, we should be moving our massive state portfolios to lower carbon investments and focus on the growing clean-energy economy."
The two state funds are the biggest targets so far of a divestment movement that has moved from college campuses towards mainstream financial conversation.
CalPERS manages about $300bn in assets, including 30 coalmining companies valued at about $167m, according to a fact sheet prepared by De Leon's office.
CalSTRS with assets of about $190bn has about $132m in coal assets.
But the divestment movement is showing momentum. The Rockefeller Brothers Fund - the legacy of a business empire founded on oil - shed all fossil fuel holdings last September. Stanford University also committed to divesting from coal companies.
Meanwhile, Harvard University is being taken to court by students for refusing to divest.
In a separate initiative, fossil fuel activists are pushing the University of California to eliminate its $90bn in fossil fuel holdings.
De Leon's proposal calls on managers of both state funds to withdraw from all coal companies, and make no new investments in coal within 18 months after the bill becomes law.
It further calls on the two funds to explore the feasibility of expanding its divestment, by divesting entirely from fossil fuels - including natural gas - and report back to the state legislature by 1 January 2017.
CalPERS refused to respond directly to the divestment call until it had seen the proposals. "There have been no discussions or decisions on this topic," a spokesman said in an email.
But the fund told reporters in a statement last month: "We are a founding member of the Investor Network on Climate Change and most recently we partnered with more than 100 global institutional investors, representing more than $13 trillion, to call on governments and policy makers to take action on carbon pricing, to provide regulatory support for energy efficiency and renewable energy, and to fully support innovation and deployment of new low-carbon technologies by the end of 2015."
CalSTRS did not respond to requests for comment on the divestment proposals or on Gore's visit.
Managers of the two funds balked when De Leon first unveiled his divestment proposals.
But divestment activists said the two funds had been amenable to shareholder pressure in the past, and that they were hopeful of negotiating a withdrawal from coal.
The divestment call was bundled with a suite of measures intended to solidify California's efforts to fight climate change.
The proposals would commit California to generating half of its electricity from wind and solar power by 2050 - up from the current target of 33%. They also call for a 50% reduction in the use of gasoline for fuel by 2030, through a combination of fuel efficiency measures and investments in public transport. Existing buildings would be required to cut their energy use by 50%.
Brown embraced a number of those goals in his inaugural address last month.
But the measures are in for a fight from oil and electricity companies and even some Democrats, the Los Angeles Times reported.
In introducing his proposal, De Leon said he was taking his cue from the growing momentum of a divestment movement which has now spread to 300 college campuses.
"We need to listen to the values of the next generation and make sure our investment strategy reflects their priorities," he said.
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The Guardian
February 10, 2015 Tuesday 4:58 PM GMT
Global water loss: what should business do? - live chat;
Experts discuss the role of business in addressing global water loss, the value of corporate water stewardship and the climate change implications. Join us on Wednesday, 11 February, at 1pm GMT/8am ET for the discussion
BYLINE: Tess Riley
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 624 words
Every day, 45bn litres of drinking water are lost to the world's water systems (pdf), water which could otherwise meet the needs of almost 200 million people.
Global water losses affect developed and developing countries alike. In Goa, India, for example, 40% of water transported from treatment plants (pdf) never reaches its destination. Meanwhile, one fifth of potable water leaving treatment plants in England and Wales is lost before it gets to the tap. That's 3,108,000,000 litres of water that go to waste every single day.
Such water losses present a serious threat to global water security. Likewise, there are significant costs to both business and the environment of treating water that then goes unused. Finding solutions is clearly imperative.
This live chat will look at why such losses are happening and what can be done. We'll touch on the social, economic and environmental implications, the potential role business plays in addressing the problem, and the rise of corporate water stewardship as a means of engaging businesses in addressing global water insecurity.
In turn, we will discuss whether there is scope for governments, businesses and NGOs to collaborate to address global water losses, the factors conducive to such collaboration and its limitations.
In all of these discussions it is vital that they are framed within the context of climate change. Climate change is already having a serious impact on global water availability and this is only set to worsen. Do companies concerned about the impacts of water insecurity on their businesses recognise that making broader commitments to sustainable business practices is vital if we are to have any hope of addressing the threat of serious water shortages in the future?
Join us on Wednesday 11 February at 1pm GMT for a live chat with a panel of experts to discuss these questions and more, including:
How do businesses assess the future impacts of water loss on their organisations?
What tools are there to help businesses address water loss?
What role does corporate water stewardship play?
What are some real examples of business programmes or initiatives creating change in this area?
How can businesses collaborate (with other businesses, governments and/or NGOs) to address global water loss?
The panel
Dale Jacobson, governor, World Water Council
Leong Ching, senior research fellow, Institute of Water Policy, University of Singapore
Tony Smith, chief executive, Consumer Council for Water
Hannah Greig, private sector advisor, WaterAid
Morten Riis, business development manager, Grundfos
Jacob Tompkins, managing director, WaterWise
Yasmin Siddiqi, principal water resources specialist, Asian Development Bank
Marco Fantozzi, water loss regional representative for south east Europe, International Water Association
Selma Spaas, program leader of the International Water Leadership Programme at Nyenrode Business Universiteit
How to join
The live chat is completely text based and will take place on this page in the comments section below, kicking off on Wednesday 11 February 1pm GMT. You can submit any questions in advance using the form below, or tweet them to @GuardianSustBiz using #askGSB and we'll put them to the panel on the day.
The water hub is funded by Grundfos. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled 'brought to you by'. Find out more here.
This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. Become a GSB member to get more stories like this direct to your inbox.
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February 10, 2015 Tuesday 4:14 PM GMT
Geoengineering should not be used as a climate fix yet, says US science academy;
That extreme planet-hacking fixes for climate change have become a future possibility is a wake up call to reduce emissions now, say top US scientists
BYLINE: Suzanne Goldenberg
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 1266 words
Climate change has advanced so rapidly that the time has come to look at options for a planetary-scale intervention, the National Academy of Science said on Tuesday. But it was categorical that such 'geoengineering' should not currently be deployed at scale or considered as an alternative to cutting emissions now.
The much-anticipated report from the country's top scientists strongly endorsed the idea of further research into a topic it admitted had once been taboo: proposed high-tech fixes for climate change.
Cutting the carbon pollution that causes climate change was still the main solution, the scientists said, but they conceded they could see the day when desperate governments would turn to geoengineering.
"That scientists are even considering technological interventions should be a wake-up call that we need to do more now to reduce emissions, which is the most effective, least risky way to combat climate change," Marcia McNutt, the committee chair and former director of the US Geological Survey, said.
"But the longer we wait, the more likely it will become that we will need to deploy some forms of carbon dioxide removal to avoid the worst impacts of climate change."
The two-volume report, produced over 18 months by a team of 16 scientists, was far more guarded than a similar British exercise five years ago which called for an immediate injection of funds to begin research on climate-altering interventions.
But the two US reports - Climate Intervention: Carbon Dioxide Removal and Reliable Sequestration and Climate Intervention: Reflecting Sunlight to Cool the Earth - could boost research efforts at a limited scale.
Bill Gates, among others, argues the technology, which is still confined to computer models, has enormous potential and he has funded research at Harvard. The report said scientific research agencies should begin carrying out co-ordinated research.
But geoengineering remains extremely risky and relying on a planetary hack - instead of cutting carbon dioxide emissions - is "irresponsible and irrational", the report said.
The scientists looked at two broad planetary-scale technological fixes for climate change: sucking carbon dioxide emissions out of the atmosphere, or carbon dioxide removal, and increasing the amount of sunlight reflected away from the earth and back into space, or albedo modification.
But even with such technologies on the horizon it was far better to fight climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the report concluded.
The report also warned that offering the promise of a quick fix to climate change through planet hacking could discourage efforts to cut the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.
"The message is that reducing carbon dioxide emissions is by far the preferable way of addressing the problem," said Raymond Pierrehumbert, a University of Chicago climate scientist, who served on the committee writing the report. "Dimming the sun by increasing the earth's reflectivity shouldn't be viewed as a cheap substitute for reducing carbon dioxide emissions. It is a very poor and distant third, fourth, or even fifth choice. |It is way down on the list of things you want to do."
But geoengineering has now landed on the list.
Climate change was advancing so rapidly a climate emergency - such as widespread crop failure - might propel governments into trying such large-scale interventions.
"The likelihood of eventually considering last-ditch efforts to address damage from climate change grows with every year of inaction on emissions control," the report said.
If that was the case, it was far better to be prepared for the eventualities by carrying out research now.
The report gave a cautious go-ahead to technologies to suck carbon dioxide out of the air, finding them generally low-risk - although they were prohibitively expensive.
The report discounted the idea of seeding the ocean with iron filings to create plankton blooms that absorb carbon dioxide.
But it suggested carbon-sucking technologies could be considered as part of a portfolio of responses to fight climate change.
It would involve capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and pumping it underground at high pressure - similar to technology that is only now being tested at a small number of coal plants.
Sucking carbon dioxide out of the air is much more challenging than capturing it from a power plant - which is already prohibitively expensive, the report said. But it still had a place.
"I think there is a good case that eventually this might have to be part of the arsenal of weapons we use against climate change," said Michael Oppenheimer, a climate scientist at Princeton University, who was not involved with the report.
The other, far more riskier planetary-scale climate interventions involves proposals to increase the amount of sunlight reflected back into space by injecting sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere to increase the amount of reflective particles.
But the report expressed deep misgivings about tinkering with the reflectivity of the atmosphere on a planetary scale. "Albedo modification techniques mask the effects of greenhouse warming; they do not reduce greenhouse gas concentrations," the report said.
The two technologies have very different downsides, said Ken Caldeira, an atmospheric scientist at Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology and a geoengineering pioneer.
"The primary concern about carbon dioxide removal is how much does it cost," he said. "There are no sort of novel, global existential dilemmas that are raised. The main aim of the research is to make it more affordable, and to make sure it is environmentally acceptable."
In the case of albedo reflection, however, the issue is risk. "A lot of those ideas are relatively cheap," he said. "The question isn't about direct cost. The question is, What bad stuff is going to happen?"
There are fears such interventions could lead to unintended consequences that are even worse than climate change - widespread crop failure and famine, clashes between countries over who controls the skies.
But Caldeira, who was on the committee, argued that it made sense to study those consequences now. "If there are real show stoppers and it is not going to work, it would be good to know that in advance and take it off the table, so people don't do something rash in an emergency situation," he said.
Spraying sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere could lower temperatures - at least according to computer models and real-life experiences following major volcanic eruptions.
But the cooling would be temporary and the risks enormous, the report said. The interventions would do nothing to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are in the atmosphere - but merely mask some of the symptoms. It would do nothing to right ocean chemistry, which was thrown off kilter by absorbing those emissions.
"My view of albedo modification is that it is like taking pain killers when you need surgery for cancer," said Pierrehumbert. "It's ignoring the problem. The problem is still growing though and it is going to come back and get you."
Dr Matthew Watson, reader in Natural Hazards at the University of Bristol and who was the lead scientist on a UK geoengineering project that was cancelled due to a perceived conflict of interest, said: "This latest report builds on previous discussion and captures a centrist position that many scientists and publics will feel comfortable with. It highlights the need for careful, engaged and holistic thinking and strongly echoes the messages of UK researchers from the recent Royal Society meeting in London."
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February 10, 2015 Tuesday 3:37 PM GMT
Sustainability now key selling point for business schools attracting students;
After years of neglect, students are now demanding business courses include sustainability on the syllabus
BYLINE: Mike Scott
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 1032 words
It has become increasingly accepted in corporate boardrooms that sustainability is an important business issue, but the business schools that train the managers of tomorrow - and the students themselves - have not always kept pace.
In the past, issues such as climate change, labour condition and access to resources were not widely recognised as factors that could make a big difference to the bottom line and students were encouraged to focus on maximising shareholder value, short-term profits and the narrow interests of individual businesses rather than society and the economy as a whole.
Related: Business schools: 'the silent but fatal barrier to the sustainability agenda'
"It used to be painful to teach sustainability issues," says Matthew Gitsham, director of Business and Sustainability at Ashridge Business School. "There was lots of resistance and even anger among the students, many of whom thought sustainability was irrelevant and even a waste of the money they had spent on fees."
Sustainability scholars used to struggle to reach out to their colleagues in business schools, says Frederik Dahlmann, assistant professor of global energy at Warwick Business School. Talking about sustainability can also make it harder to get papers published in academic journals, he adds. "There's no clear reason that should be the case, but you almost always have to downplay the sustainability aspect and talk about operational issues. It is partly because so many journals are based in the US, where sustainability is less accepted as a business issue than in Europe."
However, the situation is changing, he says. "Students see this as an area that they can no longer choose to ignore. Many business schools are now driving it as an area where they can have a competitive advantage."
Related: Are business schools failing to teach sustainability? - podcast
Gitsham agrees that sustainability is now a selling point for business courses. "The shift in student attitudes over the last 10 years has been phenomenal. We know that some people choose us specifically because we have a focus on this area. Some of them do so because they see the importance of the issue to today's businesses, while others are coming at it from a values point of view."
Ashleigh Dueker, an MBA student at Lancaster University, signed up to her course after a stint working as a member of the Peace Corps in a rural village in Mali. "The most sustainable approach to development is through empowering local people by letting them make their own money rather than handing out aid. I was helping to promote local business start-ups for income generation but based on what I thought, having done an undergraduate degree in neuropsychology. I knew I needed to come to business school to learn how to promote business better."
Having secured a job at the consultancy Grant Thornton, she plans to do pro bono work in the community where she previously volunteered.
Related: Why primary school children should be taught about money
Financial crisis
It was the financial crisis that triggered a widespread change in attitudes, partly because many of the accreditation bodies that assess business courses - such as EQUIS (European Quality Improvement System), AMBA (Association of MBAs) and AACSB (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business) - built into their criteria a requirement that business schools should include sustainability as part of the syllabus, according to Dr Morven McEachern, director of the Centre for Social Business at Salford Business School.
"The accreditation platforms came to us [the academic community] and said 'you have to do something'. There is more pressure on business schools to provide a balanced view," she says. "As part of our responsibility to educate and develop people, we have a responsibility to show them what is happening in the world and the impact of what we do."
Mark Stoddard, director of operations at AMBA, says sustainability is now incredibly important for all MBA stakeholders. "In research carried out by AMBA over the last few years, students, alumni and employers highlighted the value of sustainability, and its increasing importance over time. Almost 80% of business schools agreed that sustainability is an important part of the MBA curriculum, with a similar figure believing in the shift to a stakeholder approach to management and business."
Primary school children spend more time learning about the ancient Egyptians than learning about the environment
Jonathan Grant, PwC
This shift in attitude is evident among employers as well, says Andy Cartland, co-founder of sustainability-focused recruitment company Acre. "We are seeing sustainability being embedded more deeply into businesses. It is being seen as a skill that people can't do without. If we are not addressing these issues at business schools, we won't capture the huge opportunities that sustainability issues create."
However, Jonathan Grant, director, sustainability & climate change at PwC, says the focus on sustainability in business schools is too little, too late. "If we start teaching sustainability at MBA level, we are too late. Primary school children seem to spend more time learning about the ancient Egyptians than learning about the environment. Children should have at least one hour per week at primary school on sustainability and climate change, and this should increase as they get older. After all, children starting their education this year will leave university in 2030 - at that point, the low carbon transition should be well under way."
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February 10, 2015 Tuesday 1:14 AM GMT
Remember, Abbott is the product of the Liberals' freak-out over climate;
Abbott was promoted beyond his abilities in order to obstruct action on climate change. His decline started in earnest when Obama snubbed him at the G20
BYLINE: Jason Wilson
SECTION: COMMENT IS FREE
LENGTH: 1069 words
Tony Abbott's prime ministership continued to unravel with Monday's meeting of the Liberal party room, where he begged his rebellious colleagues for six more months. There's been a lot of talk about how the decision to knight Prince Philip fatally damaged him, but an earlier humiliating encounter with a foreign dignitary was even more telling.
Back in November, Barack Obama flew into Brisbane from Beijing, where he had announced an historic climate change agreement with China's Xi Jinping. Having been greeted by a radiant George Brandis, Obama stood before an audience of students at the University of Queensland and rebuked the Abbott government for its approach to climate change.
His address affirmed the science that many in the Coalition deny: that climate change will have particularly ruinous effects for Australia, in the form of "longer droughts, more wildfires. The incredible natural glory of the Great Barrier Reef is threatened". He pointed to Australia's outsized production of carbon emissions and demanded that Australia "step up", both in terms of seriously attempting to limit emissions and in contributing more to the international Green Climate Fund.
Before turning to his next topic he told the assembled students:
You have the power to imagine a new future in a way that some of the older folks don't always have.
As a way to commence a visit to an ally, it was brutal. Abbott, who had tried to keep climate change off the G20 agenda, was immediately forced onto a footing of damage control, and his government was soon briefing against the leader of the free world.
Rather than the foreign affairs showcase Abbott had been hoping for, the G20 underlined how Australia was now out of step with the leadership of almost every major economy. Efforts to cosy up to Canada's Stephen Harper in the hope of forming a "carbon bloc" only illustrated how convoluted and marginal the international politics of denial have become.
After a polling mini-recovery of sorts for Abbott between July and September, November - the month of the G20 and Obama's address - marked a turning-point. Between September and November, Abbott's always-poor net satisfaction ratings had improved and stabilised a little; from November they declined rapidly to where they are today. In some polls, Abbott now has more than half the voters saying that he should resign. November was also the month in which Bill Shorten decisively overcame Abbott as preferred prime minister, and Shorten's lead is now wider than ever. From November until now, the ALP has enjoyed an unbroken ascent in the polls. The latest Newspoll gives Labor its biggest-ever lead on a two-party-preferred basis, of 57% to 43%.
After Obama's Queensland speech, howls went up from conservative columnists (some of the same ones who delighted in calling Bush critics "anti-American") accusing the president of treachery. As far as they were concerned, sabotaging climate change policy was the reason Abbott was in the Lodge, and was integral to the meaning of his prime ministership. In a sense, they were absolutely right. Absent his willingness to take a certain line on climate policy, Abbott would never have been Liberal leader or prime minister.
The flaws that Abbott has displayed since he took over as opposition leader in 2009 - the meltdowns, the appalling political instincts, the anachronistic attachments, the sexism - have been evident since he entered public life. He has never been popular, and he was only elevated because of a freak-out from the denialist wing of the Liberal party over Malcolm Turnbull's proposal to deal with Labor on an emissions trading scheme. There has been a lot of analysis in recent weeks of Abbott's peculiar personality, but not enough recollection of the reason that it's on such prominent display. He's the leader because he promised his party's right wing to make no deals on climate, and to blindly oppose any meaningful policy response.
Ultimately, Abbott and the Coalition have been brought undone by the same failure that has defeated a decade's worth of Australian national leaders: the failure to generate a credible response to the most pressing global crisis. John Howard dragged his feet in the midst of drought, and was brought low by an ALP leader who promised vigorous action. Kevin Rudd called climate change the "greatest moral challenge of our time", only to reveal that he wasn't up to it, which began his fatal slide in the opinion polls. Julia Gillard offered a response she couldn't readily explain, allowing her carbon price to be framed as a tax, and therefore a lie, by Abbott.
Now Abbott, who was promoted beyond his abilities in order to obstruct any action - to "Axe the Tax" - finds himself out of alignment with the global mood, and threatened by Turnbull, the man he tore down.
This obvious thread in Australia's recent national history is ignored by those who would rather point to social media, or indeed democracy itself, as the source of political instability. More arguments have been made this week that politicians are somehow crippled by voluble public disaffection that social media facilitates. Fewer have been willing to consider that causation runs in the opposite direction: that the anger at politicians across the spectrum in recent years should be read as an outcome of the unwillingness of national leaders to face up to long-standing crises. Fewer still have wondered whether this may be because the orthodoxies about possible solutions to climate change and other fundamental problems - like growing inequality - produce policies that are bound to fail.
Economic historian Philip Mirowski considers market-based responses to climate change, of the kind proposed in Australia for a decade on both sides of politics, are a form of "bait and switch". They mean that:
... political actors originally bent upon using state power to curb emissions are instead diverted into the endless technicalities of the institution and maintenance of novel markets for carbon permits, with the not unintended consequence that the level of emissions continues to grow apace in the interim.
Some will say that this overstates the matter, but it works uncomfortably well as a potted summary of Australian national politics since 2007. The rise (and eventually fall) of Abbott is a direct result of our political class taking their eyes off the prize, and getting lost in the details.
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The New York Times
February 10, 2015 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final
Burying a Mountain of CO2
BYLINE: By HENRY FOUNTAIN
SECTION: Section D; Column 0; Science Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1539 words
HENGILL, Iceland -- In a cramped work trailer not far from Iceland's largest geothermal power plant, a researcher pored over a box of core samples -- cylinders of rock that a drilling rig had pulled from deep underground just a few minutes before.
In a test that began in 2012, scientists had injected hundreds of tons of water and carbon dioxide gas 1,500 feet down into layers of porous basaltic rock, the product of ancient lava flows from the nearby Hengill volcano. Now the researcher, Sandra Snaebjornsdottir, a doctoral student at the University of Iceland, was looking for signs that the CO2 had combined with elements in the basalt and become calcite, a solid crystalline mineral.
In short, she wanted to see if the gas had turned to stone.
''We have some calcites here,'' she said, pointing to a smattering of white particles in the otherwise dark gray rock samples. ''We might want to take a better look at them later.''
Ms. Snaebjornsdottir and her colleagues are certain that the process works, but the cores -- eventually hundreds of feet of them -- will undergo detailed analysis at a laboratory in Reykjavik, Iceland's capital, to confirm that the calcites resulted from the CO2 injection.
The work is part of a $10 million project called CarbFix, which is developing an alternative way to store some of the carbon dioxide emitted by power plants and industries. When that carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere, it traps heat, making it the biggest contributor to global warming. So to help stave off the worst impacts of climate change, experts say, billions of tons of CO2 may have to be captured and stored underground.
But doing so is costly. And with little in the way of economic incentives to spur carbon storage, there are only about a dozen large-scale projects operating around the world, storing a total of less than 30 million tons a year, according to the Global CCS Institute, which promotes the technology. Only one of these is at a power plant -- the Boundary Dam project in Saskatchewan, Canada, which started capturing and storing emissions from one of its coal-fired boilers last fall.
Boundary Dam and the other projects operate roughly the same way: Carbon dioxide gas, highly compressed so that it acts like a liquid, is injected into a formation, usually sandstone and often an old oil or gas field. Impermeable rock layers above the storage zone should, in theory, keep the CO2 trapped indefinitely, but because the gas remains buoyant, there is a risk that it will move upward through cracks and eventually bubble back into the atmosphere.
The CarbFix project differs from this conventional approach by using water along with carbon dioxide, and by injecting them into volcanic rocks. The technique is designed to exploit the ability of CO2 to react with the rocks and turn into solid minerals.
''Basically we're using a natural process and engineering it for climate-change mitigation,'' said Juerg Matter, a geochemist at the University of Southampton in Britain and one of the lead researchers on the project. Until last year, Dr. Matter was at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, a CarbFix partner.
But whether the approach will prove to be commercially viable and lead to wider adoption of carbon storage, particularly on the huge scale that will be required to help stem the forces of climate change, remains uncertain.
In the CarbFix process, the injected water and CO2 mix inside the well as if it were a giant geological soda machine. The resulting carbonated water, which is acidic, helps break down the rock, releasing calcium and other elements that combine with the carbon and oxygen from the CO2.
Because the gas, in effect, disappears, ''we don't like to call it storage,'' said Edda Aradottir, who manages the project and works for Reykjavik Energy, the utility that runs the geothermal plant and is another CarbFix partner. The preferred term, she said, is mineral carbonation.
But injecting huge amounts of water along with the CO2 -- 25 tons of liquid for each ton of gas -- adds to the cost. CarbFix scientists have estimated that transportation and injection could cost about $17 per ton of CO2, about twice the cost of transporting and injecting the gas alone. (These costs are on top of the much higher costs of capturing and separating CO2 from a power plant smokestack.)
But Sigurdur Gislason, a geochemist at the University of Iceland and the project's chief scientist, said the CarbFix approach might have a cost advantage over the long term. Because of the risk of leakage, a conventional storage site would have to be monitored, potentially for hundreds of years, at a cost that is difficult to estimate. A CarbFix site, with its stable minerals, could be left alone.
''No one ever talks about monitoring,'' Dr. Gislason said. ''This is where we score very highly.''
Mineral carbonation can occur in many kinds of rock, but often it is extremely slow. The CarbFix approach accelerates the process by injecting into basalt, a very reactive rock. And few places in the world can top Iceland for basalt; the country is made almost entirely of it. The island sits atop the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the boundary between two of the planet's largest tectonic plates, where basaltic magma rises from deep within the earth to form new crust.
What Iceland lacks, however, are significant CO2 emissions. Geothermal generating stations, like the Hellisheidi plant across a road from the CarbFix site, do emit some CO2 -- it and other gases bubble up naturally along with the hot water and steam used to generate electricity -- but the amounts are only about 5 percent of the emissions from an equivalent natural-gas plant.
''We can never do large-scale CO2 injection'' in Iceland, Dr. Aradottir said. But because of the geology, the country is an ideal place to demonstrate to potential users like power companies that the process works. (Since the initial test, CarbFix has scaled up its process and is now injecting 10,000 tons of gas per year from the plant at a nearby site.)
Large basalt deposits are found in other locales, including the Pacific Northwest in the United States. There, at a site in the Columbia River basin near Wallula, Wash., a similar test project -- the only other one in the world -- is also in an analysis phase, having completed the injection of 1,000 tons of carbon dioxide in 2013.
The project, a partnership of several companies and Battelle Memorial Institute, a nonprofit research and development organization that operates the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, might best be described as a hybrid between conventional CO2 storage and the CarbFix approach.
Only carbon dioxide is injected, said Pete McGrail, a research fellow at the laboratory who leads the project. That helps to keep costs in line with conventional CO2 storage. And the basalt has dense, impermeable layers that keep the buoyant gas contained.
But because basalt is so reactive, after a relatively short time -- a matter of years, not centuries -- most of the CO2 should be mineralized, making long-term monitoring unnecessary. (With the CarbFix process, once the CO2 is dissolved in water, it is no longer buoyant, so there is no need for an impermeable layer.)
Like the CarbFix researchers, Dr. McGrail was surprised by how reactive basalt was when he conducted some initial experiments in the early 2000s.
''We had a conventional view that reactions would be slow,'' he said, as they are in sandstone and other rocks. ''But much to our surprise, when we cracked open those samples, it was one of those game-changer moments.''
In Iceland, the detailed analyses of the core samples should conclusively determine if the CarbFix approach works. But already the researchers have a strong indication that their technique is successful. A submersible pump installed at the bottom of a nearby well to monitor the injection process broke down twice. Both times when it was hauled up for repairs it was covered in calcite. ''That's basically the proof,'' Dr. Aradottir said.
But it remains an open question whether the mineralization approach will be adopted when and if carbon storage becomes more widespread. While there is more than enough basalt around the world -- Ms. Snaebjornsdottir has calculated that the Mid-Atlantic Ridge alone could handily store every last bit of emitted CO2 -- getting the gas to the storage sites would be impractical in many cases.
And given that the economics of carbon storage are already poor, it is difficult to see many companies taking on the added expense of injecting water, too.
''If you're looking at it from the point of view of, 'Would a fossil-fuel power plant choose to sequester CO2 by carbonating water?' -- no, that doesn't make any sense,'' said Elizabeth Burton, general manager for the Americas of the Global CCS Institute. But if the plant has to re-inject wastewater anyway, ''maybe the economics would work out,'' she said.
Dr. Matter and the other CarbFix scientists are confident that mineralization will be an answer, at least for some efforts to fight climate change.
''The problem is big enough,'' Dr. Matter said. ''We need many solutions.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/10/science/burying-a-mountain-of-co2.html
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GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: A drilling rig at the CarbFix site in Iceland, where researchers are testing whether gaseous carbon dioxide can be turned into rock as a way of keeping it out of the atmosphere. (D1)
From top: CO2 from a power plant is injected into a dome-covered borehole
a driller pulling rock cores for analysis
CarbFix scientists examining a box of just-pulled cores, above. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY BARA KRISTINSDOTTIR FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (D5)
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The New York Times
February 10, 2015 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final
Climate Is Big Issue for Hispanics, and Personal
BYLINE: By CORAL DAVENPORT; Megan Thee-Brenan contributed reporting from New York.
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1334 words
WASHINGTON -- Alfredo Padilla grew up in Texas as a migrant farmworker who followed the harvest with his parents to pick sugar beets in Minnesota each summer. He has not forgotten the aches of labor or how much the weather -- too little rain, or too much -- affected the family livelihood.
Now an insurance lawyer in Carrizo Springs, Tex., he said he was concerned about global warming.
''It's obviously happening, the flooding, the record droughts,'' said Mr. Padilla, who agrees with the science that human activities are the leading cause of climate change. ''And all this affects poor people harder. The jobs are more based on weather. And when there are hurricanes, when there is flooding, who gets hit the worst? The people on the poor side of town.''
Mr. Padilla's concern is echoed by other Hispanics across the country, according to a poll conducted last month by The New York Times, Stanford University and the nonpartisan environmental research group Resources for the Future. The survey, in which Mr. Padilla was a respondent, found that Hispanics are more likely than non-Hispanic whites to view global warming as a problem that affects them personally. It also found that they are more likely to support policies, such as taxes and regulations on greenhouse gas pollution, aimed at curbing it.
The findings in the poll could have significant implications for the 2016 presidential campaign as both parties seek to win votes from Hispanics, particularly in states like Florida and Colorado that will be influential in determining the outcome of the election. The poll also shows the challenge for the potential Republican presidential candidates -- including two Hispanics -- many of whom question or deny the scientific basis for the finding that humans caused global warming.
Among Hispanic respondents to the poll, 54 percent rated global warming as extremely or very important to them personally, compared with 37 percent of whites. Sixty-seven percent of Hispanics said they would be hurt personally to a significant degree if nothing was done to reduce global warming, compared with half of whites.
And 63 percent of Hispanics said the federal government should act broadly to address global warming, compared with 49 percent of whites.
A greater percentage of Hispanics than whites identify as Democrats, and Democrats are more likely than Republicans and independents to say that the government should fight climate change. In the poll, 48 percent of Hispanics identified as Democrats, 31 percent as independents and 15 percent as Republicans. Among whites, 23 percent identified as Democrats, 41 percent as independents and 27 percent as Republicans.
Over all, the findings of the poll run contrary to a longstanding view in politics that the environment is largely a concern of affluent, white liberals.
''There's a stereotype that Latinos are not aware of or concerned about these issues,'' said Gabriel Sanchez, an associate professor of political science at the University of New Mexico and director of research at Latino Decisions, a survey firm focused on the Hispanic population. ''But Latinos are actually among the most concerned about the environment, particularly global warming.''
One reason, Mr. Sanchez and others said, is that Hispanics often live in areas where they are directly exposed to pollution, such as neighborhoods near highways and power plants.
Hispanics typically rate immigration, education and employment in the top tier of the policy issues on which they vote, but the poll is the latest in a growing body of data showing that Hispanics also care intensely about environmental issues.
A 2013 poll by the Pew Research Center found that 76 percent of Hispanics agreed that the earth had been warming, and 59 percent attributed that warming to human activity. By comparison, 62 percent of whites agreed that the earth had been warming, and 41 percent attributed that to human activity.
A 2014 study in the scientific journal PLOS One found that nationally, minorities were exposed to concentrations of the toxic pollutant nitrogen dioxide that were 38 percent higher than what whites faced. Nitrogen dioxide is linked to respiratory illness and, like planet-warming carbon dioxide, is spewed from vehicle tailpipes and power plant smokestacks. While it is not directly linked to global warming, populations that experience high levels of exposure to it are likely to be more supportive of pollution regulation, Mr. Sanchez said.
The nationwide poll was conducted Jan. 7 to 22 using cellphones and landlines by The Times, Stanford and Resources for the Future. Interviews were in English or Spanish with 1,006 adults, including 738 non-Hispanic white adults and 103 Hispanic adults. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus four percentage points for non-Hispanic white adults and 12 percentage points for Hispanic adults.
The combined results have been weighted to adjust for variation in the sample relating to geographic region, sex, race, Hispanic origin, marital status, age, education and, for landline households, the number of adults and number of phone lines. In comparing subgroups, The Times reports only poll results that are statistically significant.
Tony Vazquez of San Jose, Calif., a poll respondent and a former truck driver who now makes nickel plates for car parts, said in a follow-up interview that he would support policies such as national taxes on greenhouse gas pollution.
''Where I live, you don't know what you're breathing -- smog and pollution from refineries, ships, diesel trucks,'' Mr. Vazquez said. ''You're breathing it all.''
Hispanics are also more likely to be concerned about the impact of global warming outside the United States, Latino researchers say, particularly in Latin America, Mexico and the Caribbean. Stronger droughts and storms there can lead to flooding or shortages of food and water, but people and governments may not be equipped to handle that.
President Obama has proposed spending $3 billion on a global Green Climate Fund intended to help poor countries adapt to the effects of climate change, but Republicans in Congress have been sharply critical of that plan. In contrast, two-thirds of Hispanics in the poll said the United States government should give money to poor countries to help them reduce the damage caused by global warming. Two-thirds of whites said the United States should not provide the money.
The result, Mr. Sanchez and other researchers said, is that politicians should be wary of dismissing the issue of climate change. ''The most important thing is that candidates have to think about the Latino population as complex,'' Mr. Sanchez said. ''To ignore the environment is to ignore something that a large section of the Latino population sees as important.''
Republican political strategists were skeptical.
''The real issue here is whether a dollar spent fighting climate change is better than a dollar spent improving schools, health care or national security,'' said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster. ''Most Republicans are going to find greater political advantage in promoting credible plans to strengthen the economy, improve education and make progress on a host of other issues, including immigration, rather than climate change.''
In Florida, a state that will be crucial to presidential candidates, Nicole Hernandez Hammer, a sea-level rise researcher of Cuban-Guatemalan descent, is working to raise awareness of climate change among Hispanic voters. Last month, she was invited to sit in the first lady's box during Mr. Obama's State of the Union address.
Of Hispanics' growing interest in climate change issues, Ms. Hammer said: ''We're not at rallies. Latinos in immigrant communities are more concerned about putting food on the table.''
But, she said, ''We know that our communities are disproportionately more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, so when it comes time to vote, we make our voices heard on the issue.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/10/us/politics/climate-change-is-of-growing-personal-concern-to-us-hispanics-poll-finds.html
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GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: A refinery inWilmington, a mostly Latino area of Los Angeles. (PHOTOGRAPH BY MONICA ALMEIDA/THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A1)
A garlic field in Cantua Creek, Calif. A drought in 2014 threatened hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland in the region. (PHOTOGRAPH BY MATT BLACK FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (A14)
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The New York Times Blogs
(Dot Earth)
February 10, 2015 Tuesday
In Geoengineering Study, Science Academy Sees Merit in CO2 Removal, Risk in Reflecting Sunlight
BYLINE: ANDREW C. REVKIN
SECTION: OPINION
LENGTH: 1914 words
HIGHLIGHT: A panel of experts finds too many risks in techniques for blocking sunlight to justify this method in countering global warming.
Experts convened by the National Academy of Sciences have weighed in with valuable reports on the two main "geoengineering" strategies for countering global warming driving by the buildup of greenhouse gases: "reflecting sunlight to cool the Earth" and "carbon dioxide removal and reliable sequestration." [I'll add direct links when they're up.]
The panels' overarching bottom line is straightforward:
There is no substitute for dramatic reductions in the emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases to mitigate the negative consequences of climate change, and concurrently to reduce ocean acidification.
There are no big surprises in the voluminous reports, but they do provide a great guide to both the scientific and societal issues attending using "climate interventions" - the reports' phrase for geoengineering techniques - to counter humanity's continuing intervention: the release of tens of billions of tons of carbon dioxide a year.
The scientists find much merit in pursuing further research on both, but only see practical prospects for capturing and storing carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas emitted by human activities. Methods for reflecting sunlight, or increasing the planet's "albedo," are fraught with technical and diplomatic challenges. (There's lots more on Dot Earth on that question. I've long posited that it'll be a very long time before humanity agrees on where to set the global thermostat by managing sunlight, and there's no appreciable advantage in one country trying to do this on its own.)
This excerpt from an overarching summary captures the difference:
Overall, there is much to be gained and very low risk in pursuing multiple parts of a portfolio of CDR [carbon dioxide removal] strategies that demonstrate practical solutions over the short term and develop more cost-effective, regional-scale and larger solutions for the long term. In contrast, even the best albedo modification strategies are currently limited by unfamiliar and unquantifiable risks and governance issues rather than direct costs.
Here's a table laying out the contrasting findings on the two intervention methods:
For more, here's the brunt of the National Academies' news release:
There is no substitute for dramatic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions to mitigate the negative consequences of climate change, a National Research Council committee concluded in a two-volume evaluation of proposed climate-intervention techniques. Strategies to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere are limited by cost and technological immaturity, but they could contribute to a broader portfolio of climate change responses with further research and development.
Albedo-modification technologies, which aim to increase the ability of Earth or clouds to reflect incoming sunlight, pose considerable risks and should not be deployed at this time.
Carbon dioxide removal and albedo-modification techniques have been grouped up to now under the common term "geoengineering," but they vary widely with respect to environmental risks, socio-economic impacts, cost, and research needs. Carbon dioxide removal addresses the root cause of climate change - high concentrations of the greenhouse gas in the atmosphere - and generally have well-understood benefits and risks, but current technologies would take decades to achieve moderate results and be cost-prohibitive at scales large enough to have a sizeable impact. By contrast, albedo-modification techniques would only temporarily mask the warming effect caused by high CO2 concentrations, and present serious known and possible unknown environmental, social, and political risks, including the possibility of being deployed unilaterally.
These differences led the committee to evaluate the two types of approaches separately in companion reports, a distinction it hopes carries over to future scientific and policy discussions. In addition, the committee believes that these approaches are more accurately described as "climate intervention" strategies - purposeful actions intended to curb the negative impacts of climate change - rather than engineering strategies that imply precise control over the climate.
"That scientists are even considering technological interventions should be a wake-up call that we need to do more now to reduce emissions, which is the most effective, least risky way to combat climate change," said committee chair Marcia McNutt, editor-in-chief of Science and former director of the U.S. Geological Survey. "But the longer we wait, the more likely it will become that we will need to deploy some forms of carbon dioxide removal to avoid the worst impacts of climate change."
If society ultimately decides to intervene in Earth's climate, any actions should be informed by a far more substantive body of scientific research, including ethical and social dimensions, than is presently available, the committee said. Decisions regarding deployment of carbon dioxide removal technologies will be largely based on cost and scalability, and research is needed to make current options more effective, more environmentally friendly, and less costly. Conversely, any future decision about albedo modification will be judged primarily on questions of risk, and there are many opportunities to conduct research that furthers basic understanding of the climate system and its human dimensions - without imposing the risks of large-scale deployment - that would better inform societal considerations.
"If the world cannot slow emissions or the effects of climate change are more extreme or occur sooner than expected, there may be demands to pursue additional climate-intervention technologies about which scientists need a better understanding," said National Academy of Sciences President Ralph J. Cicerone. "Although riskier ideas to lessen the amount of energy absorbed from the sun should not be considered for deployment, they should be studied so that we can provide answers if someday these ideas begin to be considered in attempts to avert catastrophe. These reports should guide federal agencies in supporting research on climate-intervention technologies, while keeping separate any decision-making about their implementation."
Carbon dioxide removal and sequestration
Some carbon dioxide removal strategies seek to enhance or mimic the natural processes that already remove about half of the world's carbon emissions from the atmosphere each year. Environmental risks vary among the proposed technologies, but overall the risks are relatively low and generally understood. However, most carbon dioxide removal strategies have limited technical capacity, and absent some unforeseen technological innovation, large-scale deployment would cost as much or more than replacing fossil fuels with low carbon-emission energy sources, the committee said.
- Land-management approaches such as forest restoration and low-till agriculture are mature, readily deployable technologies with well-known environmental consequences.
- Enhanced weathering processes on land and in the ocean to accelerate natural removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere have only been carried out on a limited scale with intermediate technological readiness. Ocean-based approaches in particular carry significant environmental and socio-political risks.
- Ocean iron fertilization is an immature technology whose high costs and technical and environmental risks currently outweigh the benefits.
- Approaches in which biomass is converted to heat, electricity, or liquid or gas fuels followed by CO2 capture and sequestration are limited by the availability of land for biomass cultivation and the need to transport it to processing facilities.
- Direct air capture of carbon is an immature technology with only laboratory experiments carried out to date and demonstration projects in progress. Technologies for storing the captured carbon are at an intermediate stage, but only prototypes exist and are not at the scale required for significant sequestration.
The committee recommended federal research and development investment to improve methods of carbon dioxide removal and disposal at scales that would have a significant global climate impact. In particular, research is needed to minimize energy and materials consumption, identify and quantify risks, lower costs, and develop reliable sequestration and monitoring capabilities.
Albedo-modification research
Technologies that prevent sunlight from reaching Earth's surface could reduce average global temperatures within a few years, similar to the effects of large volcanic eruptions. While many albedo-modification techniques have been proposed, the committee said two strategies that could potentially have a significant impact are injection of aerosols into the stratosphere and marine cloud brightening. Unlike carbon dioxide removal, these methods would not require major technological innovation to be implemented and are relatively inexpensive compared with the costs of transitioning to a carbon-free economy.
However, albedo modification would only temporarily mask the warming effect of greenhouse gases and would not address atmospheric concentrations of CO2 or related impacts such as ocean acidification. In the absence of CO2 reductions, albedo-modification activities would need to be sustained indefinitely and at increasingly large scales to offset warming, with severe negative consequences if they were to be terminated. In addition, albedo modification introduces secondary effects on the ozone layer, precipitation patterns, terrestrial and marine ecosystems, and human health, with unknown social, political, and economic outcomes.
Many of the processes most relevant to albedo modification - such as those that control the formation of clouds and aerosols - are among the most difficult components of the climate system to model and monitor. Present-day observational capabilities lack sufficient capacity to monitor the environmental effects of an albedo-modification deployment. Improvements in the capacity to monitor direct and indirect changes on weather, climate, or larger Earth systems and to detect unilateral or uncoordinated deployment could help further understanding of albedo modification and climate science generally.
The committee said it would be "irrational and irresponsible" to implement sustained albedo modification without also pursuing emissions mitigation, carbon dioxide removal, or both. It opposed deployment of albedo-modification techniques, but recommended further research, particularly "multiple-benefit" research that simultaneously advances basic understanding of the climate system and quantifies the technologies' potential costs, intended and unintended consequences, and risks.
Albedo-modification research will have legal, ethical, social, political, and economic ramifications. The committee recommended the initiation of a serious deliberative process to examine what international research governance structures may be needed beyond those that already exist, and what types of research would require such governance. The degree and nature of governance should vary by activity and the associated risks, and should involve civil society in decision-making through a transparent and open process.
The study was sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences, U.S. intelligence community, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and U.S. Department of Energy.
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The Guardian
February 9, 2015 Monday 3:21 PM GMT
We can start leaving the oil in the ground right now - here's how;
The mechanism developed to forgo exploiting oil in Yasuni national park in Ecuador can be applied worldwide
BYLINE: Maria Rosa Murmis and Carlos Larrea
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 1078 words
As the world's nations prepare to reach binding agreements on climate change this year in Paris, one of the foremost thoughts in political leaders' minds must - or should - be how to respond to the fact that in order to avoid catastrophe, humanity cannot extract more than about a third of proven fossil fuel reserves. According to scientific evidence, the larger proportion of reserves must be left underground if we are to keep global warming below a 2C rise by 2100.
This means that nations must make two critically important decisions: 1) how much carbon each nation is allowed to emit and 2) which reserves are to be exploited and which are not.
The world has some experience with the first decision, but none with the second. Yet we don't have to start from scratch.
In 2007 Ecuador's president Rafael Correa proposed forgoing exploiting the oil in the Ishpingo, Tambococha and Tiputini (ITT) fields under the Yasuni National Park if the international community provided half of the income Ecuador would be forsaking. Unfortunately, after six years of negotiations, Correa announced in 2013 that Ecuador would abandon the Yasuni-ITT Initiative, as it came to be called, and push ahead with exploitation.
Nevertheless, the years of work by those involved resulted in the creation of an innovative financial and institutional mechanism which the world could adopt today for oil deposits elsewhere. This mechanism consisted of a trust fund administered by the UN and featuring a multi-stakeholder committee including Ecuador's government, civil society and international contributors.
The fund was intended to be an instrument of genuinely sustainable development which would respect the rights and cultures of the people in Yasuni, including two groups of indigenous people, the Tagaeri and Taromenane, living in what Ecuador's constitution calls "voluntary isolation." The fund's capital was to come from both public and private voluntary contributions from the international community, and would be invested in renewable energy projects in Ecuador, with the interest directed to a variety of activities. These included participatory management of natural areas belonging to indigenous communities, reforestation and sustainable management of forests owned by individual landholders, increasing energy conservation and efficiency nationwide, and ending deforestation in protected areas.
Ultimately, the goal of the Yasuni-ITT Initiative was to promote the transition from the current development model based on oil extraction - which has demonstrably failed at reducing poverty and inequality - to a new strategy based on equity and sustainability.
Maybe Yasuni was ahead of its time. Although scientists have warned for years about potential catastrophe, the world wasn't really listening. Today, as many of the world's leaders appear to be embracing the need to take action, the time has come to honour the legacy of the Yasuni-ITT Initiative.
We can start leaving the oil under the ground - right now. We know we must, and, with the Yasuni-ITT Initiative, we know how to do it.
If the world is to forgo extracting certain oil reserves, the first that must be left untouched are those that would involve the greatest losses in terms of living systems, local communities and world heritage, and those whose preservation would entail the greatest additional benefits in terms of climate change mitigation and adaptation. In other words: the oil lying under areas of high conservation value in developing countries.
Fortunately - or, rather, unfortunately - it isn't hard to find candidates. Half way around the world from Ecuador another country rich in biodiversity, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), is grappling with the pressure to exploit oil under the Virunga National Park.
The similarities between Virunga and Yasuni are striking. Both are tropical rainforests in developing countries, and both are national parks. Both are International Union for Conservation of Nature "Category II" protected areas, both belong to regions considered "priority places" for conservation by the WWF, and both are "important bird and biodiversity areas", according to Birdlife International. Unesco declared Virunga a "World Heritage Site" in 1979, and Yasuni a "Biosphere Reserve" in 1989.
In addition, Virunga has been declared a "wetland of international importance" under the Ramsar Convention and is home to 200 of the world's remaining 700 seriously endangered mountain gorillas. Yasuni, on the other hand, is the most important biological reserve in the Amazon basin and possibly the most biodiverse region in the western hemisphere.
Furthermore, both Virunga and Yasuni support thousands of people. Yasuni is home to approximately 3,000 indigenous people, while some 50,000 depend economically on fishing and related commercial activities in Virunga. Yasuni is also home to the Tagaeri and Taromenane, the only two groups of indigenous people in Ecuador who have chosen to avoid contact with western culture and continue living their traditional lifestyle based on gathering, hunting and semi-nomadic agriculture.
Four years ago UK-based company Soco began oil exploration in the southern half of Virunga. In June 2014 a WWF-led campaign resulted in an announcement by Soco that it would cease its seismic operations in the area, although the extent of the commitment to withdraw from Virunga remains unclear. Soco has agreed not to proceed without UNESCO and DRC government approval, but there is concern that the park boundaries may be redrawn or other means will be found by the government to allow the company to continue.
Virunga, like Yasuni, presents an opportunity for genuinely sustainable development involving local communities. The mechanism created for Yasuni-ITT could be applied there. Indeed, it should become a permanent mechanism under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC): a fund that developing nations with biodiverse and culturally rich areas sitting on top of oil deposits can apply to. Resources could be allocated to initiate project preparation and fund-raising, with a central body responsible for oversight and coordinating projects worldwide.
But the world doesn't need to wait for the UNFCCC. Applying the mechanism created for Yasuni-ITT to Virunga could serve as a pilot project.
The Yasuní-ITT Initiative may have been so cutting edge, so challenging to political will, that it was ahead of its time. Now that time has come.
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The Guardian
February 9, 2015 Monday 3:08 PM GMT
Children of change: empowering learners through education for sustainable development;
Today's learners need to be equipped with the skills to navigate a complicated future - but how can this be achieved without instilling fear and despondency?
BYLINE: Duncan Jefferies
SECTION: THE CRYSTAL PARTNER ZONE
LENGTH: 922 words
Many of today's children face a challenging future. The world's population could reach almost 10 billion by the middle of the century, the effects of climate change are increasingly being felt, and the gap between the richest and poorest in society has become a gulf. But presenting young people with doom and gloom scenarios is only likely to frighten them. It might even make them despondent, and therefore less likely to engage with sustainability teaching; the people who have the biggest stake in the future, on whose shoulders the burden of change will weigh most heavily, could be 'switched off' from learning the skills they'll need to survive and thrive.
"How we ensure that future generations have access to an appropriate and fair amount of resources - that is a deeply fundamental question," says Professor James Longhurst, assistant vice chancellor, environment and sustainability, at the University of the West of England. "Young people need to be prepared for the sorts of challenges that they will face in their lifetime, consider their own responses to those challenges, and more importantly, think through what their contribution to the solution will be."
That's the foundation of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). It isn't about spelling out worst-case scenarios; it's about giving students the knowledge, values and social critical thinking abilities they need to live happy, healthy sustainable lives. The core teaching concepts are based around empowering and motivating learners to examine their own behaviour and that of others, and take action that will improve their well-being as well as that of the planet.
Children are then encouraged to think about how we could get from probable to preferable scenarios, and what steps are needed to get there. When this is coupled with 'action learning' - involving children in choosing a project or issue they would like to address, then helping them see it through to completion, assessing what they've learnt and how to apply this knowledge - it can really "change self-esteem and your sense of agency for making a difference," says Ann Finlayson, chief executive of SEEd, which aims to support and encourage educators to help young people live a more sustainable life.
The Crystal, a strikingly futuristic building on the Royal Docks, East London, is designed to help students of all ages envisage what a sustainable future might look like, particularly in a technological and urban context. Aside from being one of the world's greenest buildings, it's home to a large, permanent exhibition centred around fourteen zones that showcase global sustainability trends, challenges and futures, including urban planning, energy, water, healthy lifestyles and the environment.
Engaging visuals and real-life examples that children can apply to their own lives are at the heart of the exhibition. "It's about possible solutions, and solutions that are already in place today," says Rachel McVeagh, education facilitator for The Crystal. One of the exhibits tasks children with running a city for 40 years. "They look at power, water and finance and then they try and make the right decisions to build a sustainable city," she says. "It shows them the challenges involved in balancing a sustainable life with quality of life."
Chris Dillon, event and safety manager at The Crystal, says that "everyone from grandparents down to toddlers" has visited the building since it opened in 2012. Visits are often tailored to suit each group's particular interests, and teaching resources are available through The Crystal's website. The Crystal also aims to motivate students to study sustainable engineering. "The University of East London recently brought in their third year engineering students," Chris says, "and they were able to speak to our technology manager about a career in engineering."
Oasis Academy Silvertown is walking distance from The Crystal. School principal Charles Claxton says it has become a source of inspiration for both teachers and pupils alike. "It's so much more relevant than just saying 'well, remember to switch the lights off, children'. It brings it [sustainability] to life."
When the school visited recently, pupils were able to use it as a resource for a piece of creative writing about utopias and dystopias. "We were talking about utopian visions of what a city might look like, and also contrasting that with a dystopian vision... All of the displays on energy conservation, good transport infrastructure and so on - they were able to build that information into their utopian vision."
Professor Longhurst says that "whether you're in primary school or in higher education - anywhere on that spectrum - the opportunity to visit a place, to be inspired by the alternative futures that are presented in The Crystal, for example, those are incredibly important parts of an educational experience."
At present sustainable development doesn't feature in the national curriculum for schools in England, and climate change is only taught to GSCE students. SEEd believes this needs to change - not least because Education for Sustainable Development can help students develop the skills they need to critically assess the masses of information they're now constantly bombarded with, figure out their impact on the world, and ultimately lead more fulfilling and sustainable lives.
Copy on this page is controlled by The Crystal, sponsors of the Guardian Sustainable Business Awards and the business futures hub.
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The Guardian
February 9, 2015 Monday 1:27 PM GMT
University of Sydney to cut carbon footprint of its investments by 20%;
University to phase out carbon emissions from all the companies in its $413m portfolio, but says it is not exclusively divesting from fossil fuel companies
BYLINE: Emma Howard
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 502 words
The University of Sydney will cut its fossil fuel investments by reducing the carbon footprint of its AUD$413m (£212m) listed share portfolio by 20% over three years.
The decision announced on Monday makes the university the first in Australia to commit to a strategy of phasing out carbon emissions from all the companies in its portfolio rather than exclusively targeting those in fossil fuels. The university's total investment portfolio is worth $1.36bn.
The Australian National University pulled all of its investments out of fossil fuels last October, a move that prime minister Tony Abbott called "a stupid decision". Such divestment is an approach advocated by campaign movements at 350.org and Greenpeace, and has been adopted by Glasgow University in the UK and partially embraced by Stanford University in the US.
However, the University of Sydney has distanced itself from straight divestment, saying that the policy does not account for the carbon footprint of non-fossil fuel companies and risks cutting out fossil fuel companies which are also working on renewable energy.
Sara Watts, vice principal (operations), said: "If you divest from a particular company or a sub-sector, it's a really blunt instrument. The new strategy balances the university's obligation to manage funds wisely on behalf of our students, staff, donors and alumni with its desire to address climate change and protect Australia's heritage. It signals to the entire market that investors are concerned about the impact of climate change and expect contributing sectors to respond with plans to reduce their emissions."
The university will join the Portfolio Decarbonisation Coalition, an initiative launched by the United Nations Environment Programme in September 2014. It is designed to bring together a "critical mass" of investors committed to reducing the carbon footprint of their investment assets by USD$100bn USD. It also includes two of the largest asset managers and pension funds in Europe.
The coalition does not stipulate how investors should decarbonise their portfolios, although they must publish their carbon footprint and commitments annually.
The university will not divest from any sector entirely, meaning that in theory it could retain its investments in Whitehaven Coal. The company is developing Australia's biggest new coal project in New South Wales, in southern Australia. In 2014, Greenpeace activists built a mock mine-site on the University of Sydney campus to highlight the investments.
The Sydney decision follows a student campaign and referendum last year in which 80% of students voted in favour of the university divesting from fossil fuels. The university thereafter committed to a comprehensive review of its investments.
Greenpeace Climate and Energy Campaigner Nikola Casule said: "The University of Sydney has taken an important step in the fight against dangerous climate change. However, the university must declare which companies will be affected if its policy is to be credible."
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The Guardian
February 8, 2015 Sunday 6:32 PM GMT
Deluded and dysfunctional, the Republicans have lost the plot;
They may have won Congress, but an instinct for obstinacy means the party is now fighting itself
BYLINE: Gary Younge
SECTION: COMMENT IS FREE
LENGTH: 1224 words
Recently, in an effort to embarrass Republicans pandering to their scientifically challenged base, Senate Democrats proposed a series of votes on climate change. While most Americans and the overwhelming majority of scientists believe climate change is real and people are the primary cause of it, Republican voters are evenly divided on whether it exists at all, and reject the idea that we are responsible.
One amendment, by the Democratic senator Brian Schatz, stated simply that climate change is real and human activity significantly contributes to it. Republican senator John Hoeven offered a compromise : take the word "significantly" out. When asked why, he said: "It was about finding that balance that would bring bipartisan support to the bill."
Reaching across the aisle in search of compromise and consensus is the professed goal of almost every candidate for public office in the US, particularly in recent times, when presidents have come to personify not unity but division. Over the past six decades, the 10 most polarising years in terms of presidential approval have been under either George W Bush or Barack Obama.
As a means, bipartisanship is, of course, an admirable goal: the more politicians are able to work together, put the interests of their constituents first and get things done, the better. The grandstanding, bickering and procedural one-upmanship that characterises so much of what passes for politics is one of the things that makes electorates cynical and drives down voter turnout.
But as an end in itself, bipartisanship is at best shallow and at worst corrosive. For it entirely depends what parties are joining together to do. This is particularly true in America, where constituencies are openly gerrymandered, both parties are funded by big money, and legislation is often written by corporate lobbyists.
Bipartisan efforts over the past couple of decades have produced the Iraq war, the deregulation of the financial industry, the bank bailout made necessary by that deregulation, the slashing of welfare to the poor, and an exponential increase in incarceration. As the hapless Steve Martin says to his hopeless travel companion, John Candy, in Planes, Trains and Automobiles: "You know, I was thinking, when we put our heads together ... we've really gotten nowhere."
Comity in the polity is overrated and should certainly not be mistaken for what is right or even popular. And even if it wasn't overrated, bipartisanship is not always possible. Half of Republicans still believe the US did find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, over half believe climate change is a hoax, and almost half do not believe in evolution. There is a limit to how much agreement you can reach with people with whom you disagree on fundamental matters of fact, let alone principle.
But if the parties cannot work together, they are at least supposed to work separately. What has become evident since Republican victories in November's midterm elections, which delivered them both houses of Congress, is that they don't just have a problem compromising with Democrats - they cannot even compromise with each other. For the past four years they have revelled in their dysfunctionality, using Obama as a foil. Apparently unaware that brinkmanship is supposed to take you to the edge, not over it, they have shut down the government and almost forced the nation to default on its debts through a series a spectacular temper tantrums.
As the Republican congressman Marlin Stutzman pointed out in a particularly candid moment 18 months ago, when Republican obduracy caused a government shutdown, "We have to get something out of this. And I don't know what that even is."
These hissy fits have invariably been aimed at forcing Obama to undo the very things he pledged to do if elected, and to which Republicans have no plausible, coherent response: during his first term that was Obamacare; now it is immigration reform. Opposition, in short, had become not a temporary electoral state but a permanent ideological mindset in which their role was not to produce workable ideas but to resist them.
When they won the Senate as well as the House, they were supposed to work together to produce Republican legislation that Obama would be forced to veto, definitively exposing the real source of the gridlock. In fact, they are simply imploding under the weight of their own obstinacy. They've run out of people to blame for not compromising with them. So now they're blaming each other.
"The Republicans are like Fido when he finally catches the car," the Democratic senator Charles Schumer told the New York Times. "Now they don't have any clue about what to do. They are realising that being in the majority is both less fun and more difficult than they thought."
Their current internal feud was prompted by Obama's executive order for modest immigration reform, which was enacted last November. It aims to prevent the deportation of up to 5 million undocumented immigrants living in the US, provide many with work permits, and shift the focus of immigration control to deportations of convicted criminals and recent arrivals.
The Republican-controlled House, where funding bills must originate and legislation can be passed by a simple majority, has voted for a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) bill that would eviscerate Obama's reforms. But to get the bill through the 100-seat Senate they need 60 votes. Senate Republicans have only 54 seats and Democrats, who are unanimously opposed to the bill, keep filibustering it.
In a functional party the Republican Speaker, John Boehner, would work out what changes he could make to the bill to give the Republican Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, a fighting chance of getting the requisite majority to pass legislation they could both take credit for. Instead, Boehner has offered McConnell not compromise but commiserations. "He's got a tough job over there; I've got a tough job over here. God bless him, and good luck."
The House has sent the same bill to the Senate twice. The Senate has failed to pass it several times. In effect, they've treated the Republican-controlled Senate no differently to how they treated its Democratic predecessor, with similar results. Reflexively, House Republicans have their bottom lip extended and at the ready. "We sent them a bill," representative Michael Burgess told Politico, "and they need to pass it. They need to pass our bill." A tantrum is not far off. "Politically, [McConnell] needs to make a lot of noise," says representative John Carter.
Senate Republicans, meanwhile, roll their eyes, count to 10 and wait patiently for the noise to give way to reason. "We can go through the motions, sure, but I don't think we're fooling anybody," said Republican senator Jeff Flake about the prospect of another doomed vote. "Because we need [Democratic] support to get on the bill."
If they don't find a solution by 27 February, then the DHS will be shut down and Obama won't have had a thing to do with it. The true source of the gridlock over the past six years will be clearer than ever. The emperor will be out there, twerking, in the buff.
"It's not an issue of commitment, it's a matter of math," said the Republican senator John McCain - perhaps failing to realise that math, like science, is no competition for blind faith and bad politics.
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The New York Times
February 7, 2015 Saturday
Late Edition - Final
The New School Divests Fossil Fuel Stock and Refocuses on Climate Change
BYLINE: By JOHN SCHWARTZ
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 13
LENGTH: 592 words
Many universities have decided to drop fossil fuel stocks from their investment portfolios, but the New School in New York City has decided to go a step further.
The eclectic, historically progressive school said not only would it divest itself of all fossil fuel investments in coming years, but it is also reshaping the entire curriculum to focus more on climate change and sustainability.
The school, which has a strong emphasis on the field of design, sees opportunities in meeting the challenge of climate change and economic growth, said Joel Towers, executive dean of Parsons the New School of Design.
''What we're trying to do here is to get students and faculty to think differently about climate change, and look at it as an opportunity to design the future differently,'' he said.
That can mean something as seemingly small as creating processes for making clothing that minimize waste and transportation of materials, or planning urban environments that are more resilient and attuned to extreme weather events, he said.
The school will study its own facilities to find ways to reduce its carbon footprint and save energy costs, and reduce paper use and waste. And it plans to promote environmentally sensitive food services through such measures as working with small-scale suppliers in the Hudson Valley. The school has consulted with Bill McKibben, the writer and environmental activist, on its initiative.
Climate change, said the New School's chief operating officer, Tokumbo Shobowale, is ''a wicked design problem.'' Shifting the curriculum across all of the school's disciplines, he said, is a way to go beyond divestment, a step that he said drew skepticism at first from many faculty members.
''A lot of people said this is not going to make a difference in terms of hurting these companies or hurting their ability to conduct oil and gas exploration,'' he said about the divestment plan.
Still, he added, divestment can be used as a teaching tool -- economics students are studying the companies in the school's $340 million endowment and their practices to help devise principles to add some nuance to their decisions about which stocks to keep or sell.
The announcement comes as institutions and student groups prepare for Global Divestment Day, which in fact will stretch over two days, Feb. 13 and 14, with hundreds of events planned around the world to urge institutions and individuals to sell off their investments in fossil fuel industries.
The action by the New School is the latest example of unusual approaches to the divestment issue.
On Tuesday, a Massachusetts state court will hold a hearing in a case brought by students at Harvard University in November; the lawsuit calls for the courts to force the school to sell off fossil fuel stocks.
Harvard has asked the court to dismiss the suit. The Harvard president, Drew Gilpin Faust, has said divestment is neither ''warranted nor wise'' and that the endowment ''is a resource, not an instrument to impel social or political change.''
The New School sees things differently, said Michelle DePass, dean of its Milano School of International Affairs, Management and Urban Policy.
She said that the ultimate goal of the program was to transform all 14,000 students, faculty members and staff into ''fully aware, service-oriented climate citizens.''
While such goals are easy to envision for students in public policy and environmental studies, she said that drama students could be encouraged to create works that touched on issues of climate resiliency.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/07/science/the-new-school-takes-a-big-step-beyond-divesting-fossil-fuel-stock.html
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The Guardian
February 6, 2015 Friday 11:10 PM GMT
The outdoor economy is big. Its voice in Washington is not;
With climate change threatening outdoor recreation, isn't it time for Washington to take into account the value of the outdoor economy?
BYLINE: Marc Gunther
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 951 words
Two small California ski resorts, Dodge Ridge and Badger Pass, shut down in January as temperatures climbed to near-record highs and weeks passed without snow. With the Sierras suffering a historic drought, it's hard to say for certain if they'll reopen.
The ski-industry closings are a small but representative setback for what a new report calls the outdoor economy - that is, "the stream of economic output that results from the protection and sustainable use of America's lands and waters when they are preserved in a largely undeveloped state".
Outdoor recreation is a powerful economic force. It accounts for "more direct jobs than oil, natural gas and mining combined", according to the report published by the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank, in January.
But in the political arena, those businesses that depend upon nature are decided underdogs when they battle adversaries, such as the fossil fuel industry, which would like to see more exploration for oil and gas on federal lands.
One of the top battle lines is about which use supplies the most jobs. And sorting out the jobs claims - the Washington trade association version of "mine is bigger than yours" - isn't easy.
The Outdoor Industry Association has estimated that outdoor recreation, which includes hiking, biking, camping, fishing, hunting, skiing and motorcycling, supports 6.1m jobs in the US (pdf). The American Petroleum Industry (API) says the oil and gas industries support 9.8m US jobs.
To settle such arguments, the Center for American Progress is asking the government to track the financial impact of the outdoor economy, just as it measures the energy, health care and education sectors. Matt Lee-Ashley, who wrote the report with Clare Moser and Michael Madowitz, says the commerce department's Bureau of Economic Analysis currently cannot estimate the dollar impact of outdoor recreation, let alone gauge its value to the nation's health or quality of life.
"If you're building economic policy, you need good numbers," Lee-Ashley says. "What percentage of the US travel industry relates to outdoor places? How many people coming to the US visit a national park, and how much do they spend?"
The bigger problem for nature lovers is that the companies and industry groups that depend on protecting wild and beautiful places - groups like the Outdoor Industry Association, the Conservation Alliance, the National Ski Areas Association and companies such as The North Face and Patagonia - don't have the clout or lobbying budgets to match bigger industries that worry less about protecting the outdoors.
Consider, as an example, a group called Protect Our Winters, which organizes skiers and snowboarders, among others, to "create a social movement against climate change, and ultimately to affect policy," says Chris Steinkamp, its executive director. A nonprofit started by pro snowboarder Jeremy Jones and funded in part by the ski industry, its annual budget is about $500,000.
The broader Outdoors Industry Association, meanwhile, spent about $7m in 2013, less than 20% of which went to government affairs, according to its most recent annual report.
These groups and their environmental allies are being massively outspent by fossil fuel interests. The American Petroleum Institute, for example, spent $235m in 2012, according to its IRS Form 990. That year, API paid public relations company Edelman $51.9m for public relations and advertising, spent another $17m on lobbying and awarded its chief executive, Jack Gerard, $3.5m in direct compensation and $1.6m in "other compensation".
Other energy industry groups, including America's Natural Gas Alliance and the National Mining Association, are smaller than API but significantly bigger than the outdoor industry organizations. In the climate-change debate, advocates for the outdoors bump up against even more powerful business lobbies like the US Chamber of Commerce.
For its part, the outdoor industry is trying to broaden its base of support. Venture capitalist Nancy Pfund recently helped start a group called the Conservation for Economic Growth Coalition, representing the technology industry.
Patrick Von Bargen, a Washington DC government relations executive who is working on behalf of the coalition, says "the innovation economy, and the companies that comprise it, benefit enormously from accessible outdoor recreation provides". The best and the brightest in the tech industry, he says, want to work in places with easy access to the great outdoors.
In its largest advertising campaign ever, The North Face last year urged people to spend more time in beautiful places and "Never Stop Exploring." The company commissioned the band My Morning Jacket to record " This Land Is Your Land," the Woody Guthrie song, and donated proceeds from sales on iTunes to conservation groups.
While the campaign was more commercial than political, Letitia Webster, who is global director of corporate Sustainability for VF Corp, The North Face's parent company, told me: "We really believe in getting people passionate about the outdoors. Then they're going to want to conserve it. They're going to want to protect it."
The outdoor industry is well represented in Bicep, a group of companies advocating for legislation to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Aspen Skiing Co, Burton Snowboards, Clif Bar, Nike, Patagonia, The North Face, Timberland and VF Corp all are Bicep members.
Notably absent from the group, though, are airline or hotel companies, even though they, too, benefit from the outdoor economy. Airlines have invested in efficient planes to reduce their fuel costs and emissions, but they have opposed government regulation or carbon taxes.
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February 6, 2015 Friday 2:24 PM GMT
Why Barclays must quit bankrolling coal industry;
Barclays CEO Antony Jenkins talks of courage, values and purpose, so why is he a lead financier of coal, a major contributor to climate change?
BYLINE: Jo Confino
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 1128 words
There is an invisible DNA thread that links companies to their original purpose, which executives ignore at their peril.
Jenkins said that he wants to ensure the bank is around in another 325 years...he should now take a stand and quit coal
Because our transactional-based economic structures focus attention only the tiny sliver that is our conscious mind, business people often fail to take account of a company's moral character.
But what we see time and again is that once the connection with the past is severed, often as a result of companies putting profits before ethics, it may be impossible to fully connect back to the original pathway.
Business leaders in the past understood this only too well. Sir Ove Arup, the founder of multinational professional services group Arup, famously said that "the trouble with money is that it is a dividing force, not a uniting force, as is the quest for quality or a humanitarian outlook. If we let it divide us, we are sunk as an organisation - at least as a force for good."
Similarly CP Scott, the great Guardian editor of 57 years, wrote in a leader column celebrating the paper's centenary in 1921 that the paper had "a moral as well as a material existence, and its character and influence are in the main determined by the balance of these two forces. It may make profit or power its first object, or it may conceive itself as fulfilling a higher and more exacting function."
Related: Barclays' Transform programme: culture change or window dressing?
What got me thinking about this was listening recently to Antony Jenkins, CEO of Barclays, talking about the 20 Quaker families who created the bank more than 300 years ago.
Barclays, like many other banks, lost its moral compass when the puffed-up investment bankers and traders came to believe they were masters of the universe and that their purpose was to make money from money, sod the rest of us.
Jenkins is now trying to rebuild the company's shattered integrity by re-embedding a set of values into Barclays that point to the bank's founders who were, like Arup and Scott, business people who also understood their obligations to society.
In fact, the bank's website highlights with pride David Barclay the younger, who became a partner in the bank in 1776, and the campaigning stance he took when he found himself the owner of a slave plantation in Jamaica in settlement of a debt. Not only did he free the slaves, but brought them to Philadelphia at a cost of £3,000.
Given its recent history, is it fair for Jenkins to call forth these ghosts of its moral past? And what more would he need to do to have a chance of retying that DNA thread, which was cut with such brutal force?
Jenkins talks of the need to drive the values into every corner of Barclays and claims to be doing more than most other organisations to ensure all staff abide by them. "Putting values at the centre of how you evaluate an individual or a company's performance - as we've done with our balanced scorecard - is pretty rare", he said. "We have looked far and wide, and found few companies who are doing what we are doing."
But while Jenkins talks of the need to systemise the values and describes Barclays as "a machine with inputs and outputs", values are only truly meaningful when they represent a heartfelt desire.
One of Barclays' core values is integrity, which is described as showing the courage to do and say the right thing.
Scott understood this when he wrote in 1921 that "character is a subtle affair, and... is not a thing to be much talked about, but rather to be felt. It is the slow deposit of past actions and ideals. It is for each man his most precious possession."
One of Barclays' core values is integrity, which is described as showing the courage to do and say the right thing. So while Jenkins appears to be genuine about his desire to rebuild the bank's shattered integrity, what would be an equivalent stance Jenkins could take which matches the courage shown by David Barclay back in the 18th century?
What immediately jumps to mind is stopping the damage being done by the bank's continuing funding of the dirty coal industry, which is contributing so much to climate change.
The reason I pick this is because climate change is similar in one sense to the slave trade in that challenging its disastrous impacts necessitates taking a moral stance and standing up to those in power who are benefitting from the status quo.
Related: Has Barclays brought corporate responsibility reporting into disrepute?
In a report last year, the Rainforest Action Network (RAN), Sierra Club and BankTrack highlighted that Barclays is now the lead financier of mountaintop removal coal mining at a time when competitors such as JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and BNP Paribas have stopped supporting this destructive practice.
Also, between 2005 and April 2014, Barclays was the fourth largest financier of coal, providing (EURO)17bn to the coal mining sector and the coal power companies, made up of (EURO)8.6bn of loans and (EURO)9.3bn in underwritings.
I asked Barclays about this and the response lacked any sense of can-do spirit. In a statement, it said: "When considering a financing decision, including those relating to coal, Barclays makes a careful assessment of the social and environmental impacts. This is integral to the due diligence and risk escalation process.
"We also adhere to the Equator Principles - detailed environmental and social criteria applicable to project finance transactions covering issues including environmental impact assessment, local community consultation, the impact on indigenous peoples and cultural heritage sites, relocation of communities and related compensation."
Clearly whatever measures it is currently using are not enough. Jenkins said that he wants to ensure the bank is around in another 325 years and that he doesn't "want people coming to Barclays who want to make a lot of money, but rather to believe in what we are doing and in something bigger than ourselves."
If Jenkins truly wants civilisation - never mind his company - to be around in 2340, he should now do and say the right thing; take a stand and quit coal.
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February 6, 2015 Friday 11:51 AM GMT
World's biggest sovereign wealth fund dumps dozens of coal companies;
Norway's giant fund removes investments made risky by climate change and other environmental concerns, including coal, oil sands, cement and gold mining
BYLINE: Damian Carrington
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 612 words
The world's richest sovereign wealth fund removed 32 coal mining companies from its portfolio in 2014, citing the risk they face from regulatory action on climate change.
Norway's Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), worth $850bn (£556bn) and founded on the nation's oil and gas wealth, revealed a total of 114 companies had been dumped on environmental and climate grounds in its first report on responsible investing, released on Thursday. The companies divested also include tar sands producers, cement makers and gold miners.
As part of a fast-growing campaign, over $50bn in fossil fuel company stocks have been divested by 180 organisations on the basis that their business models are incompatible with the pledge by the world's governments to tackle global warming. But the GPFG is the highest profile institution to divest to date.
A series of analyses have shown that only a quarter of known and exploitable fossil fuels can be burned if temperatures are to be kept below 2C, the internationally agreed danger limit. Bank of England governor Mark Carney, World Bank president Jim Yong Kim and others have warned investors that action on climate change would leave many current fossil fuel assets worthless.
"Our risk-based approach means that we exit sectors and areas where we see elevated levels of risk to our investments in the long term," said Marthe Skaar, spokeswoman for GPFG, which has $40bn invested in fossil fuel companies. "Companies with particularly high greenhouse gas emissions may be exposed to risk from regulatory or other changes leading to a fall in demand."
She said GPFG had divested from 22 companies because of their high carbon emissions: 14 coal miners, five tar sand producers, two cement companies and one coal-based electricity generator. In addition, 16 coal miners linked to deforestation in Indonesia and India were dumped, as were two US coal companies involved in mountain-top removal. The GPFG did not reveal the names of the companies or the value of the divestments.
"One of the largest global investment institutions is winding down its coal interests, as it is clear the business model for coal no longer works with western markets already in a death spiral, and signs of Chinese demand peaking," said James Leaton, research director at the Carbon Tracker Initiative, which analyses the risk of fossil fuel assets being stranded.
A report by Goldman Sachs in January also called time on the use of coal for electricity generation: "Just as a worker celebrating their 65th birthday can settle into a more sedate lifestyle while they look back on past achievements, we argue that thermal coal has reached its retirement age." Goldman Sachs downgraded its long term price forecast for coal by 18%.
On Wednesday, a group of medical organisations called for the health sector to divest from fossil fuels as it had from tobacco. The £18bn Wellcome Trust, one of the world's biggest funders of medical research , said "climate change is one of the greatest challenges to global health" but rejected the call to divest or reveal its total fossil fuel holdings.
In January, Axa Investment Managers warned the reputation of fossil fuel companies were at immediate risk from the divestment campaign and Shell unexpectedly backed a shareholder demand to assess whether the company's business model is compatible with global goals to tackle climate change.
Note: The first line originally said 40 coal mining companies had been dropped, instead of the correct number of 32. A further eight companies were dropped due to their greenhouse gas emissions: five tar sand producers, two cement companies and one coal-based electricity generator.
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February 6, 2015 Friday 8:07 AM GMT
What is cli-fi? And why I write it;
Sarah Holding on a book genre you may not have heard of before. Not sci-fi but cli-fi: fiction that explores the consequences of climate change - and possibilities to rewrite the future
BYLINE: Sarah Holding
SECTION: CHILDREN'S BOOKS
LENGTH: 720 words
I've always loved science fiction. Not the galactic kind you'd associate with Star Wars or Star Trek, but the more earthbound, slightly surreal type some people call magical realism - stories where one small thing seems odd in an otherwise ordinary world and then kick starts a great adventure.
As a child, it didn't matter to me whether it was a wardrobe ( The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe ), a grandfather clock ( Tom's Midnight Garden ), an amulet ( Five Children and It ), or a funny old caveman ( Stig of the Dump ), with that kind of book I was hooked from the first page. I particularly love the moment when this one element of the story opens up a whole other world in space and time. It's exactly that moment I was after when I started writing for children.
For me, writing is about designing a complete sense of a world. Maybe because I used to be an architect by training: when people ask me how I became a children's author, I tell them both authors and architects want to affect the quality of our existence. I'm not after utopia - far from it - Bladerunner is still one of my favourite films, because I find it stimulating to be confronted with a bleak future that asks questions about what makes us human. However, as a mother of three, I worry about the more disturbing dystopian books and films aimed at children that have come out in the past few years - I mean the kind where there isn't any real sense of hope for the future.
Striking a balance between hope and hopelessness is not easy, but it became a whole lot easier once I realised my own writing wasn't merely magical realism, nor for that matter sci-fi, but " cli-fi" - that is fiction that foregrounds climate change.
Cli-fi is trending in teen and YA publishing right now - witness The Carbon Diaries by Saci Lloyd, Red Rock by Kate Kelly, and Water's Edge by Rachel Meehan - just a handful of the many British titles tackling a wide range of compelling issues: shortages of food, fresh water, oxygen or dry land, giving us vivid depictions of the human consequences of climate change.
Given the steady increase in the number of volcanoes, earthquakes, sinkholes and floods reported recently, it's easy to see why this new literary genre might have emerged, especially when successive world leaders have gone back on commitments made in Rio and Kyoto to reduce energy consumption, move away from fossil fuels, and invest more heavily in renewable energy.
But is cli-fi simply a case of authors doing their bit for climate change or something more?
I can't speak for everyone, but I write cli-fi because it reconnects young readers with their environment, helping them to value it more, especially when today, a large amount of their time is spent in the virtual world. Cli-fi advocates restoring equilibrium to our physical environment, making it not just a setting or backdrop to a story, but a story's primary purpose and emotional appeal. The characters in my writing are genuinely concerned about the environment and want to make a difference, which I hope is contagious and spreads to my readers too.
As a cli-fi author I can do more than I ever could as an architect to change our circumstances: cli-fi has allowed me to participate imaginatively in rewriting our future, a future on which we all depend, whereby the planet recovers its equilibrium and continues to support life, this is something that I have particularly noticed when giving workshops in schools.
Climate change is usually covered as part of science and geography in schools, so the complex human implications rarely get discussed and let's be honest; in this context it's a little-bit dull.
With cli-fi you can liven things up very quickly and get young people writing fictional scenarios in which the world has gone horribly wrong. At every workshop I've run - whether it was in a primary or secondary school, a staged event with Ed Davey during Climate Week or my Big Write at the Isle of Wight literary festival, the outcome is very powerful: cli-fi makes young people realise that they too can rewrite our future.
What do you think about the cli-fi genre? Ever read any? Got cli-fi to recommend? Tell us on email childrens.books@theguardian.com or on Twitter @GdnChildrenBks.
Sarah Holding is the author of the SeaBEAN Trilog y. Her latest book SeaRISE is out now.
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February 6, 2015 Friday
Investing in Energy Efficiency Pays Off
BYLINE: DAVID BORNSTEIN
SECTION: OPINION
LENGTH: 1905 words
HIGHLIGHT: Colleges are finding that refitting buildings with greener heating and ventilating systems can pay for itself in a few years.
A junior and senior economist are walking down the street. The junior one spots a $20 bill on the ground and says, "Hey, look, 20 dollars! Should I pick it up?" The senior economist replies: "Don't bother. It can't be real. If it were, someone would have taken it already."
The idea that money is available for the taking defies economic logic. But sometimes it's true. That's the case with a vast opportunity that's routinely overlooked by institutions across the country - from universities to hospitals, companies to governments.
The opportunity is investing in energy efficiency. "The returns are tremendous, and there's virtually no risk," said Mark Orlowski, the founder and executive director of the Sustainable Endowments Institute, an organization that is building a network to advance research, education and practical tools to help institutions, primarily universities and colleges, make investments that mitigate climate change.
Consider the example of Burton D. Morgan Hall, a 48,000-square-foot building completed in 2003 on the campus of Denison University in Granville, Ohio. Even though it's only a decade old, energy conservation technologies have advanced so rapidly in recent years that significant savings were possible. In 2012, Jeremy King, Denison's sustainability coordinator, explained, the college invested about $108,000 to install new sensor-controlled heating and cooling systems and energy efficient lighting throughout the facility. The combined savings from reduced gas and electric bills have remained roughly $28,000 per year, the initial estimate. (The rate for natural gas has gone down but electricity prices have increased.)
That's less than a four-year payback, or a 26 percent return, which is 10 points higher than the average return earned by college endowments in the United States in 2014.
For investments in energy efficiency, it's not an unusual return. And it's low risk: unless the building is destroyed or the usage patterns change markedly - the energy savings will continue long after the principal is recovered.
Nationally, the potential savings from energy conservation investments are astounding. In a 2012 study, Deutsche Bank and the Rockefeller Foundation found that retrofitting buildings for energy conservation in the United States could save $1 trillion over a decade, reduce American greenhouse gas emissions by 10 percent, and spur employment across the country.
To be sure, retrofitting at the national level would require huge efforts of mobilization. But at the level of a single university or government agency, the opportunities are more straightforward. So why do institutions regularly overlook them?
One problem, says Orlowski, is disbelief. Like the economist above, if something seems too good to be true, we assume it is. Indeed, energy savings can be difficult to measure and verify (although there are reliable methods for estimation).
But a bigger problem is that energy efficiency is mainly thought of as a cost, not a potential windfall. And it can be particularly hard to justify funding for retrofits when budgets for programs are being slashed.
Even when money is available - in cash reserves or endowments - institutional silos get in the way. The individuals who are best positioned to identify potential savings - operations and facilities managers - have little interaction with the people who control resources - finance and investment managers. As a result, fund managers may look far and wide for attractive returns, while failing to recognize market-beating opportunities to invest in their own campuses.
How do you solve this problem? The Sustainable Endowments Institute (S.E.I.) is advancing a workable approach. It provides step-by-step guidance to help universities and colleges (as well as other institutions) establish Green Revolving Funds (G.R.F.s) - funds that treat green projects as investments and reinvest savings. It also provides them with access to a software platform called the Green Revolving Investment Tracking System (Grits) that allows them to track returns, and review the efficiency investments that other colleges have made, too. (Explainer videos here.)
S.E.I. is a small organization that punches above its weight. The Billion Dollar Green Challenge it introduced in 2011 to build momentum for G.R.F.s has brought together institutions that have, to date, committed $110 million to these investment vehicles. The Grits library contains detailed investment information on 350 energy efficiency projects from 75 institutions, viewable by members. (One founding partner of the Green Challenge, Western Michigan University, has made its project information publicly available in summary and detailed reports.)
Denison University was an early partner in the Billion Dollar Green Challenge. "We signed the American College and University Presidents' Climate Commitment in 2010 and we have a goal of carbon neutrality by 2030," Jeremy King, the university's sustainability coordinator, explained.
In 2011, Denison committed to creating a $1 million green revolving fund. Since then, the university has put $1.8 million into it and invested in 60 efficiency projects. King reports that Denison's energy consumption per square foot of building space has dropped by 13.5 percent since 2008.
"It's relatively easy to set up the fund," King added. "But it's not always easy for people to put two and two together and redirect the savings back into it." This can be a tricky sell when utility bills go up, or colleges add buildings, and you have to explain that the savings is avoiding what would have been a higher bill.
To make the fund work, therefore, it's important to create a common frame of reference. The first step is to form a working group that includes representatives knowledgeable about finance, facilities, faculty, students and sustainability. S.E.I. provides templates to guide the process: how to organize the group, write the fund's charter, and establish its operating and investment guidelines.
At Denison, leadership came from the vice president of finance, Seth H. Patton. "He got it and insisted that savings from efficiencies flow back into the fund until the cost was repaid," said King. Additional savings would reduce the general operating budget.
Last year, Denison decided to increase its revolving fund - the Green Hill Fund - to $3 million. "We are choosing projects that have an average payback of six years or less, so in any given year we'll have $500,000 to invest in energy efficiency independent of the operating budget," said King.
Another partner in the Billion Dollar Green Challenge, the University of New Hampshire, capitalized its G.R.F. with funding for efficiency projects that the state government offered from the Obama administration's stimulus package. "We said, if you give us the seed money, not only will we get to work right away, but we'll continue this work for years and years," said Matthew O'Keefe, the university's director of energy and utilities.
The school started with $600,000 in the fund. In five years, it has generated $1.3 million in energy savings, allowing the original sum to be reinvested in energy saving projects that have cost $1.8 million over all.
Some of the investments were no-brainers; others provide longer returns. For instance, the school insulated sections of its three miles of underground piping, an investment that pays for itself in just two years. "In one of our science buildings, we spent about $100,000 on 'demand control ventilation' and saved that in just over a year," he added. They installed a solar preheat ventilation system - an air chamber attached to an exterior wall with a black surface. The air is drawn in slowly through small holes, heated by the sun, and used for ventilation (a 10-year payback).
"You have a great bang for the buck if you can just get the money to invest in it. It's really important to have a separate funding mechanism," said O'Keefe. "We think that over 10 years, we will have saved $3 million with no other external injections of capital."
When Elizabeth Kiss, president of Agnes Scott College, in Decatur, Georgia, heard about the Billion Dollar Green Challenge, she decided to establish a G.R.F., and reached out to college donors to finance it. Kiss was surprised when the first grant came from a patron who was skeptical of the environmental movement and climate change. What attracted him, she said, was the efficiency argument and the prospect of saving money for the college's core mission.
To design the fund, the school's director of sustainability, Susan Kidd, worked with financial officers, faculty and students. Peyton Nalley, a sophomore, developed the processing form needed for project approval and funds transfer. Working on the G.R.F. gave Nalley a practical connection to ethical concerns raised in her courses, she said. "In economics, we're looking at property and discrimination," she said. "And huge power plants are always located in poor areas."
To date, the college has received pledges totaling $500,000, and invested $271,000 in six projects, with an average payback period of 3.7 years, said Kidd.
One of the most active institutions using Grits today is Western Michigan University, which established its first G.R.F. in 1980, and has contributed data on 60 projects. "One benefit of a revolving fund is that it enables engineers to become entrepreneurs," said Peter J. Strazdas, the school's associate vice president for facilities management and president-elect of the national industry association known as APPA: Leadership in Educational Facilities. "What kills people is when they have an idea and you talk about it but nothing happens," he added. But when engineers or mechanics know funding for ideas exists, they take initiative. "I've got 500 employees in facilities, and they're the ones coming up with project ideas and making them happen," he said. "I'm a cheerleader."
This month, S.E.I. formed a partnership with the two largest higher education networks that prioritize energy efficiency: the American College and University Presidents' Climate Commitment and APPA. "We'll be rolling out Grits on a pilot basis to approximately 100 additional universities by the end of February," said Orlowski. One priority will be providing access to institutions that serve predominately minority students. (Grits is available for a free trial to any nonprofit institution.)
It's a big moment for a small organization. It could open doors to 2,000 institutions. But Orlowski knows that the path ahead won't be downhill. Although no one is refusing to consider the idea, he explained, "People say, 'We're overloaded and this isn't a fire that needs to be put out now.' But if they actually did an energy audit, they would find millions of dollars in savings - and that money could be used for all sorts of things: scholarships, new faculty positions, even more pay for the university president."
Join Fixes on Facebook and follow updates on twitter.com/nytimesfixes. To receive e-mail alerts for Fixes columns, sign up here.
David Bornstein is the author of "How to Change the World," which has been published in 20 languages, and "The Price of a Dream: The Story of the Grameen Bank," and is co-author of "Social Entrepreneurship: What Everyone Needs to Know." He is a co-founder of the Solutions Journalism Network, which supports rigorous reporting about responses to social problems.
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February 5, 2015 Thursday 8:57 PM GMT
Pope Francis to make address to Congress during Washington DC visit;
Pope will be the first leader of the Catholic church to address both houses of Congress during visit later this year, House speaker John Boehner announces
BYLINE: Amanda Holpuch in Washington
SECTION: WORLD NEWS
LENGTH: 751 words
Pope Francis is set to become the first leader of the Catholic church to address both chambers of Congress, during his trip to the US later this year.
The House speaker, John Boehner, said on Thursday that the pope will visit the US Capitol in Washington on 24 September, where he is scheduled to be the first pontiff to address a joint meeting of Congress. "It will be a historic visit, and we are truly grateful that His Holiness has accepted our invitation," Boehner said in a statement.
Last month, Francis announced that he would be visiting Washington DC, New York and Philadelphia in September. It is his first trip to the US since becoming the pontiff.
"In a time of global upheaval, the Holy Father's message of compassion and human dignity has moved people of all faiths and backgrounds," said Boehner. "His teachings, prayers and very example bring us back to the blessings of simple things and our obligations to one another. We look forward to warmly welcoming His Holiness to our Capitol and hearing his address on behalf of the American people."
Last month, Boehner announced that Congress had invited another world leader to address a joint session of Congress - the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Neither Boehner nor Netanyahu cleared the trip with the White House.
Though the details of Francis's itinerary are not yet known, in Congress he will face an audience grappling with issues Francis has championed, like immigration, climate change and relations between the US and Cuba.
The immigration battle in Congress took on new urgency after Obama announced executive actions to help protect undocumented migrants in the US. Republicans are hoping to undo these actions, while the White House has threatened to veto legislation that tries to block them.
Francis, meanwhile, has decried conditions at the US-Mexico border and said that he would have liked to enter the US through the Mexico border as a "sign of brotherhood and of help to the immigrants", but his schedule does not have enough space for such a trip.
He is also hoping to influence this year's UN climate meeting in Paris, according to papal representatives. Delegates from around the globe are gathering in Paris as part of a UN-led attempt to end 20 years of negotiations on how to reduce emissions and better address climate change.
In 2015, the pope is due to speak about the issue in an address to the 1.2 billion Catholics worldwide and the UN general assembly. He is also to call a summit of the main global religions to discuss the climate.
Climate change discussions in Congress, however, are more stilted. Last month, the Senate voted 98-1 that climate change is not a hoax. A majority of those voting agreed that climate change is caused in part by human activity, including 15 Republicans. But at least 19 members of Congress have made comments denying climate change.
This week, Congress has also held three hearings on Cuba-US ties, in response to the December announcement that the two countries are easing diplomatic relations. The Republican senator Marco Rubio of Florida has been a vocal critic of the plan and said in a hearing that he did not support the policies "for the simple reason that I don't think they will be effective".
Barack Obama has said Francis played an important role in getting US and Cuba to reopen diplomatic relations. The Vatican sent letters to Obama and the Cuban president, Raúl Castro, asking the two to consider resolving their strained relations on humanitarian grounds. The Vatican also hosted meetings between delegations from the two countries - which were said to have been where important breakthroughs in the discussions were made.
Francis is expected to meet with Obama at the White House. At the national prayer breakfast on Thursday, Obama said he is looking forward to welcoming him to the US.
"Like so many people around the world, I've been touched by his call to relieve suffering, and to show justice and mercy and compassion to the most vulnerable," Obama said. "He challenges us to press on in what he calls our 'march of living hope'."
Pope Francis said he was traveling to the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia. This event is held every three years and organizers say it is the "world's largest Catholic gathering of families".
And along with his address to Congress, he plans to hold a controversial sainthood ceremony for Junípero Serra, the 18th-century Spanish Franciscan priest who set up a mission in California.
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February 5, 2015 Thursday 8:44 PM GMT
'It's never the science itself': why the right questions climate and vaccines;
Movement's doubts about climate change, vaccination, and other matters of science are tied to ideas of morality and belief in limited government
BYLINE: Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
SECTION: US NEWS
LENGTH: 976 words
Creationism, climate denial and anti-vaccination rage: long before the measles outbreak in the US, a deep mistrust of scientists infected some strands of the American conservative movement.
Conservatives are not alone in their rejection of scientific experts and evidence. But the sentiments this week from potential Republican contenders for president - first New Jersey governor Chris Christie in London, then Kentucky senator Rand Paul wagging his finger during a television interview, then a cavalcade of clarifications - have exposed a number of tendencies in American conservatism.
There is the deep resentment of government. And a fierce concern for family privacy. More and more conservatives have a strong libertarian streak. But the aversion to vaccinating children - and the departure from mainstream thinking on public health and other issues - is not really a question of science, experts on the movement said. It's about the clash between science and deeply held beliefs.
"As with any kind of science denial, it's never the science itself. It's these cultural fears," said Joshua Rosenau of the National Center for Science Education.
On evolution, conservative mistrust stems from the clash with the very foundations of morality for believers - that humanity was created in its present form by God.
On stem cell research, it's the idea of destroying human embryos that causes concern.
On climate change, it's the argument - exploited and propagated by fossil fuel interests - that government has no place telling companies what to do.
And on vaccines, as on home schooling and sex education, anti-science sentiments largely have to do with the idea that parents - and parents alone - are the ones who should make choices for their children.
Related: Medical experts rebuke Republican politicians hyping vaccination concerns
"They don't want the government telling them what to do," said Ronnee Schreiber, who teaches gender and politics at San Diego State University. "It's about being anti-government regulation and 'preservation of the privacy of the family'."
Rosenau said some studies suggested that those confronted with evidence that contradicted deeply held beliefs may become more sceptical of unrelated scientific claims.
Creationists can be drawn to climate denial or mistrust of vaccines - even though there is universal acceptance of climate change by the world's top scientists and the eradication of measles through mass vaccination campaigns is seen as a singular public health achievement.
But there is no firm evidence that Republicans are more distrustful of vaccinations than Democrats - or, leaving aside party identification, that conservatives are less likely than liberals to protect their children from disease.
The Pew Research Center, in a poll released last week, found two-thirds of Americans supported mandatory vaccines. But there was a deep strain of suspicion among those under 30 years old, with 41% thinking vaccines should be a parental choice.
More than one-third of Republicans polled thought vaccines should be left up to parents - compared to 26% in 2009. But the figure was about the same among voters who called themselves independent in the newest poll.
Some 22% of Democrats thought parents should decide on vaccines, compared with 27% in 2009.
A 2013 survey showed 26% of Republicans believe the now-demolished claims that vaccines cause autism - compared to 16% of Democrats.
But other research showed no real political divide among the outliers who fear childhood vaccinations.
Paul, a libertarian Republican, is an eye doctor, but his comments insisting that most vaccines "ought to be voluntary" and citing "many tragic cases" run counter to the guidelines of the American Medical Association, which says physicians have an ethical responsibility to encourage universal childhood immunisation. But the anti-vaccination movement much more typically skews to the left.
The environmental lawyer Robert Kennedy Jr dismayed many colleagues when he refused to let go of the argument that preservatives used in vaccines caused a spike in autism - long after those claims had been discredited.
Religious and social conservatives did object to the HPV vaccine, which some on the right claimed would encourage young girls to have sex.
Fiscal conservatives lashed out when Barack Obama allocated funding under the 2009 stimulus to promoting the hlN1 flu vaccine.
But American conservatives for the most part have had no quarrel with vaccines - unless they are on a collision course with other deeply held beliefs, said John Evans, who teaches bioethics at the University of California at San Diego and is married to Schreiber.
"Religious conservatives are totally whole-hog with applied science, or what we call medicine," he said. "They are all in favour of inventing new vaccines, but they have these moral lines."
But it's hard to discount entirely signs of growing distrust of scientists among some Republicans, even before more than 100 cases of measles were discovered in the US this year, in 14 states and Washington DC.
Climate scientists, in particular, have been accused of pursuing an ideological agenda for urging cuts to the greenhouse gas emissions that are causing global warming.
"One strand in all of this is definitely the growth within the Republican right of scepticism about scientists as authority figures," said Theda Skocpol, professor of government and sociology at Harvard. "They just don't accept that scientists are public authority figures."
She also said that scepticism was growing among young people across the political spectrum - people who are not as familiar with the risks of childhood diseases because of the overall effectiveness of vaccination programmes.
Evans agreed: "It's the Tea Party ideas of 'don't tread on me' and total freedom," he said.
Even if it carries a toll.
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The Guardian
February 5, 2015 Thursday 1:34 PM GMT
Flood Re insurance scheme 'needlessly expensive';
Scheme to provide affordable home insurance for UK properties at risk of flooding will cost three times more than the benefits it brings, warn government advisers
BYLINE: Damian Carrington
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 492 words
A £180m tax on home insurance to subsidise the premiums of flood-prone households is poor value for money and badly designed, according to the government's official climate change advisers.
The Flood Re scheme, designed by the government and Association of British Insurers, will cost three times more than the benefits it will bring, the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) warned on Thursday. It also said the scheme does little to encourage homeowners in flood risk areas to protect their homes, therefore only postponing the problem of dealing with increasing flooding.
The Environment Agency predicts more homes will be at high risk of flooding in coming decades, even in the best case scenario. This rising risk is the greatest impact of climate change on the UK, according to the government's own scientists.
However, the coalition government has cut overall flood defence spending, despite injecting emergency funds after major floods in 2012 and 2014. The end of an earlier agreement with insurers to provide universal and affordable insurance in return for rising government investment in defences has been extended while Flood Re is being set up.
Professor Lord John Krebs, who leads the CCC's work on adapting to global warming, wrote to Brendan McCafferty, the chief executive of Flood Re. He warned: "Flood Re is set to subsidise many hundreds of thousands of households more than the estimated number that might struggle to afford cover in the free market. This makes Flood Re needlessly expensive and renders the costs three time the economic benefits."
Flood Re is set to subsidise flood insurance for 500,000 homes but only 200,000 would find it hard to get affordable insurance, said Krebs, quoting insurance industry data.
Krebs also warned that including the most expensive homes - those in band H for council tax - was a "retrograde step". He added that because Flood Re would pay out all claims in full, there was no risk to the homeowner or their insurance company, leading to a "risk that claim costs will spiral".
A spokeswoman for Flood Re said: "Measuring the benefits of Flood Re in terms of economic return does not take account of the significant benefits that it will enable for hundreds of thousands of customers across the UK who, in the absence of Flood Re, would face the awful prospect of suffering flooding without the ability to access affordable flood cover."
She said the scheme could save the government billions of pounds: "Flood Re is being built by the insurance industry and, without it, the cost of helping people rebuild their lives after a flood would either fall to government or to the victims themselves."
A spokeswoman for the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: "We urge people to protect their properties from the risk of flooding. Flood Re aims to protect people in the highest flood risk areas from spiraling insurance premiums but, crucially, not at the expense of other householders."
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The Guardian
February 5, 2015 Thursday 9:44 AM GMT
Richard Branson leads call to free global economy from carbon emissions;
Prominent business leaders claim setting a net-zero emissions target for 2050 would push companies into reducing their reliance on fossil fuels
BYLINE: Fiona Harvey, environment correspondent
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 563 words
Governments should set a clear target of making the world's economy free from carbon emissions by mid-century, Sir Richard Branson and a group of other prominent businesspeople have urged.
The goal - of eliminating the net impact of greenhouse gases, by replacing fossil fuels and ensuring that any remaining emissions are balanced out by carbon-saving projects such as tree-planting and carbon capture and storage - is more stretching than any yet agreed by world governments. The G8 group of rich nations has pledged to cut emissions by 80% by 2050, and some developing countries to halving emissions by then.
Branson, long a vocal advocate of action on climate change, said that setting such a goal would galvanise businesses into reducing their reliance on fossil fuels and cutting carbon dioxide. "Taking bold action on climate change simply makes good business sense," he said. "It's also the right thing to do for people and the planet. Setting a net-zero GHG emissions target by 2050 will drive innovation, grow jobs, build prosperity and secure a better world for what will soon be 9 billion people. Why would we wait any longer to do that?"
Governments will meet in Geneva next week under the auspices of the United Nations to hammer out the draft of a text that could form the basis of a new global agreement on climate change, scheduled to be signed at a crunch conference in Paris in December.
The US, China and the EU have already set out their targets on emissions beyond 2020, when current commitments made at the climate summit in Copenhagen in 2009 run out. Other nations are expected to follow suit by submitting their post-2020 national emissions targets to the UN from now to April, after which they will be evaluated to check that they are fair and add up to a global cut in emissions that will put the world on a path to avoiding the worst effects of climate change.
The call to governments to pledge a zero-net-emissions target for 2050 was made by the B Team group of international business leaders. It includes Ratan Tata, chairman of the Tata Group manufacturing conglomerate; Paul Polman, chief executive of Unilever; Mo Ibrahim, the telecommunications billionaire; Guilherme Leal, the Brazilian billionaire; Francois-Henri Pinault, chairman of the luxury goods group Kering; Arianna Huffington, the media entrepreneur; and a handful of others.
Paul Polman called on other business leaders to join in: "A target of net-zero emissions by 2050 is not only desirable but necessary. This is the time to redouble our efforts and further accelerate progress to decarbonise our economy. This is not going to be easy, but the earlier we act, the greater the economic opportunities will be."
The group said the transition to a net-zero emissions economy could, if managed correctly, bring economic benefits to all countries, rich and poor, as well as cleaner air and a healthier environment.
Mary Robinson, the UN's special envoy on climate change, said: "A transition to net-zero [emissions] will succeed only if it is done fairly. The necessary technology for sustainable development must be an available and affordable option for all countries. Without this, developing countries will have no alternative to dirty energy for their development, locking themselves into fossil fuel infrastructure for the long term, and we will fail to secure a safe climate future."
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The Guardian
February 4, 2015 Wednesday 11:15 PM GMT
We can't spend our way out of climate change;
MasterCard has introduced a new Sustain:Green credit card that offsets buyers' carbon footprints, but it doesn't do enough. We need to consume less, not more
BYLINE: Erik Assadourian
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 1003 words
Did you hear? MasterCard has introduced a new credit card where "every swipe" helps offset your personal carbon footprint. For every dollar you charge, Sustain:Green, which manages the rewards program, will offset two lbs of CO2.
That's right, now you can finance your annual vacation to the Bahamas without feeling guilty! And if you believe that, have I got a credit card for you.
Oh, how ridiculous this new eco-marketing venture is. There's the sustainababbly (pdf) name, and an uninspired and politically correct choice of offset project (planting trees).
Even worse, the concept reinforces the idea that climate change - and its solutions - can be solved on an individual level, and manipulates consumers into feeling good about consuming. Slavoj Zizek said it best when he described how, in this new stage of "cultural capitalism", the absolution for your consumer-sin is embedded directly in the price of the product.
Now, don't get me wrong. If Americans are going to use credit cards, it's better that we use a Sustain:Green card instead of one that gives them free stuff - such as free miles for carbon-laden airline travel. At least this way rainforests in Brazil will get some new trees via the certified Mata no Peito forest preservation project.
But how much money would a cardholder have to spend in a year to offset his or her footprint? The US Environmental Protection Agency estimates 2012 emissions at 6.53bn metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents, which comes to an average of 20.8 metric tons (45,800 lbs) per US resident.
Using the EPA's estimates and taking into account the bonuses the card offers (2,500 lbs for every $1,250 spent per quarter), cardholders would have to spend just under $18,000 a year to offset a typical American's emissions. (It would be less in the first year, when the card offers a one-time 5,000 lb bonus with cardholders' first purchase.)
Assuming, that is, that the offsets work - that the trees are planted; that the livelihood projects that are funded actually create sustainable alternatives to logging and growing soy; and that these projects don't inadvertently displace indigenous people or finance the planting of mono-cropped tree farms, as many other offset projects have.
Even if the Mata no Peito project is sound and well-managed, new research has found that the full social cost of a ton of carbon may be more like $220, not the $13.12 per ton available on Terrapass or the less than $9 per ton value placed on it by Sustain:Green, assuming a 1% cashback rate.
Maybe some low-hanging offsets can be plucked for now. But ultimately, the scale and scope of emissions reductions are so great that we need to focus corporate, governmental and citizen energy on steeply pricing carbon and keeping a large percentage of our fossil fuel reserves - 82% in the case of coal - safely buried in the ground. The message of a card like this one is that we can spend our way to a greener, climate-friendly planet. It leads us in the wrong direction.
A far better choice for a smart, green consumer would be to choose a credit card that gives cash back - at 1% that $18,000 would return $180 - and donate that money to an NGO working to effectively tackle the root causes of climate change. Take your pick of root causes: a consumer culture stimulating overconsumption; corporations pushing consumers to use more fossil fuels and eat more animal products; or an absurd lack of resources for basic family planning services, to name a few.
I can imagine a much bolder carbon offsetting initiative. Sustain:Green's rewards dollars could support basic contraception access in the US, for example. Every new American is projected to create an average of 9,441 metric tons of carbon dioxide over his or her lifetime. Providing birth control - whether condoms, intrauterine devices or pills - costs relatively little. Every cardholder could potentially cut tens or even hundreds of thousands of tons of CO2 during their lifetimes, which would result in quite an effective offset program.
With current offsets available, $180 could buy 13.7 tons of offsets at $13.12 per ton (as is available on Terrapass ), which is less than what the card delivers. So if you're in favor of offsets, this card makes sense. But offsets, as they work now, aren't effective enough to combat climate change on the scale needed.
I hate to once again play the grumpy environmentalist, but it's hard not to see this new card as a cheap marketing ploy to pull more green consumers into using credit cards (and running a monthly balance, which is where the big bucks are).
The trouble is, offsetting our consumer lifestyle won't get us to where we need to go. We need to consume far less, move away from a growth-centric economic system and reduce the human population - all of which will take bold institutional changes, not a credit card upgrade.
The real danger here is that so-called "green consumption" will serve, not as a gateway to further action, but as an end in itself. As environmental science professor Michael Maniates of Yale-NUS College wrote more than a decade ago : "Individualizing responsibility does not work - you can't plant a tree to save the world." Instead, he wrote, it "diverts attention from political arenas that matter. In this way, individualization is both a symptom and a source of waning citizen capacities to participate meaningfully in processes of social change."
If Sustain:Green is up for making a political activism offset credit card, that might do the trick. But until then, get yourself a cashback card, and donate your 1% (or more) to good groups taking bold actions. Even better, get involved in helping to make the change yourself.
Correction: This piece was updated on 3 February to more accurately represent the carbon offsets offered by the Sustain:Green credit card.
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The Guardian
February 4, 2015 Wednesday 5:21 PM GMT
More big businesses push for stricter environmental regulations;
For many companies, it's becoming increasingly clear that you cannot be successful in a society that fails
BYLINE: Matthew Gittsham
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 827 words
It's been 34 years since Ronald Reagan, speaking at his first inauguration, told the American people that "Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem." But a growing trend of activist businesses suggests that Reagan's succinct summary of the traditional, stereotypical business view of government has begun to fray at the edges.
Today, some of the world's biggest businesses are calling for better - and more aggressive - government policy to tackle the biggest global challenges. In a " Business Manifesto " presented at Davos last month, for example, chief executives from SAB Miller, KPMG, Philips, Yara, GSK, DSM, Sumitomo Chemical, AkzoNobel, Novozymes, Unilever and others called for government leaders to be as ambitious as possible in the deals they reach at September's Sustainable Development Goals summit in New York and December's climate summit in Paris.
Cynics would argue that, at the root, this call for better government policy must be based in self-interest, as nothing else motivates business. Others might argue that some of the most passionate and effective sustainability activists also happen to be CEOs of major companies. Research suggests that the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
Looking at the specific policies endorsed by many of these business leaders, it isn't hard to see how their proposals for government regulation dovetail with their economic self-interest. For example, many are calling for policies that address long term predictability in climate policy, a problem that, increasingly, is affecting global trade. Others are asking for governments to set ambitious global goals on a host of issues - like food and nutrition, water, sanitation and hygiene, energy and climate, gender equity, education and good governance - that affect their customers.
But while this business-based call for policy change may be somewhat self-interested, it still represents a significant shift in the corporate mindset since the Reagan era. Many CEOs now realize that there is a clear business case for good policy on sustainable development. Poverty, concentration of wealth and environmental challenges present clear threats to business. Unilever estimates that climate change already costs it (EURO)200m ($229m) a year.
What's more, a growing number of companies are realizing that there are significant commercial opportunities for businesses that are prepared to address today's global challenges, and the right policy frameworks can make a huge difference.
Philips' healthcare and LED-lighting businesses have great commercial solutions for helping address health and climate challenges - and the right policy agreements in Paris and on the SDGs will grow the size of these markets. Similarly DSM sees market opportunity for its nutritional supplements from making tackling malnutrition a policy priority.
Many business leaders are already starting to map out how their businesses can align their corporate strategies for expansion with the funding and market growth that will result from the Sustainable Development Goals - through new initiatives led by KPMG and a partnership of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, the Global Reporting Initiative and the UN Global Compact.
But this business case for government policy is only part of the explanation of what's going on. Ultimately, business leaders are human beings too, and at that level, many have begun to recognize that some common challenges affecting all of us can only be solved with the help of coordinated government policy. As CEO Feike Sijbesma of DSM explains, "As a business leader, you cannot be successful, nor even call yourself successful, in a society that fails."
This shift in mindset from business leaders is vital. For all the efforts of governments and NGOs, business still provides 90% of jobs in developing countries and 80% of capital flows. For the Sustainable Development Goals to be achieved, business has to be on board.
Clearly, not all business leaders are quite so forward-thinking. Globally, companies still lobby against workers' rights legislation, environmental regulation and other sustainability initiatives. For example, research conducted by Oxfam suggests that the business community collectively spends (EURO)44m ($50.5m) a year lobbying Brussels to water down EU climate rules.
But it is remarkable how many of today's business leaders are calling for more aggressive government policy - a sign that should signal to the policymakers negotiating deals in September and December that business will back them to go the extra mile. As Unilever CEO Paul Polman says, "We now have the opportunity to eradicate poverty and deal with the issue of climate change. What bigger opportunity do you want to see?"
The values-led business hub is funded by SC Johnson. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled "brought to you by". Find out more here.
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The Guardian
February 4, 2015 Wednesday 5:16 PM GMT
Fossil fuel companies are the greatest threat to life's party - not greens;
People who argue it's a good idea to respect nature's thresholds get labelled spoilsports, but the real party-poopers are those who recognise no limits at all
BYLINE: Andrew Simms
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 876 words
22 months and counting
"Will we go ahead?" asked Shell CEO, Ben van Beurden, rhetorically, about the oil company's plans to drill in the Arctic. "Yes if we can. I'd be so disappointed if we wouldn't." Van Beurden had the grace to concede that his plans "divide society," but he seemed unable to comprehend that they might condemn it.
From new research showing that recent sea level rise is "far worse than previously thought", to updated confirmation of how far we are transgressing our planetary environmental boundaries, an almost daily accumulation of evidence seems unable still to connect van Beurden's words to their full implication.
What if, instead, he had said to the press conference gathered to hear Shell's quarterly financial results a few days ago: "We wish to inform you that our business plan is to destabilise permanently the climate on which you, your families and society depend."
Harsh? Perhaps, but their strategy will end the party for the rest of us, so that their corporate party might continue. In fact, it seems that extreme weather in the form of drought is already breaking hearts in Brazil by forcing cities to cancel carnival, the greatest party of all.
It's ironic. Those who argue it's a good idea to respect nature's various thresholds (like not making farming so toxic that you poison the bees who kindly pollinate our food crops) traditionally get labelled as fun-free spoilsports. But it seems it's those who recognise no limits at all who represent the greatest threat to life's party.
While the global industrial exploitation of nature drives a mass extinction event on land and sea, it becomes ever clearer that our own well-being is dependent on the general condition of the environment. Our health, both physiological and psychological, is deeply connected to and relies on the diversity of life.
Now, a new global calculator developed by the Department of Energy and Climate Change, suggests a course of action to prevent irreversible warming that could be as good for the web of life as it is for our quality of life. Radical changes to farming, transport, food and fuel will be needed, but it envisages a world of spreading forest canopies, clean, quiet electric transport and healthy, increasingly vegetarian diets. With such a potential win-win, why would anyone choose bad times with business as usual? The status quo is tenacious.
If you look at the UK's biggest lobbying groups at the centre of European power in Brussels, their scale seems to be in direct proportion to the damage they do and how likely they are to resist progressive change. Oil, finance and aviation are all in the top five. And, even as the economics of fracking and remote oil exploration, such as in the Arctic, have fallen apart, their lobbies remain persistent and audacious. How else could a Conservative party, which extols the notion of an English person's home being their castle, be persuaded to promote changes in the trespass law to allow fracking firms to drill beneath homes without the owners' permission ?
Logic, consistency and science become inconvenient to indefensible positions. When the US Senate last month voted on whether climate change was real and caused by human activities it was creating future folklore. Accepting the first, but not the second proposition, the Senate put its debate on a par with the famous, and now seen as absurd, 1925 Scopes 'Monkey' case in theUS, which effectively put the theory of evolution on trial.
History is littered with the sorrow of foreknowledge of terrible things about to happen. "We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families," a line written in a letter by Tutsi pastors in 1994 must be among the saddest words ever written, as they proved correct and became the title of a book on the Rwandan massacres. Like the Holocaust of half a century earlier, there were signposts pointing toward impending atrocity. Yet, a strange disbelief about the possibility of truly extreme action left even informed observers paralysed.
Don't we now have enough foreknowledge on global warming to call a halt in the face of those who would not only burn all currently known fossil fuel reserves, but search for more?
Knowledge and learning from history are themes in The Edge of Extinction: Travels with Enduring People in Vanishing Lands, by the author Jules Pretty who draws a map of hope from the mountains of China to the Russian steppe and the snows of Canada. He describes an astonishing diversity of human experience in which our species has learned to live well with, rather than against, nature and often each other.
Done intelligently and not dogmatically, we might still make a pleasant and lasting home for everyone on our blue and green planet. But, to make the most of it and keep the party going, we'll have to stop clinging to dead economic models which wreck our environmental foundations. Because, sadly, for those excited by the possibility of planetary relocation, the nearest known other Earth-like planet is around 13 light years away and would probably take a few hundred thousand years to get to. That's a long time to wait to get another party started, when you can keep the one you're already at going strong.
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The Guardian
February 4, 2015 Wednesday 4:22 PM GMT
Paris climate summit: missing global warming target 'would not be failure';
EU climate chief and UN's top climate official both play down expectations that international climate talk pledges will help hit 2C target
BYLINE: Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington and Arthur Neslen in Brussels
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 543 words
The European Union climate chief says talks at a major climate summit in Paris this year will not be a failure even if governments fail to keep warming below the dangerous 2C threshold.
The comments, downgrading expectations for a strong outcome at Paris, suggest that the architects of a global climate deal are already resigned to the prospect that governments will fail to aim high enough when setting out their targets for cutting greenhouse gas emission in the coming months.
"2C is an objective," Miguel Arias Canete, the EU climate chief, said. "If we have an ongoing process you can not say it is a failure if the mitigration commitments do not reach 2C."
The 2C target was the internationally agreed goal of the climate negotiations. But Canete, who was visiting Washington this week for talks with the state department climate envoy, Todd Stern, said: "Any step forward is a step forward."
However, he added "but we want ambitious objectives for 2015", and said it was crucial that negotiators agreed on an accounting mechanism for reviewing those climate pledges and then raising them to avoid catastrophic warming.
In Brussels, meanwhile, the UN top climate official, Christiana Figueres, was similarly downplaying expectations, telling reporters the pledges made in the run-up to the Paris meeting later this year will "not get us onto the 2C pathway".
The sober comments from two of the top players at Paris were a further sign that officials do not see the meeting in December as an end game but the next phase of the effort to get governments to deliver action on climate change.
Emissions reductions should not be "a one-off effort but rather the start of a multi-period effort, throughout which countries will continue to increase their contributions," Figueres said ahead of meetings with EU officials. "Every year there has to be more - no backsliding - and there also has to be a long term destination: climate neutrality by the second part of this century."
Canete was operating on a similar time horizon, looking out beyond Paris to "long term objectives".
In his speech at the Atlantic Council, Canete said the US was pivotal to a global climate deal - but he reiterated Europe's preference for a legally binding agreement, which would be practically impossible for Barack Obama in the current US domestic political scene.
"A legally-binding climate deal would be the greatest single act for sending long-term clarity to the markets. And we will only get there if the US and EU are on the same page."
In the short-term, however, Canete said he was pressing G20 governments to come forward with their climate pledges early.
That would give NGOs, think tanks, and other experts more time to assess the individual climate pledges and see how far they add up towards the overall 2C goal.
India - one of the world's top emitters - has already said it will not be ready to come forward with its climate pledge til May or June, past the original UN deadline.
But Canete said: "If only the United States China and the European Union present ambitious pleges it is 50% of world emissions. If we put on board all the G20 it is substantial. We would like every single country big and small to make mitigation commitment. That is very positive for climate change."
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The Guardian
February 4, 2015 Wednesday 5:30 AM GMT
Health sector should divest from fossil fuels, medical groups say;
Health profession should repeat its leadership on tobacco divestment because of health risks from climate change and air pollution, says Medact and other groups
BYLINE: Damian Carrington
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 740 words
The health sector should get rid of its fossil fuel investments on moral grounds, as it previously did with its tobacco investments, according to a report by a coalition of medical organisations.
The report cites climate change as "the biggest global health threat of the 21st century" and says air pollution from fossil fuels also causes millions of premature deaths a year. The organisations argue that the health sector, and in particular the £18bn Wellcome Trust, should not be helping to fund the harm they exist to tackle.
"The link between fossil fuels, air pollution and climate change are clear, and the health impacts are unacceptably high," said Dr David McCoy, director of health charity Medact, which produced the report with the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare, the Climate and Health Council, Healthy Planet UK, and Medsin. "This report sends an unequivocal message that the health sector should end its financial association with the fossil fuel industry."
The report argues that the tobacco and fossil fuel industries have both worked to create doubt about the harm the use of their products can cause.
"The UK health profession led the way in the tobacco divestment movement two decades ago, putting the issue firmly on the political agenda and paving the way for stronger anti-tobacco legislation," writes public health professor Martin McKee, at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, in the report. "This report shows why, in 2015, fossil fuels can no longer be considered an ethical investment. This is one of the defining challenges of our time."
The members of the British Medical Association have already voted to divest from fossil fuels, the first health organisation in the world to do so. But the Wellcome Trust has rejected the call.
"Climate change is one of the greatest contemporary challenges to global health, and the Wellcome Trust has made understanding the connections between environment, nutrition and health one of our five key research challenges," said a spokesman for the Wellcome Trust, one of the world's biggest funders of medical research. "We understand the aims of the campaign to encourage divestment from fossil fuel industries. We do not however support the approach and continue to believe that engagement offers a better prospect for change than divestment."
The Trust was unable to give the Guardian examples of its engagement with fossil fuel companies. Its endowment, worth £18bn in total, has £450m invested in Shell, BP, Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton alone. But the Trust was unable to tell the Guardian the value of its total fossil fuel holdings.
The report also calls for the UK's medical Royal Colleges to divest. A spokeswoman for the Royal College of Surgeons said: "We will review the findings of the report and any implications for our investment portfolio."
Over 180 institutions, including city authorities, universities and churches, have already committed to divesting $50 billion of fossil fuel investments, a move backed by South African anti-apartheid campaigner Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
The world's governments have pledged to limit carbon emissions so that global warming is kept below a 2C danger limit. A series of analyses have found this means much of the world's known and exploitable fossil fuels will have to remain unburned. A comprehensive scientific study in January found 80% of coal reserves, 50% of gas reserves and 33% of oil reserves would have to remain in the ground.
Analysts warn that these unburnable fossil fuel reserves will become worthless if government's act on their pledge, creating a significant financial risk to investors. World Bank president Jim Yong Kim, and Bank of England head Mark Carney have both warned of the risk, as does the new report.
Recently, Axa Investment Managers warned the reputation of fossil fuel companies were at immediate risk from the divestment campaign and Shell backed a shareholder demand to assess whether the company's business model is compatible with global goals to tackle climate change.
Alistair Wardrope, student doctor and co-author of the new report, said: "People worldwide are already dying as a result of the health impacts of fossil fuels, but tomorrow's doctors will have to cope with the full extent of climate change's health cost. We have a responsibility to our future patients to ensure that health organisations are not funding the biggest global health threat of the 21st century."
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The New York Times
February 4, 2015 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
E.P.A. Says Pipeline Could Spur Emissions
BYLINE: By CORAL DAVENPORT
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 16
LENGTH: 707 words
WASHINGTON -- An Environmental Protection Agency review of the Keystone XL pipeline emphasized that the recent drop in global oil prices might mean that construction of the pipeline could spur increased development of the Canadian oil sands -- and thus increase planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.
That review might influence President Obama's long-delayed verdict on the 1,179-mile pipeline, which could bring about 800,000 barrels of oil per day from Alberta to the Gulf Coast. Mr. Obama has said that an important element of his decision will be whether construction of the pipeline would contribute significantly to climate change.
''I think that in their careful way, they are pointing out that this does fail the president's climate change test,'' Tiernan Sittenfeld, a senior vice president at the League of Conservation Voters, said of the E.P.A. review. ''We think these comments are a big deal, and they make us more confident that the president is going to reject this dangerous pipeline.''
The letter, which came from Cynthia Giles, the assistant administrator of the E.P.A., and was posted on the E.P.A. website on Tuesday, came in response to an 11-volume environmental impact statement on the project that was produced last year by the State Department.
Secretary of State John Kerry asked eight other agencies to weigh in on the project. The deadline for those responses was Monday, and the State Department has not publicly released comments from all of the agencies.
The letter notes that the State Department's environmental review concluded that the process of extracting oil from the Canadian oil sands produces about 17 percent more greenhouse gas pollution than the process used to extract conventional oil -- but that the oil was likely to be produced, extracted and brought to market with or without construction of the pipeline.
It concluded that without construction of the pipeline, the oil would be brought to market by rail.
However, that review also found that demand for the oil sands fuel would drop if oil prices fell below $65 a barrel, since moving oil by rail is more expensive than using a pipeline. The price of oil closed at $51.87 a barrel at midafternoon Tuesday.
Ms. Giles noted that over the long term, the price of oil would probably rise. But, she wrote, ''given the recent large declines in oil prices and the uncertainty of oil price projections, the additional low price scenario included in the Final S.E.I.S. should be given additional weight during decision making, due to the potential implications of lower oil prices on project impacts, especially greenhouse gas emissions.'' Final S.E.I.S. is the State Department's final supplemental environmental impact statement.
It is a small distinction, but one that shows the E.P.A. emphasizing quietly that, in some outcomes, the pipeline could contribute to additional greenhouse gas emissions.
Meanwhile, pressure is rising on Mr. Obama to make a decision, which he has been waiting to do since the start of his administration. Next week, the House is expected to pass a bill that tries to force his approval of the pipeline. Mr. Obama is expected to veto that measure, although that would not necessarily signal that he would oppose the pipeline itself.
While it had long been expected that Mr. Obama would approve the pipeline -- an infrastructure project that would bring oil to the United States from Canada, a strong ally -- he has recently made critical comments about the project. Some analysts have speculated that he may wish to deny the project as a way to make a symbolic statement about his broader commitment to climate change issues.
''By focusing on the emissions related to an energy resource that is developed outside of the United States, the E.P.A. is ignoring the fundamental sovereignty of another country and the significant steps that Canada and Alberta have already taken to reduce emissions,'' the TransCanada Corporation, the company that wants to build the pipeline, said in a statement.
''Respectfully, this goes far beyond the mandate of the E.P.A., and legislators and others would not appreciate other countries interfering in issues of American federal or state sovereignty,'' the statement said.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/04/us/politics/epa-review-of-keystone-pipeline-notes-potential-rise-in-greenhouse-gases.html
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The Guardian
February 3, 2015 Tuesday 8:44 PM GMT
Keystone pipeline: Obama given boost from EPA report revising climate impact;
Falling oil prices could mean higher carbon pollution for the controversial pipeline, a finding that gives Obama new cause to reject the project
BYLINE: Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 711 words
Falling oil prices have changed the economic viability of the Keystone XL pipeline - and that means the project would result in much higher carbon pollution, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said on Tuesday.
The finding gives Barack Obama new grounds on which to reject the pipeline, only days after the Senate voted to force approval of the project and as the House Republican leadership moved to a final vote that could send a pipeline bill toward the president's desk as soon as next week.
In a letter to the State Department, the EPA said the recent drop in oil prices meant that Keystone would indeed promote further expansion of the Alberta tar sands, unleashing more greenhouse gas emissions and worsening climate change.
"Until ongoing efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production of oil sands are more successful and widespread development of oil sands crude represents a significant increase in greenhouse gas emissions," the EPA's assistant administrator, Cynthia Giles, wrote in a letter posted on the agency's website.
The agency said building the pipeline could increase emissions by as much as 27.4m metric tonnes a year - almost as much as building eight new coal-fired power plants.
Campaigners said the finding gave Obama all the information he needed to reject the pipeline. Obama had earlier said he would take climate change into account when rendering his final decision on the project.
"As of today the president has all the nails that he needs to close the lid on this particular boondoggle of a coffin," Bill McKibben, the founder of 350.org, which led environmental opposition to the pipeline, told a conference call with reporters.
The president has final authority over the pipeline - much to the frustration of TransCanada, the pipeline company, which has been trying to build the project for more than six years.
TransCanada reiterated that production in the Alberta tar sands was expanding anyway, suggesting that Keystone would have no effect on climate change. "The oil that Keystone XL will deliver is getting to market today - that is a fact," Shawn Howard, a spokesman for the company, wrote in an email.
The State Department had earlier concluded that Keystone would have little impact on developing the tar sands - and that the oil would be extracted anyway.
However, one year later, the assumptions in the State Department review no longer held, the EPA said. Falling oil prices made it less likely producers would pay the high costs of shipping by rail, the agency found.
"Given the recent variability in oil prices, it is important to revisit these conclusions," the EPA said.
With oil trading below $50 a barrel, the agency went on: "Construction of the pipeline is projected to change the economics of oil sands development and result in increased oil sands production, and the accompanying greenhouse gas emissions, over what would otherwise occur."
The EPA also raised questions about the State Department's review of alternative routes to the Keystone XL. The pipeline crosses three states, and has encountered legal opposition from landowners in Nebraska.
The latest finding from the EPA offers Obama more solid grounds on which to reject Keystone.
Republicans in Congress have also jumped on the pipeline, making it one of their top legislative priorities and voting to take the decision over the pipeline out of Obama's hands.
On Tuesday, House majority leader Kevin McCarthy said he would move to bring the Senate bill up for debate next week, setting up the long-awaited showdown with the president's veto pen.
The White House said Obama would veto any law seeking to force approval of the project. Obama has said that climate change will factor into that decision.
Campaigners said the EPA finding left Obama will little option but to turn it down.
"The Environmental Protection Agency has just affirmed what has been clear all along: the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline fails the president's climate test," said Michael Brune, president of the Sierra Club.
"These comments re-confirm that this dirty and dangerous project would significantly increase carbon pollution. That's the standard the president has set for rejecting Keystone XL, so we fully expect him to do just that."
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The Guardian
February 3, 2015 Tuesday 7:48 PM GMT
What's wrong with state-subsidised opera
SECTION: CULTURE
LENGTH: 445 words
In light of Charlotte Higgins' argument ( Opera's malaise doesn't stop at the Coliseum, 2 February) that English National Opera would be better off in an auditorium with half the capacity of the 2,300-seat Coliseum, it's worth recalling that in November 1963 Denys Lasdun was hired to design for Sadler's Wells Opera (the forerunner of ENO) a theatre with 1,600 seats, only 50 more than at the company's then base, Sadler's Wells Theatre in Islington. This new opera house was to rise on the South Bank, alongside a twin-auditorium National Theatre. But in February 1966, with the cost of this publicly funded project soaring far above original estimates, the Labour government and Labour-controlled GLC shelved the opera component, forcing Lasdun back to his drawing board and Sadler's Wells into seeking an existing, rather than purpose-built, venue in central London. In 1968, it chose the Coliseum. Daniel RosenthalAuthor,The National Theatre Story
· Charlotte Higgins fails to get to grips with the problem of opera "reinventing itself as a crucial part of our national cultural fabric". The problem is there is no policy for the arts in England. Arts funding is now run like a fifth-rate hedge fund that every three years selects a national portfolio of arts organisations and then three years later unbundles them. In an age of austerity, the Royal Opera House and ENO exist cheek by jowl and in 2015 will receive public funding of circa £37m. If two A&E units existed side by side, one would be closed or relocated immediately. A national policy for the arts would ensure equitable distribution of funding across art forms and regions. Chris HodgkinsLondon
· The implications of Charlotte Higgins's analysis stretch to a much wider tranche of the contemporary arts, in a society faced with growing social inequalities, climate change and general malaise. The "stronger sense of mission" Higgins advocates for ENO is no less a need across most of our arts communities. Arts Social Action can confirm her conclusion that it is contemporary theatre which points the way. David Hare's 2009 The Power of Yes at the National Theatre turned the 2008 financial meltdown into a synthesis of gripping drama and public revelation. More recently the Royal Court's 2071 collaboration between stage director Katie Mitchell and climate-science professor Chris Rapley brought a riveting cocktail of drama and climate change. Higgins' nostalgia for when "ENO stood for something exciting, radical, modern ... in the days when it was cheap, it was young, it was classless..." should reverberate across the wider arts scene. The world moves; so must we. Ralph WindleArts Social Action
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The Guardian
February 3, 2015 Tuesday 1:16 PM GMT
Republicans finally admitted climate change is real: so what will they do about it?;
In a vote last month 15 Republican senators agreed that climate change is caused by human activity. Only three were ready to state how they would tackle it and none suggested a target for cutting greenhouse gas emissions
BYLINE: Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
SECTION: US NEWS
LENGTH: 1281 words
It seemed like a simple idea at first: ask Republicans what they would do about climate change.
Late last month, some Republicans in the Senate finally admitted climate change is real. A small minority of 15 Republican senators agreed with the rest of the world that it is caused by human activity.
So what were they going to do about it? The senators didn't know, or they weren't telling - yet. "You are going to find people very hesitant to talk about this," an aide to one Republican senator said. The aide was right.
Only three of the 15 Republicans came forward with ideas for climate solutions, when asked by the Guardian.
Those three Republicans - Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee - suggested a range of measures from building more nuclear power stations, promoting energy efficiency, and encouraging investment in technological research.
Crucially, none of the Republicans proposed a target for cutting greenhouse gas emissions - which cause climate change.
And none of the Republicans backed Barack Obama's plan to cut carbon pollution from power plants.
They argued Obama was going about fighting climate change all wrong.
"My disagreement with the Obama administration is over its wrongheaded approach to solving this problem by proposing to deliberately raise the price of energy and construct a complicated cap-and-trade system," Alexander said in an emailed statement which also affirmed that human activity was a driver of climate change.
His suggestion was to build 100 new nuclear reactors, to provide emissions-free power, and double government-sponsored research.
Murkowski opposed building more reactors without first establishing a permanent respository for nuclear waste, a spokesman said.
He said she supported "responsible efforts" to reduce emissions. "What Senator Murkowski has said is that we ought to have a no regrets policy that can reduce emissions but also won't have a negative impact on the American economy, competitiveness and the weekly budgets of American families," the spokesman said.
She opposed a carbon tax.
Susan Collins of Maine said the answer was in promoting domestic clean energy and efficiency. "By promoting clean, domestic energy alternatives and efficiency, we can reduce pollution, advance the goal of energy independence for our nation, and spur the creation of new manufacturing jobs in America," the senator said in a statement.
"I've always maintained that it is a false choice to pit the environment versus the economy," she went on.
A fourth Republican, John Hoeven of North Dakota, who proposed but eventually voted against one of the climate votes, supported carbon capture technology, a spokesman said.
All the other senators were no-shows including John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina who have in the past sponsored bills to put economy-wide limits on carbon pollution through cap-and-trade measures. Both of those attempts ended in defeat.
But there were signs that the Republican wall of denial about climate change was beginning to come down, said Brian Schatz, a Hawaii Democrat who put forward one of the climate change votes in the Senate last month.
Those votes - during the debate over the Keystone XL pipeline - for the first time in years saw Republicans abandoning denial to debate policies of climate change.
"We shouldn't be Pollyanas about converting anyone from denier to activist but I think we converted people from denier to non-denier," Schatz said. "People are going to have to move in increments. You can't expect people taking a position just about as extreme as you could find would suddenly agree with me on all energy matters."
He went on, "Republicans understand they can't ignore the problem any more and I think they feel on firmer ground if they disagree on policy rather than a set of facts that is well established."
The votes saw virtually the entire Senate - except for a lone hold-out, Mississippi Republican Roger Wicker - vote that climate change was real and not a hoax.
Fifteen Republican senators voted with Democrats that climate change was caused in part by human activity. Five Republican senators voted with Democrats that human activity was the main driver of climate change - which is in line with scientific opinion. Two Republican senators voted with Democrats against a measure seeking to void a US-China deal to cut carbon pollution.
Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat who also proposed a vote on climate change, said the Republicans were now in disarray on the issue.
"They are all over the place. There is one who says it's not even happening. There are the others who say the climate is changing, but we have nothing to do with it. There are others who say the climate is changing and we have something to do with it. And then there are others who say the climate is changing and we have a lot to do with it and we should do something about it," he said.
Whitehouse argued Republicans were now caught between, on one side, powerful corporate interests and the conservative Tea Party wing - which continues to deny the existence of climate change - and on the other, public opinion, which breaks in favour of action on climate change.
A number of the Republicans who broke ranks on climate change are from states Obama won in 2012 and are facing tight re-election contests in 2016.
"I think the fact that so many felt they needed to vote for the amendments shows that many realise they are being perceived as anti-science and anti-reality and that is not playing that well back home," said Alden Meyer, director of strategy for the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Two-thirds of American voters would reject a candidate who denies the existence of human-caused climate change, according to a Stanford University poll released last week.
There could well be other Republicans in Congress who disagree with the party mainstream on climate change - but who are not yet ready to go public, said Jim Brainard, the Republican mayor of Carmel, Indiana, and a longtime supporter of action on climate change.
"I'm sure out of 535 members of Congress there are people in there who agree with me," he said. "It's abundantly clear that the climate is changing and we are going to be behind the eight ball on those changes we have to make, and the people who have taken these unrealistic views will not be re-elected."
The 15 Republicans who acknowledged the human contribution to climate change included: Senators Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Susan Collins of Maine, Bob Corker of Tennessee, Jeff Flake of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Orrin Hatch of Utah, Dean Heller of Nevada, Mark Kirk of Illinois, John McCain of Arizona, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Rand Paul of Kentucky, Rob Portman of Ohio, Mike Rounds of South Dakota, and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.
Five of those senators voted that human activity was a significant cause of climate change. They were: Alexander, Ayotte, Collins, Graham and Kirk.
Ayotte and Collins also voted against the measure seeking to void the US-China climate deal and block Obama from pursuing an international climate change treaty.
The ideas that have come out from the breakaway Republicans so far do not yet add up to a credible alternative to Obama's vision for fighting climate change. "They don't like the EPA rules. They don't like the cap-and-trade bill," said Meyer. "They got tired of saying: 'I am not a scientist', but it's not really there yet."
He went on: "It is like AA. The first step is admitting you have a problem. Those 15 Republicans have now admitted: 'We have a problem.' The question is: what are we going to do about it?"
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The Guardian
February 3, 2015 Tuesday 2:39 AM GMT
Barrier Reef coral genetically altered in hope of surviving climate change;
Coral species from different climes being mixed as a form of 'assisted evolution' to see if it will help them adapt more quickly to rising sea temperatures
BYLINE: Oliver Milman
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 749 words
The Australian government's marine research agency is looking to genetically alter species of coral to help them cope with rising sea temperatures, as new modelling showed the coverage of living corals on the Great Barrier Reef could decline to less than 10% if warming continued.
Scientists at the Australian Institute of Marine Science have partnered with the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology to look at how "assisted evolution" may help corals more quickly adapt to climate change. These studies are some of the first conservation-based, non-commercial uses of genetic modification.
A study modelling the prospects of the reef using a decade of data found there was a "very high likelihood" of coral cover plummeting below 10%, with corals replaced by sponges and algae as temperatures increased.
This would take the Great Barrier Reef beyond what previous studies suggested was a key "tipping point" that would threaten the reef's ability to recover and grow. Such a reduction, the study suggested, could occur with just 1C to 2C of further warming in areas of the reef already experiencing pressure from other impacts such as fishing and pollution. This amount of warming is virtually locked in due to the current amount of greenhouse gas emissions.
"The Great Barrier Reef used to be one of the more pristine examples of reefs globally, but it has suffered a decline and will continue to do so if action isn't taken," said report co-author Jennifer Cooper, a James Cook University PhD student who worked on the study with scientists from the UK and the US. "Our model showed that reducing the impact of other human threats to the reef, such as overfishing and pollution, did mitigate coral decline. However, if temperature increases more than 2C the benefit of lowering threat levels may not be enough to stop further coral loss.
"This suggests that climate change, and more specifically sea surface temperature increase, is an important driver of change on the reef."
The stark warning on the reef's future prospects follows a period of decline that has seen coral cover drop to 14% - half of what it was 30 years ago. Climate change, pollution and a plague of coral-eating starfish have been identified as the main causes of the deterioration.
Aims is now looking at radical new ways of helping Great Barrier Reef corals deal with the rapid rate of warming and acidification of the oceans.
Initial work has begun at the Australian institute's sea simulator in Townsville, Queensland, where different types of coral were picked shortly before their annual spawning and matched via IVF to create new hybrids. Scientists reared the coral larvae and then settled them to assess their growth into juveniles.
Coral from the central part of the Great Barrier Reef has been crossed with coral from the colder reaches of the southern reef to see if the resulting hybrid was more resilient in higher temperatures. Scientists are also looking at whether they can alter the microbial communities, the algae that live within coral tissue, so they can adapt to climate change.
It is hoped the research can speed up the evolutionary process so that corals can cope with the almost unprecedented rate of warming in the oceans. While corals can adapt to different temperatures, it usually takes thousands of years before they can evolve within gradually changing climates.
Dr Madeleine van Oppen, a senior principal research scientist at Aims, told Guardian Australia: "We can create genetic diversity and new genetic variations, and then let natural selection pick and do the rest."
"We are trying to accelerate the process of what happens in nature, to help them to cope better. This is theoretically possible.
"We want to spend the next five years experimenting, to find out which manipulations work best. It's an important area to invest in. We need these methods available in case we want to implement them. If we don't, we may be too late if the situation does get bad.
"The health and coral cover of the reef has declined over the last decade, it's a great concern."
Scientists are increasingly looking at new ways to mitigate the impact of warming seas, such as shading corals, in case emissions are not radically cut to stave off the worst of climate change.
Unesco's world heritage committee will consider whether to list the reef as "in danger" in June. On Monday, the Australian government submitted a report to Unesco that argued the listing was not justified due to its efforts to reverse the reef's decline.
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The Guardian
February 3, 2015 Tuesday 12:23 AM GMT
Fracking set to be banned from 40% of England's shale areas;
Guardian analysis reveals new rules agreed by government will make huge swath of protected areas off limits for shale gas explorationShare your views on fracking in the UK via GuardianWitnessGuardian Live debate about fracking with Natalie Bennett of the Green party
BYLINE: Damian Carrington and Xaquín GV
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 969 words
Fracking is set to be banned on two-fifths of the land in England being offered for shale gas exploration by the government, according to a Guardian analysis.
Such a wide-ranging ban would be a significant blow to the UK's embryonic fracking industry, which David Cameron and George Osborne have enthusiastically backed.
There were setbacks last week after the Scottish government declared a moratorium and UK ministers were forced to accept a swath of new environmental protections proposed by Labour, leading some analysts to say the outlook for fracking was bleak
One of those new protections was to rule out fracking in national parks, areas of outstanding natural beauty (AONBs), sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs) and groundwater source protection zones (SPZs).
Neither the government nor Labour have stated how much of the land available for future shale gas drilling - 60% of England - would be affected by the new bans. But a Guardian data analysis has revealed it is 39.7%, with large swaths of the south and south east off-limits, as well as the Yorkshire Dales and Peak district.
An independent analysis by Greenpeace also found that 45% of the 931 blocks being licensed for fracking in England were at least 50% covered by protected areas, which it said was likely to make them unattractive to fracking companies. Just 3% of of the blocks have no protected areas at all, Greenpeace found.
Ministers were forced to accept Labour's new environmental rules last week to avoid a rebellion by Conservative and LibDem backbench MPs, many of whom are facing opposition to fracking from constituents. Labour's shadow energy minister Tom Greatrex told MPs : "Let me make it absolutely clear that our new clause is all or nothing; it cannot be cherry-picked. All the conditions need to be in place before we can be absolutely confident that any shale extraction can happen."
However, a spokesman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change said: "It is too early to say what areas may be affected under this extension of protections. The government will return to the Lords with a package of measures to give effect to these amendments." In particular, the Decc spokesman was unable to confirm that all three levels of groundwater special protection zones would remain protected, as the accepted amendment states. This raises the prospect that the government will overturn that measure when the rules are finalised in the Lords.
"The fracking industry is in retreat, with public opposition forcing MPs to respond as the election approaches," said Friends of the Earth energy campaigner Donna Hume. "But it would be cynical of ministers to accept one day that no fracking can take place within any groundwater protection area, and then try to water it down the next day. Any attempt to play politics with rules to protect people's drinking water would be met with contempt by the public."
"The industry will now be thinking long and hard about its plans for unconventional oil and gas development in the UK. The amendments to the bill mean the outlook for the sector is uncertain," said Philip Mace, an oil and gas specialist law firm Clyde & Co. "Investors loathe this sort of uncertainty, so the prospects for shale oil and gas in the UK looks bleak for the short and medium term."
Labour's new protections also create uncertainty for fracking sites which already have licences, but are in the protected areas.
The government said the new rules will not apply retrospectively but many of the affected sites have yet to get all the planning and environmental permissions they require. The sites include Cuadrilla's Balcombe site (AONB) and Celtique's Fernhurst site (national park), as well as sites in an SSSI in Cheshire and a groundwater SPZ near Hull. But the changes will not affect Cuadrilla's two sites in Lancashire, where councillors were last week forced to postpone their final planning decision.
"The shale industry's seemingly irresistible advance is now looking more and more resistible every day," said Louise Hutchins at Greenpeace UK. "Unless ministers can explain why fracking is too risky for the South Downs but perfectly safe in the Lancashire countryside, the next obvious step is to ban this controversial technique from the whole of the UK."
A report last Monday from a committee of senior MPs, including former Conservative environment secretary Caroline Spelman, called for a UK-wide moratorium after concluding fracking was incompatible with the nation's climate change targets and brought risks to health and the environment. But the proposal was defeated in the Commons.
Ken Cronin, chief executive of the trade body UK Onshore Oil and Gas, said: "It is good news MPs rejected the misguided attempts to introduce a moratorium. Most of the [Labour] amendments agreed are in line with best practice in the industry or codify the directions of regulators, which the industry would naturally comply with. We now need to get on with exploratory drilling to find out the extent of the UK's oil and gas reserves."
Geoff Davies, chief executive of Celtique, said: "We are studying the impact of the amendments [and] will make a decision in due course regarding the potential appeal of the Fernhurst planning refusal." Cuadrilla did not respond to a request for comment.
A government source said: "Everyone still wants to get cracking, but they realise you have to take people with you and that is filtering through." Ministers argue that shale gas development will bring jobs and increase the UK's energy security.
The Guardian analysis examined England, which has the large majority of the UK's shale potential. Northern Ireland is covered by a different regime, Scotland has a moratorium on new planning consents for shale, and data for protected areas was not immediately available for Wales.
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The Guardian
February 2, 2015 Monday 2:03 PM GMT
Robert Mugabe assumes African Union helm with familiar rallying cry;
Zimbabwe president calls on Africa to harness resources for its own ends as members urged to tackle infrastructure, climate change, conflict and Ebola
BYLINE: Sam Jones
SECTION: GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT
LENGTH: 894 words
Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe's 90-year-old president, has assumed the chairmanship of the African Union (AU) with a call for members to improve infrastructure and tackle climate change, conflict and Ebola, and with a familiar rallying cry that Africa's wealth belongs to Africa and not "imperialists and colonialists".
The veteran leader, who was elected head of the union on Friday, replaces President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, of Mauritania.
"By electing me to preside over this august body, with full knowledge of the onerous responsibility that lies ahead, I humbly accept your collective decision," Mugabe told the AU summit in Addis Ababa.
"I do so, confident that I can always count on your full support and cooperation in the execution of the important mandate you have given me."
The president, who has led Zimbabwe since 1980, said the focus of his tenure would be on "issues of infrastructure, value addition and benefication, agriculture and climate change in the context of Africa's development".
The continent's underdeveloped roads, railways and air and sea networks, he said, were hampering efforts to improve trade, investment and tourism. "We need to continue - and perhaps redouble - our current collective efforts in this sector.
"Given that the continent is rich in mineral resources - and resources should be seen to contribute more meaningfully to Africa's development - they are our wealth and we must guard against their being exploited for the benefit of others."
Related: Robert Mugabe: man of the people?
If Africa continued missing out on the full benefits of its mineral wealth by exporting its resources in their raw or semi-raw form, said Mugabe, people would remain unemployed and languishing "in extreme poverty".
Similarly, he said, Africa's "vast agricultural potential" had to be harnessed by ensuring that people had access to the land on which so many depend.
Mugabe said his own government's land reforms - intended, he suggested, precisely to take land from "colonisers" and give it back to Zimbabweans - had seen his country subjected to "practical demonisation ... from those who had selfish and vested interests in our land".
Nevertheless, said Mugabe, production in the tobacco sector had now far surpassed levels attained by the white farmers who worked the land before they were expropriated.
But such agricultural progress could not be taken for granted. "Since we are the most vulnerable as a continent, it is imperative that we actively champion our interests within the framework of the UN's climate change negotiations."
Referring to the ongoing conflicts in Libya, South Sudan and Central African Republic - and the turmoil in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo - Mugabe said the union needed to work harder to bring about sustainable peace on the continent.
He also raised the "intolerable" atrocities perpetrated by Boko Haram. "The scourge of terrorism and all its attendant evils threatens all our gains achieved since 1963," he said.
"In the coming year we therefore should deliberate and find lasting solutions to the scourge of terrorism, the loss of innocent [life] and the destruction of property inflicted by terrorists recently in Cameroon and Nigeria."
Mugabe identified Ebola as another scourge. While he said he had been heartened to see that "a lot of ground has already been covered" in combating the epidemic, he stressed the disease still needed to be fought and eradicated.
Characteristically, he could not resist gloating over recent oil reserve discoveries across the continent. "Oil, oil, oil - which the blind eyes of colonialists could not see!" he said.
"God bless! It was the handiwork of the Almighty. We thank him for it. For sure, African resources should belong to Africa and to no one else except those we invite as friends. Friends we shall have, yes, but imperialists and colonialists no more. Africa is for Africans."
Despite the applause that greeted his words, the decision to appoint Mugabe as president of the AU was not universally popular within the ranks of the union.
Although many Africans revere him as a hero of the liberation struggle, Mugabe's autocratic style of rule and intolerance of dissent or opposition has left him increasingly isolated on the international stage. His use of political violence and intimidation has resulted in travel bans from the US and EU.
"It's not a very encouraging sign," one African diplomat, who asked not to be identified, had told Agence France-Press in the runup to the announcement. "The Mugabe style belongs to a past generation, the one that takes power hostage, and this is no longer the AU creed."
Jeggan Grey-Johnson, a spokesman of the pan-African civil society coalition, the AU We Want, said Mugabe's election would send "mixed signals and an extremely awkward message on international levels on how the AU stands on principles of democracy and good governance".
Others, however, have defended the move. "Who am I to say to the people, you have elected the wrong leader?" said Erastus Mwencha, deputy chairman of the AU commission. "The people have chosen: the important thing is that you must follow the constitution of your country."
Some diplomats attending the Addis summit have described Mugabe's election as an "unfortunate accident" springing from the tradition of rotating the post between Africa's regions.
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The Guardian
February 2, 2015 Monday 9:05 AM GMT
14 of the 15 hottest years on record have occurred since 2000, UN says;
World Metereological Organisation's analysis narrowly places 2014 as the hottest recorded since 1850, as global warming continues
BYLINE: Damian Carrington
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 441 words
Fourteen of the 15 hottest years on record have occurred since 2000, according to the UN World Meteorological Organisation, as rising carbon emissions continue to trap heat and drive climate change.
The WMO's new analysis narrowly places 2014 as the hottest recorded since 1850, as have recent analyses from other organisations. The WMO analysis is particularly authoritative as it brings together a number of leading temperature records, as well as alternative ways of estimating the warmth of the globe.
The average global air temperatures over land and sea in 2014 were 0.57C above the average of 14.00C for the 1961-1990 reference period. The record temperature was above those in 2005 and 2010, the next hottest years, but only by a small amount which was within the margin of uncertainty in the calculations.
"The overall warming trend is more important than the ranking of an individual year," said WMO secretary-general Michel Jarraud. "2014 was nominally the warmest on record, although there is very little difference between the three hottest years."
"We expect global warming to continue, given that rising levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the increasing heat content of the oceans are committing us to a warmer future," he said. "In 2014, record-breaking heat combined with torrential rainfall and floods in many countries and drought in some others - consistent with the expectations of a changing climate."
Global sea-surface temperatures reached record levels in 2014, which is significant because 93% of the heat trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gases from fossil fuels and other human activities ends up in the oceans.
Related: 15 of the hottest spots around the world in 2014
The WMO said it was notable that 2014's record temperatures occurred without a fully-developed El Niño event.
These occur when warmer than average seas in the eastern tropical Pacific combine, in a feedback loop, with weather systems to drive up temperatures. The high temperatures in 1998, the hottest year of the 20th century, occurred during a strong El-Niño. On land, England saw its hottest year in three and a half centuries, according to the Central England Temperature data set.
The confirmation of 2014's extreme heat comes ahead of the next round of preparatory UN climate change negotiations in Geneva, starting on 9 February. These are intended to pave towards a global agreement to tackle climate change, the deadline for which is a summit in Paris in December.
The WMO analysis is based, amongst others, on three datasets - Hadcrut, NOAA and NASA - and the analysis from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts.
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February 2, 2015 Monday 7:09 AM GMT
Australia tells UN it is acting with 'renewed vigour' on Great Barrier Reef;
Environment minister Greg Hunt argues Australia has heeded the alarm raised over the reef's health and it should not be listed as 'in danger' by Unesco
BYLINE: Oliver Milman
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 836 words
The Australian government has told the UN it is acting with "renewed vigour" to halt the decline of the Great Barrier Reef in its official case arguing that the vast ecosystem should not be listed as "in danger" later this year.
The world heritage committee meets in Germany in June to consider whether the reef, which has lost half its coral cover over the past 30 years, has deteriorated badly enough to justify the listing.
In his letter to Unesco, the environment minister, Greg Hunt, said the government had acted with "renewed vigour" to safeguard the reef, stressing that Australia had heeded the alarm raised over its health.
"Australia has heard the concerns of its people and the international community loud and clear and is working harder than ever to address those concerns so that the intrinsic value of the reef is maintained and future generations can experience this stunning coral reef ecosystem and create their own memories for years to come," Hunt wrote.
Hunt said the government's report to Unesco "clearly demonstrates that the Great Barrier Reef does not warrant being listed as in danger.
"We know the reef is facing challenges but we are making significant progress. There is strong evidence that our efforts are working."
Australia's report addressed concerns raised by Unesco over the industrial dredging and dumping of sediment in the reef's waters by stressing that five proposals to dump material had been shelved and that the practice would be banned within the Great Barrier Reef marine park - although not in its wider world heritage area.
The report added that ports would not be developed outside designated areas until 2022, although existing ports such as Abbott Point could be enlarged.
A "reef trust" would receive $40m to improve water quality and species protection, with $10.5m spent between 2012 and 2015 to tackle a plague of coral-eating starfish. A further $700,000 is being spent to remove marine debris such as plastic bags, bottles and nets. A recent analysis suggests much more will need to be spent to revive the reef.
The government's report to Unesco said some natural features of the reef remained "intact" and some, such as the humpback whale population and the nesting sites of marine turtles, had improved.
But it admitted that "increasing infrastructure along the coastline and on islands and increased shipping traffic have degraded some of the attributes identified as contribution to top-rating views".
Hunt recently spent time in Europe as part of the government's determined diplomatic effort to avoid the "in danger" listing. An adverse listing would potentially damage the reef's $6bn tourism industry, as well as Australia's international standing, given that most endangered world heritage sites are in developing countries.
The reef was listed as a world heritage property in 1982, but has declined in recent years. A 2014 report by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority said its overall outlook was "poor, has worsened since 2009 and is expected to further deteriorate in the future".
The report cited climate change as the reef's leading threat, followed by pollution flowing onto the coral from farming land. The starfish plague and cyclones were also threats.
A joint federal and Queensland plan to reverse the reef's fortunes has been criticised by scientists due to its lack of focus on climate change. Warming, acidifying oceans are potentially highly damaging to coral.
The report sent to Unesco hailed the Coalition's Direct Action emissions plan as Australia's contribution to tackling climate change, while pointing out the amount of sediment flowing onto the reef had fallen by 11% over the past five years.
The Greens said the report would fail to allay the concerns of the world heritage committee, maintaining the government's approach was "business as usual".
"It's unbelievable that after the world heritage committee recommended no new damaging port expansions, the Abbott government went ahead and approved the world's largest coal port at Abbot Point," said Greens senator Larissa Waters.
"The Abbott government also hasn't ruled out dumping from projects that have already been applied for, such as the projects in Cairns, Townsville and Gladstone. With so many dredging and dumping projects on the books for our reef, a ban that doesn't include them would be useless."
The World Wildlife Fund said the report was "inaccurate" and did not reflect the reef's decline.
"The state party report claims that Australian and Queensland government policies on the Great Barrier Reef are sufficient to avoid an 'in danger' listing by the world heritage committee but this claim is undermined by the clear picture provided by the science," said Dermot O'Gorman, chief executive of WWF Australia.
"The Australian government's report to Unesco does not provide an accurate assessment of the Great Barrier Reef's condition, nor does it provide a convincing explanation of how the outstanding universal values of the reef will be restored."
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The New York Times
February 2, 2015 Monday
Late Edition - Final
Don't Drill Along the East Coast
BYLINE: By MARTIN O'MALLEY.
Martin O'Malley, a Democrat, was the governor of Maryland from 2007 until last month.
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Editorial Desk; OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR; Pg. 19
LENGTH: 800 words
BALTIMORE -- THE Obama administration's whiplash decision last week to allow oil and gas companies to drill along a wide area of the Atlantic Coast is a big mistake.
The facts support a ban on offshore drilling not only in the wilds of Alaska -- as the administration has announced -- but also along our densely populated, economically vibrant and environmentally diverse Eastern Seaboard.
The BP Deepwater Horizon disaster should remind us that the benefits of drilling do not outweigh the threat to local economies, public health and the environment when an inevitable spill occurs. The spill, occurring off the Louisiana coast less than five years ago, devastated the Gulf of Mexico region -- most likely costing over $100 billion in lost economic activity and restoration expenses, disrupting or destroying hundreds of thousands of jobs and causing long-term damage to 3,000 miles of fragile wetlands and beaches. Experts estimate that only 5 percent of the 4.2 million barrels of oil spilled in the gulf was removed during the cleanup; even today, oil from the spill is still appearing on the white sand beaches of the Florida Panhandle.
To allow drilling off the Atlantic Coast is to willfully forget Deepwater's awful lesson even as the economic, environmental and public health consequences continue to reverberate in communities along the gulf. If a disaster of Deepwater's scale occurred off the Chesapeake Bay, it would stretch from Richmond to Atlantic City, with states and communities with no say in drilling decisions bearing the consequences. The 50-mile buffer the administration has proposed would be irrelevant. And unlike the gulf, the Chesapeake is a tidal estuary, meaning that oil would remain in the environment for decades.
Furthermore, we shouldn't be so quick to embrace offshore exploration at a time when climate change is likely to cause increasingly powerful hurricanes, like Sandy in 2012. If a single hurricane has the power to damage or destroy more than 650,000 homes in its path, we should consider what might become of an oil rig.
Even in normal conditions, claims that safety has improved significantly in recent years should not be taken seriously. As recently as last fall, two people were killed in separate explosions off the Louisiana coast while working on offshore oil and natural gas facilities.
Oil prices are at record lows. The United States is the world's top natural gas producer and third greatest producer of crude oil. There is simply no compelling economic or security reason to expose the communities of the Atlantic Coast to the threats offshore drilling presents.
Moreover, offshore drilling fails to promote what must be our country's foremost energy policy objectives: achieving long-term energy security, creating sustainable jobs, supporting the development of new energy technologies and fighting climate change.
To be sure, the Obama administration has made laudable and hard-fought progress toward these goals. But we must quicken the pace forward, rather than accept a step back. Today, we rank 13th out of the 16 largest economies for energy efficiency. China is the world leader in clean energy investment, attracting $53.3 billion in 2013 -- more than 30 percent more than the United States.
At a time when both Democrats and Republicans agree that creating jobs should be our top priority, we are forgoing at least 2.7 million of them through our inability to enact a clean energy investment strategy. Even though 2014 was the hottest year on record, renewable-energy businesses still aren't even competing on a level playing field with fossil-fuel companies, which enjoy more than $4 billion in guaranteed federal subsidies each year.
We must make better choices for a more secure and independent energy future. In Maryland, over just eight years, we increased renewable-generation capacity by 57 percent, became a hub for new clean-tech businesses and jobs, and cut emissions by 10 percent. Clear goals, accountability and consistent choices drove better results.
As a nation, we must pursue the imperatives of accelerating cutting-edge clean-energy research, taking away the subsidies that give the advantage to the oil companies of the past over the renewable businesses of the future, modernizing our energy grid, and letting the market drive further innovation by limiting carbon emissions, among other measures.
Clean, inexhaustible sources of energy represent the biggest business opportunity in at least a century. The threat of climate change is real and immediate. Expanding offshore drilling is irreconcilable with the realities of climate science and irrelevant, at best, to taking advantage of the vast economic opportunities clean energy presents. We must move firmly toward a clean energy future.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/02/opinion/dont-drill-along-the-east-coast.html
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The New York Times Blogs
(Dot Earth)
February 2, 2015 Monday
A Fresh Look at the Watery Side of Earth's Climate Shows 'Unabated Planetary Warming'
BYLINE: ANDREW C. REVKIN
SECTION: OPINION
LENGTH: 1389 words
HIGHLIGHT: New measurements show an unabated buildup of heat in the world’s oceans, mainly in the Southern Hemisphere.
A fresh analysis of thousands of temperature measurements from deep-diving Argo ocean probes shows (yet again) that Earth is experiencing "unabated planetary warming" when you factor in the vast amount of greenhouse-trapped heat that ends up in the sea. This is not even close to a new finding, but the new study shows more precisely where most of the heat has been going since 2006 (in the Southern Ocean outside the tropics; see the red splotches in the map below).
The study, "Unabated planetary warming and its ocean structure since 2006," was published today in Nature Climate Change. [I'll add a direct link when there is one.]
The paper illustrates the importance of remembering that the atmosphere and ocean surface are just a small component of the Earth's climate system - with the ocean depths having a vast capacity to absorb and move heat on time scales ranging from years to centuries and longer.
This excerpt (my italics) explains why a recent pause in warming of sea surface temperatures (SST) can hide important deeper processes:
Global mean SST has increased by about 0.1 [degrees Celsius per] decade since 1951 but has no significant trend for the period 1998-2013. Explanations for the recent 'pause' in SST warming include La Niña-like cooling in the eastern equatorial Pacific, strengthening of the Pacific trade winds, and tropical latent heat anomalies together with extratropical atmospheric teleconnections. However, it is heat gain and not SST that reflects the planetary energy imbalance and thus the warming rate of the climate system.
Maybe it's time to revisit a question I explored in 2008: whether it's better to track "global heating" (heat gain) than "global warming" (temperature change).
Carbon Brief has posted an excellent piece by Roz Pidcock putting the new Nature Climate Change paper in broader context: "Beneath the waves: How the deep oceans have continued to warm over the past decade." Here's a snippet:
Scientists are currently interested in why temperatures at the surface of the ocean have been rising slower than in previous decades, even though we're emitting greenhouse gases faster than ever. Sea surface temperatures across the globe increased by about 0.1 degrees Celsius since 1951, but showed no significant trend between about 1998 and 2013, today's paper notes. This raises an obvious question. If Earth is gaining heat, but the surface isn't warming very much, where is the heat going instead?
Into the deep
Monitoring temperature change at Earth's surface is a poor indicator of what's happening below, says the new paper. The surface is strongly affected by natural climate fluctuations, such as El Niño, which can temporarily speed up or slow down the pace of warming. Data collected by a network of free-floating sensors, known as ARGO floats, show that from January 2006 to December 2013, a lot more heat has been finding its way to the deep ocean instead.
The work is also nicely described in a news release from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the home base for the lead researcher, Dean Roemmich. Here's an excerpt, followed by some input (including criticism) I got from other scientists focused on the interplay of the ocean and atmosphere:
Researchers...found that the top 2,000 meters (6,500 feet) of the world's oceans warmed at a rate of 0.4 to 0.6 watts per square meter (W/m 2) between 2006 and 2013. The rate translates to a warming of roughly 0.005° C (0.009° F) per year in the top 500 meters of ocean and 0.002° C (0.0036° F) per year at depths between 500 and 2,000 meters. For perspective, Roemmich noted that the heat gain was the equivalent of adding the heat of two trillion continuously burning 100-watt light bulbs to the world's oceans.
"The rate of ocean heat gain during the past eight years is not unusual - indeed many studies of ocean data over the past 50 years and longer have produced similar rates. What is new is that the rate and patterns of ocean heat gain are revealed over a period as short as eight years, thanks to the Argo array, that the warming signal is shown to extend to 2,000 meters and deeper, and that it is occurring predominantly in the Southern Hemisphere ocean south of 20° S," said Roemmich.
"When we measure globally and deep enough, we see a steady rise in the earth's heat content, consistent with the expected greenhouse gas-driven imbalance in our planet's radiation budget," said study co-author Susan Wijffels of Australian research agency the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO).
The study puts a widely reported "hiatus" in global surface air temperatures since 1998 into context. Roemmich said the study illustrates that the hiatus in warming of the sea surface and the lower atmosphere is not representative of the steady, continuing heat gain by the climate system. Scientists measure that heat gain in terms of increasing temperature averaged over the water column.
In an email chat, Yair Rosenthal of Rutgers University and Braddock Linsley of Columbia University, whose related work was explored here in 2013, said the Argo analysis appeared to support their view that giant subtropical gyres are the place where heat carried on currents from the tropics descends into the deeper ocean.
Linlsey said: "I think the Argo data point to the central gyre regions as key to the ocean-atmosphere heat exchange story."
Rosenthal noted that this heat-banking process could buy humanity time, providing what he has called "," particularly because the deeper ocean layers are still relatively cool (compared to much of the Holocene period since the end of the last ice age).
But, he added, the oceanic heating will have consequences, as well:
For heat, as with CO2 (where the ocean is the largest reservoir), increasing ocean heat content may have a price in the future (see ocean acidification with respect to CO2). Heat can change ocean dynamics and eventually will increase glacial melting, which is mainly responding to subsurface water rather than air warming. For years we though we can bury CO2 in the ocean and all will be well. I tend to think for the reasons we discuss last year that the large heat content provides us with a buffer, but it also has its own limitations.
In an email exchange, Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research said he was concerned that the analysis, limited to data from the relatively sparse array of Argo devices, was missing large areas of the seas that other studies, including his own, have identified as significant. As a result, he said, "their estimates look low-balled". Here's more from Trenberth:
It is disappointing that they do not use our stuff (based on ocean reanalysis with a comprehensive model that inputs everything from SST, sea level, XBTs and Argo plus surface fluxes and winds) or that from Karina von Schuckmann. [Here's recent relevant research involving Trenberth .]
From Karina (2014 Ocean Sciences p 547) : "Our findings show that the area around the Tropical Asian Archipelago (TAA) is important to closing the global sea level budget on interannual to decadal timescales, pointing out that the steric estimate from Argo is biased low, as the current mapping methods are insufficient to recover the steric signal in the TAA region." [ Here's the von Schuckmann paper .]
It is a nice paper but sad that oceanographers are slow to utilize all of the available information to produce better estimates. They seem to take pride in... "exclusive use of Argo" data with no use of anything else, including sea level. SSTs are mentioned in Fig. 1 but then it is not clear what areas are included. So there are issues of the areas not included and they assume the 17 percent of the ocean not sampled warms at the same rate, but in fact the Arctic and Indonesian regions are warming much faster, but at least they did include something. The other issue, which they touch on is the short record and the dominance of interannual fluctuations in the upper ocean that are not trends.
For more perspectives on related questions, click back to RealClimate's 2013 post, "What ocean heating reveals about global warming," and also this 2010 post from climate scientist Roger Pielke, Sr.: "A Short Explanation Of Why The Monitoring Of Global Average Ocean Heat Content Is The Appropriate Metric to Assess Global Warming."
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The New York Times
February 1, 2015 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
The Climate Bottom Line
BYLINE: By BURT HELM
SECTION: Section BU; Column 0; Money and Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 2898 words
It was 8 degrees in Minneapolis on a recent January day, and out on Interstate 394, snow whipped against the windshields of drivers on their morning commutes. But inside the offices of Cargill, the food conglomerate, Greg Page, the company's executive chairman, felt compelled to talk about global warming.
''It would be irresponsible not to contemplate it,'' Mr. Page said, bundled up in a wool sport coat layered over a zip-up sweater. ''I'm 63 years old, and I've grown up in the upper latitudes. I've seen too much change to presume we might not get more.''
Mr. Page is not a typical environmental activist. He says he doesn't know -- or particularly care -- whether human activity causes climate change. He doesn't give much serious thought to apocalyptic predictions of unbearably hot summers and endless storms.
But over the last nine months, he has lobbied members of Congress and urged farmers to take climate change seriously. He says that over the next 50 years, if nothing is done, crop yields in many states will most likely fall, the costs of cooling chicken farms will rise and floods will more frequently swamp the railroads that transport food in the United States. He wants American agribusiness to be ready.
Mr. Page is a member of the Risky Business Project, an unusual collection of business and policy leaders determined to prepare American companies for climate change. It's a prestigious club, counting a former senator, five former White House cabinet members, two former mayors and two billionaires in the group. The 10 men and women who serve on the governing committee don't agree on much. Some are Democrats, some Republicans.
Even when it comes to dealing with climate change, they have very different perspectives. Some advocate a national carbon tax, some want to mandate companies to disclose their climate risks. Mr. Page suggests that the world may be able to get by without any mandatory rules at all. Some members want to push investors to divest from fossil fuel companies. Several favor construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, while one member has spent more than $1 million lobbying to stop it. But they all do agree on one issue: Shifts in weather over the next few decades will most likely cost American companies hundreds of billions of dollars, and they have no choice but to adapt.
The committee started in June as a way to promote a study that it commissioned, ''Risky Business: The Economic Risks of Climate Change in the United States.'' But it has since evolved into a loose network of missionaries who publicize the report's ominous data far and wide, in talks at the Clinton Global Initiative conference, briefings with the American Farm Bureau Federation and breakfast meetings with local chambers of commerce.
On Jan. 23, the group released the second chapter of the Risky Business project, focused on the effects on the Midwest: ''Heat in the Heartland.'' A report on California is next. With $1.7 million in grants from the MacArthur Foundation and others, the group is hiring a full-time staff.
The group is led by three men: Tom Steyer, the hedge fund billionaire whose super PAC spent $73 million last year attacking Republicans who denied climate change and promoting awareness of the issue; Henry M. Paulson Jr., the former chief executive of Goldman Sachs and the Treasury secretary under President George W. Bush; and Michael R. Bloomberg, New York City's former mayor and the billionaire founder of the financial information company Bloomberg L.P. Each spent $500,000 to commission the Risky Business research and each has his own particular goals for the initiative, all of which would be served by making the climate threat feel real, immediate and potentially devastating to the business world.
Mr. Paulson wants companies to implement and regulators to enforce disclosure rules regarding climate risk and carbon emissions for publicly traded companies. Mr. Bloomberg views the work as a way to spur city governments and local businesses to work together on climate issues and not ''kick the can down the road,'' he said. Mr. Steyer sees the dollars-and-cents research as a way to neutralize conservatives' arguments that environmental regulation always hurts business.
''One side argues morality and polar bears, and the other side argues jobs,'' Mr. Steyer said. ''You're never going to win with polar bears.''
Embracing Adaptation
To understand how the Risky Business Project came to be, it's helpful to look at how the climate change battle has been waged over the years. In the early days, discussion was focused on fixing the problem and staving off disaster. This has been the strategy environmentalists have used to respond to all sorts of risks for years: Scientists identify the harm, publicize it, debate with the responsible industry and expect legislators to take action.
The very idea of thinking about how to adapt to drastic environmental changes was basically considered taboo, an acknowledgment of defeat. ''Earlier on, you wouldn't use the 'A' word in polite conversation,'' said Henry D. Jacoby, a professor at the Sloan School of Management at M.I.T. and a climate policy researcher -- the ''A'' word being ''adaptation.'' ''People thought you weren't serious about mitigation. 'Oh, you're giving up.' ''
But climate change defied that playbook. There was no immediate crisis to point to -- no bird eggs laced with DDT, no acid rain corroding city monuments. There was no one industry to target or overwhelming constituency to push legislators.
''The rationalist, evidence-driven, faith in the political process approach to solving environmental problems has been really effective in many realms,'' said Hal Harvey, who advised the Risky Business group and is chief executive of Energy Innovation, a green policy firm. ''But it has done bupkis for climate change.''
Indecision and indifference have prevailed instead. A majority of Americans in 2014 surveys by Pew Research and Gallup acknowledged climate change was happening, and 83 percent of Americans say that without emissions reductions, global warming will be a problem in the future, according to a January survey conducted by The New York Times, Stanford University and the environmental group Resources for the Future. But in survey after survey, those same Americans rank climate change at or near the bottom of pressing issues, far behind jobs, the economy and health care.
In the meantime, powerful lobbies, including fossil fuel groups, the U. S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, stand in the way of regulation. Climate change has become a partisan issue -- a cause for conservatives who fear government overreach.
It was in this context that in November 2012, Mr. Steyer convened a meeting at his Pescadero, Calif., ranch. The month before, he had stepped down from running his hedge fund, Farallon Capital Management, to devote himself to the environment. He wanted to devise a way to fight climate change more effectively, and he had assembled some highly regarded thinkers to help him brainstorm. Attendees included the environmentalists Bill McKibben and Mr. Harvey, and the political strategists John D. Podesta and Chris Lehane.
As cattle grazed on native grasses outside, and a water-filtering eco-sculpture burbled on the patio, the participants tossed ideas around the kitchen table. Mr. McKibben discussed his fossil fuel divestment campaign. Others suggested stoking a social media groundswell. One suggested making life hard for climate change-denying politicians (the latter idea became the basis for Mr. Steyer's super PAC, NextGen Climate Action).
While Mr. Steyer was devising his political strategy, the staff at Next Generation, his nonprofit group, were at work trying to solve another critical question: How do you make climate change feel real and immediate for people?
Kate Gordon, senior vice president of Next Generation, Mr. Steyer's nonprofit, whose mission focuses on climate change and improving the economic prospects of families, found inspiration in a British report called the Stern Review, published in 2006. It was an economic analysis, sponsored by the British government, which examined all the costs of climate change, eventually concluding that the price of curbing global warming paled compared with the costs of doing nothing.
Ms. Gordon pitched Mr. Steyer on an American version -- what would become the Risky Business report. It would be a way to discuss in a practical, dollars-and-cents way how businesses would have to adapt to climate change, while also making a clear case for taking action to mitigate the coming environmental crises. He liked what he heard.
The team wanted to bulletproof the report, so that public discussion would not become a politicized debate about their methods or their messengers. So they contracted an economic research firm, the Rhodium Group. They also reached out to Mr. Paulson, a Republican, and Mr. Bloomberg, an independent, to see if they would co-sponsor the study and help form a bipartisan committee. Both agreed, and over the following summer and fall, the three enlisted other leaders through their personal networks.
Mr. Paulson called Mr. Page, whom he knew from the Latin America Conservation Council. Through a contact of Ms. Gordon's, they signed up Henry G. Cisneros, the former housing and urban development secretary under President Bill Clinton and now a real estate developer. Mr. Steyer called Robert E. Rubin, the former secretary of the Treasury under President Clinton and a longtime friend and mentor from their days at Goldman Sachs.
For some, like Mr. Cisneros, it was the first public involvement with climate change. For Mr. Rubin, it marked a change in perspective. During his time in the Clinton administration, the Treasury Department argued the aggressive emissions reductions proposed in the Kyoto Protocol would harm the economy. Mr. Rubin wouldn't make that argument now. ''I think it's the existential threat of our day,'' he said. ''Once you see it as having catastrophic impact, any economic argument follows that, because you're not going to have an economy.''
Mr. Page's involvement with the committee was the subject of ''a fairly energetic debate'' within Cargill, he said. In the end, he decided to participate because the study was an analysis of potential outcomes, not one that purported to make concrete predictions or specific policy recommendations. He also figured it would be best to be involved in any report that planned to say something about his industry, especially one with such prominent backers. He didn't want them ''using the Risky Business report to terrify the U.S. population about its food supply,'' he said.
Cargill ''hasn't weighed in'' on the regulatory debate, Mr. Page said, because the company prefers to examine rules case by case. (''Is cap-and-trade per se bad? No. Is the way it was administered in Europe ineffective? Absolutely,'' he said). Unlike other committee members, he seems to favor voluntary commitments to reduce greenhouse gases. Generally, the company is opposed to any regulation that will force it to shut plants, retire equipment or otherwise ''destroy fixed capital,'' he said.
In May 2014, the committee members gathered at the Bloomberg Philanthropies offices in Manhattan to hear two of the authors commissioned by the Rhodium Group -- Robert E. Kopp, a climate scientist at Rutgers University, and Solomon M. Hsiang, an economic policy researcher at the University of California, Berkeley -- present their findings. Among their conclusions if the status quo persisted: Climate change would increase energy demand in Texas by between 3.4 and 9.2 percent by midcentury. Crop yields in Missouri and Illinois would face a 15 percent decline over the next 25 years. And in the Northeast, annual property damage from severe storms -- from hurricanes to blizzards -- would likely increase $11.1 billion, to a total of $15.8 billion by the end of the century.
Of all the members, Mr. Rubin is most preoccupied with the so-called tail risks -- low-probability events where the most damage is done. Mr. Page, on the other hand, prefers to prepare for the most likely outcomes.
At the meeting in May, some of those differences were discussed. As the report was being put together, Cargill scientists had argued that the agriculture industry was well prepared to adapt to changes. Mr. Bloomberg was skeptical, Mr. Page recalled. During a break, Mr. Bloomberg took Mr. Page aside and peppered him with questions: Do these technologies exist? Or are you saying they will someday -- ''as in, we know there will be a cure for cancer, but we have no idea when or how?'' Mr. Page said he respected Mr. Bloomberg's diligence in seeking answers, although he maintained that adaptation was more a matter of execution for the food industry, not research and development. ''But the guy's a good reporter, let's put it that way,'' Mr. Page said.
Light Touch With the Message
Mr. Paulson works on the upper floors of a skyscraper in downtown Chicago, with a conference room overlooking the Chicago River. In January, the wind across it is cutting, and ice floes drift along the sides. By midcentury, if the Risky Business report is right, those ice floes will be gone.
When Mr. Paulson speaks to local groups, he makes sure to bring data from the report tailored to their county. ''I'm not just having an abstract conversation about climate being this big risk. I can say, 'Let me tell you!' '' he said, slapping the table. ''Here's what this is going to mean to you, your industry and your family. Suddenly people are interested.''
Mr. Cisneros says he uses a soft touch when speaking to real estate groups, so that people don't feel lectured to. ''I say, 'This has not been my highest priority either, but it's got my attention, and I want to share it with you,' '' he said. He warns audiences to budget for spiraling insurance premiums in coastal states like Florida, and to keep in mind that in drought-prone regions like California's Central Valley, water permits may become hard to acquire.
Mr. Page treads especially lightly when addressing farmers' groups, as he says they have been conditioned to think of global warming as a liberal euphemism for more regulation. Instead of coming right at the issue, he takes a circuitous route. ''I ask simple questions: 'Would you like universities to suspend research on seeds that grow in higher temperatures? Of course not! That's all I'm saying!' '' he said, raising his hands defensively. ''You get people to acknowledge that they, too, have anxieties. It's a micro-acknowledgment, not a macro-acknowledgment.''
Through this kind of education, several committee members hope to recruit business leaders to the side that helps, not hinders, the fight against climate change. ''The whole point of all of this is that it can be mitigated,'' Mr. Paulson said. ''The enemies of what we're trying to do are short-termism and a sense of hopelessness. But if we act soon we can avoid the worst outcomes and adapt.''
Even so, the committee members seem to have a long road ahead of them.
After meeting with Mr. Page, Jon Doggett, executive vice president of the National Corn Growers Association, said he was skeptical that the report would influence farmers much. His members need near-term incentives to cut greenhouse gases -- immediate cost savings, government incentives and so forth, he said.
''Are we going to reduce greenhouse gas emissions today because we believe there's an economic benefit 15 years from now? That's way too hypothetical for a family-owned and operated business that has to make a payment this year,'' Mr. Doggett said. ''The banker doesn't get paid in hypothetical dollars.''
Dale Moore, executive director of public policy for the American Farm Bureau Federation, which lobbies in Washington on behalf of farmers and ranchers, said he agreed with Mr. Page that climate seemed to be in a ''more extreme cycle'' and that agribusiness would do well to develop hardier seed strains. But the group's members remain skeptical that humans cause climate change. They are part of a consortium opposing the Environmental Protection Agency's new proposed rule limiting coal-fired power plants.
But not all business groups feel this way. The Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce parted ways with the national Chamber of Commerce in 2011 specifically because the views of Seattle members on climate change differed so drastically with the sort of climate-denying statements the national group was making. ''We were hosting clean technology conferences,'' said Maud Daudon, president of the group, ''and they were issuing statements that came from an entirely different place.''
Bit by bit, the Risky Business Project's committee members hope to turn the tide, bringing Congress around to the way that a majority of Americans feels. ''We've made progress on things like civil rights, smoking, gay marriage and other things that seemed impossible to move when businesspeople joined the silent majority,'' said Mr. Cisneros. ''Congress tends not to act until the broad mainstream, including business, is aboard.''
And if business feels the pain in its wallet, it will feel the heat to act, even on the coldest of days.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/01/business/energy-environment/climate-changes-bottom-line.html
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GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: The members of the Risky Business Project, including, from left to right above, Greg Page, Michael Bloomberg, Henry Paulson and Tom Steyer, and Robert Rubin, below, are presenting research to business groups that highlights how the effects of climate change, like increased flooding, as in the streets of Queens, N.Y., top, could hurt business and the economy. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOSHUA ROBERTS/REUTERS
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The Guardian
January 31, 2015 Saturday 8:30 AM GMT
'Drowned in a sea of salt' Blake Morrison on the literature of the east coast;
Writers from Crabbe to Sebald have been drawn to the fragile beauty of the east coast of Britain - and have immortalised it in words · Hear Blake Morrison read his poem Covehithe
BYLINE: Blake Morrison
SECTION: BOOKS
LENGTH: 1495 words
Sixty-two years ago today, the combination of a severe storm and high spring tide brought catastrophe to the east coast of England, as the water rose to six metres above sea level and overwhelmed the land. The Dutch had it even worse, with the loss of 1,800 lives - they called it the Watersnoodramp, the "flood disaster". But Suffolk and Essex suffered badly, too, with 307 deaths in all, including 38 at Felixstowe, 37 in Jaywick, and 58 on Canvey Island.
A couple of documentaries appeared around the time of the 60th anniversary of the flood but compared with the commemoration of the 2004 Asian tsunami the coverage was modest. There wasn't the footage; the only survivors with memories of the event were past pension age, and the loss of life was on a smaller scale. But perhaps another factor explains the neglect: resignation to the idea that the North Sea is destined to wreak havoc periodically and that nothing can be done to prevent it.
A recent unpublished Environment Agency analysis suggests as much, predicting that 7,000 homes, with a total value of more than £1bn, will be lost over the next century - 800 in the next 20 years. The current consensus is to let them fall into the sea (with no compensation for homeowners), since the cost of protecting them is too great. In some areas a shoreline management policy of "holding the line" or "managed retreat" will muffle the blow. But huge damage will be done in the east, where rising sea levels and a "soft" coastline have already claimed many a clifftop home.
Climate change is part of the problem. But it's no use pretending the problem is new. "This year also," the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records in 1099, "the sea flood sprung up to such height, and did so much harm, as no man remembered that it ever did before. And this was the first day of the new moon." Further flood disasters were recorded in 1236, 1251, 1551, 1690, 1703, 1736, 1881, 1897 and on through the 20th century.
The most vivid accounts of the 1953 flood came from unlikely sources. One was Hilda Grieve, an archivist in the Essex Record Office, who for her book The Great Tide tracked the tide, hour by hour, as it came down the coast, and drew on a vast collection of witness statements. A handful of these border on the comic - like the firefighter rescuing a woman on Canvey Island who won't stop talking ("I had to tell her to shut her mouth because the water was up to her neck"). More commonly, they are tragic, like the father remembering the son who died in his arms: "After a while he did not speak any more and appeared to go to sleep."
Another account of the flood, so far unpublished, is the 18,000-word diary kept by PJO Trist, Philip John Owen Trist to give him his full name, who worked for the Ministry of Agriculture and was responsible for the clean-up operation. His remedial work included flying over flooded farmland and surveying the damage: "From Orford to Iken, the flooded level of about 2,400 acres was a pathetic sight ... Below the Minsmere cliff, known to thousands who have had tea and bathed there, the shingle beach was almost unrecognisable ... Poor Minsmere! Once again she lay drowned in a sea of salt."
Trist had the right name for the job. His diary is full of sadness - for cattle and livestock swept away, for the thousands of rabbits lying dead in the marshes, for the poisoning of arable land by salt water (out of 4,000 acres flooded, only about 200 bore a crop in 1953). But perhaps the key moment comes when he momentarily forgets the "visions of mud and men and water" as he drives through the park at Boulge Hall, near Woodbridge, to the churchyard where Edward FitzGerald lies buried, and imagines "the peace of his lazy days up and down the Deben". It's Trist's way of measuring depredation against a more benign image derived from literature. And there's certainly no shortage of such images: every British coastline has its legends (of shipwrecks, piracy and selkies) but the stretch from Cromer to Felixstowe is among the most documented - and the most heavily populated with writers.
FitzGerald grew up in Suffolk and spent most of his life there. It was in a cottage on the family estate at Boulge Hall that he translated the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám and conjured an alternative notion of the east - not wintry storms and bleakness but camels, desert, a convivial jug of wine. Persia and Woodbridge don't have much in common but the original poem's emphasis on mortality ("I came like water and like wind I go") and its evocation of a paradise in the wilderness resonated with FitzGerald. The translation eventually made him famous, but by then his passion was for sailing rather than literature: he bought a yacht, the Scandal, then a herring-lugger, and would sail from the Deben to Lowestoft or over to Holland. The land felt mean and enclosed to him; society, too. But he loved the open water - and, rather than being buried, would have liked his ashes to be scattered on the sea.
Or so WG Sebald claims in The Rings of Saturn, after visiting FitzGerald's grave during his pilgrimage through East Anglia in the 1990s. The coastal chapters of the journey are eventful: Sebald encounters a herd of swine at Covehithe, sees a couple having sex on the beach below ("the man's feet twitched like those of one just hanged"), and has a kind of panic attack on Dunwich Heath. But the overall mood is one of melancholy, because the erosions of time and place have destroyed the buildings and aspirations that interest him: "The east stands for lost causes," he writes, "you can sense the immense power of emptiness." The nadir comes at Shingle Street, "the most abandoned spot in the entire region, which now consists of just one wretched row of humble houses and cottages and where I have never encountered one single human being." It's an unduly bleak view of a place I find haunting and beautiful. But it's true that the beauty is what WB Yeats would call a "terrible beauty" - not least because of the rumours that began in 1940 and persist to this day of a thwarted German invasion, and the loss of hundreds of lives.
Less in doubt is what happened at Dunwich, a once thriving medieval city later reduced by storms and floods to a tiny fishing village (now the only fishing is done by solitary anglers). Dunwich began to decline in 13th and 14th centuries, and there are photos of the last of its eight churches, All Saints, gradually disappearing into the sea between 1904 and 1919. Edward Thomas gives a snapshot on a visit in 1908:
Oh Dunwich is beautiful. I am on a heaving moor of heather and close gorse up and down and ending in a sandy cliff about 80 feet perpendicular and the black, peat-strewn fine sand below. On the edge of this 1½ miles away is the ruined church that has half fallen over already. Four arches and a broken tower, pale and airy.
George Crabbe remains the most celebrated poet of the Suffolk sea and of its power to destroy lives. But many other poets have written about it since: Frances Cornford, with her "far-off gulls like risen souls"; Alun Lewis, briefly stationed there during the second world war; Andrew Motion, who tells of the legend of the Orford Merman ; Anne Beresford, Katrina Porteous, Anthony Thwaite, Michael Hamburger and more. Many novelists, too, have set their fictions on the Suffolk coast, PD James, Ruth Rendell, Esther Freud and Julie Myerson among them. Julia Blackburn is about to publish two books set there - one a long poem in which grief over her husband's death is offset by descriptions (and photos) of murmurations of starlings above Walberswick, the other a life of the Norfolk fisherman and artist John Craske. Then there are the visitors, with their passing impressions: Carlyle, Hardy, Gissing and - least passingly - Swinburne, whose long poem, By the North Sea, strikes a note of Sebaldian gloom: "A land that is lonelier than ruin,/ A sea that is stranger than death."
Swinburne swamps his poem in such morbidity that he deserves the fun poked at him by Craig Brown, another east coast resident, in one of his clerihews: "Algernon Swinburne/ Let his skin burn./ He forgot the Skin Factor Five/ On a trip to Covehithe." But he was one of the earliest writers not only to document coastal erosion, but to see it as a metaphor for human mortality: "Like ashes the low cliffs crumble,/ The banks drop down into dust." In an age of rising sea levels and climate change, the east coast's vulnerability is ever more apparent, which may be why writers are drawn to it - in a spirit of protection not exploitation. If they can't shore up actual defences, they can, through language, conserve the cliffs and beaches under attack. As John Donne said, 'if one clod is washed away, Europe is the less.'
· Blake Morrison's new collection of poems, Shingle Street, is published by Chatto on Thursday. To order a copy for £8 (RRP £10) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call Guardian book service on 0330 333 6846.
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The Guardian
January 31, 2015 Saturday 8:17 AM GMT
Grassroots sports at risk from heatwaves due to climate change, report warns;
Sports such as tennis, Aussie rules and cricket will have to find ways to better protect the wellbeing of competitors as temperatures rise
BYLINE: Oliver Milman
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 679 words
Climate change will threaten the viability of grassroots sport in Australia, and elite tournaments will have to adapt to rising temperatures, extreme rainfall and shrinking snow cover, a report has warned.
The extreme heat policies of sports such as tennis, Aussie rules and cricket will have to "dramatically improve" to protect the health of competitors at all levels, the Climate Institute analysis concluded.
The report, featuring a foreword from former AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou, warned that while elite sport might be able to adapt to a changing climate, the "ability to respond at local sporting grounds is more questionable".
The Climate Institute compiled the report in the wake of the blistering heat that affected the Australian Open tennis tournament last year. Players and court staff fainted, water bottles melted and a participant even warned someone might die after temperatures hit 43C.
The Open has since introduced new protocols that require the match referee to consider suspending play if the ambient temperature reaches 40C.
But the Climate Institute warned that the heat policies of other sports were patchy, with a recent AFL match taking place in 38C heat and last year's Tour Down Under having no heat stipulations, even though cycling races in certain states are normally halted in extremely high temperatures.
"Heat policies are a bit confused and ambiguous between state and national levels," said John Connor, chief executive of the Climate Institute. "The Australian Open got caught short last year and these tournaments need to have proper heat policies given extreme heat is becoming more common.
"Sport is very dear to people, it's core to our way of life and it is worth $13bn a year to the Australian economy. Some sports will be at the limit of their ability to adapt or will have massive costs in order to continue, due to climate change.
"Some sports could wither on the vine if we choke off local sports. Professional tennis players can have retractable roofs and be wrapped in cotton wool but we risk the grassroots feed-in of those sports."
According to climate projections published by the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology this week, Australia will warm by up to 5C by the end of the century if greenhouse gas emissions aren't curbed.
The number of days over 35C is set to treble in Melbourne and Hobart and quadruple in Sydney. In Brisbane, there would be 20 times more hot days, while Perth would spend two months a year above 35C and Darwin 10 months a year above that mark.
The Climate Institute warned this would have a significant impact on the health of sports participants. And elongated droughts in parts of Australia, coupled with extreme rainfall, will degrade community sporting grounds and even affect large stadiums, such as the Suncorp stadium in Brisbane, which was covered in 1.5m of water during the 2011 Queensland floods.
Some of the most dramatic changes could hit those who enjoy winter sports, with the CSIRO report warning of "very substantial decreases in snowfall, increase in melt and thus reduced snow cover".
The Climate Institute cites further research by Griffith University that predicts a 60% reduction in snow cover by 2020, making it increasingly hard for skiers and snowboarders to enjoy the slopes.
During the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, more than 100 athletes put their name to a letter from US skier Andy Newell, who warned that climate change must be tackled due the "reality" of deteriorating snow conditions.
The Australian Olympic aerial skier Lydia Lassila said: "Given the unpredictable nature of our Aussie winter, many Australian athletes already train predominantly at overseas facilities or resorts.
"Although I would like to train on home soil, I haven't been able to since 2009 due to inconsistency of the conditions."
Connor said: "These impacts increase exponentially the longer we stuff around. Team Australia, if I can borrow that phrase, needs to lift its climate game. If we don't stop pumping heat-trapping pollutants into the atmosphere, things are going to get worse."
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The Guardian
January 31, 2015 Saturday 12:08 AM GMT
Correction Appended
Green surge: on the ground with party activists hoping for a second MP;
Leader Natalie Bennett joins campaigners in Norwich seeking to turn membership boom into election success beyond party's Brighton heartland
BYLINE: Rowena Mason, political correspondent
SECTION: POLITICS
LENGTH: 1283 words
"Hi, I'm Natalie Bennett, leader of the Green party in England and Wales, can I talk to you for a minute? No?" It's a tough gig, canvassing in the snow. But no time can be wasted by the Greens in the seat that gives them probably their best hope of gaining a second MP.
Flanked by a hopeful, energetic bunch of activists in their late teens and early 20s, Bennett is attempting to drum up support on a shopping street in Norwich South - Liberal Democrat turf where the Lib Dems are not very popular any more. It is one of two possibilities, along with Bristol West, for a Green gain in May - both seats are in cities where the vote can be heavily swayed by students.
Bennett talks excitedly of the "Green surge" that has seen a boost in support for the party in recent weeks, particularly among the young. But the question facing her now is whether the Greens have the mass appeal to win anywhere but Britain's hippiest city, Brighton, where their only MP, Caroline Lucas, is facing a nail-biting fight to cling on to her seat against Labour.
Not even Bennett sounds entirely convinced that the boom in national backing for the Greens will actually deliver any more seats. "What I'm confident of is a massive increase in our vote share," she says.
Neither does district nurse Lesley Grahame, the party's parliamentary candidate for Norwich South, sound particularly confident of victory, rating her chances as "getting better".
Grahame - a seasoned environmental and anti-nuclear activist - seems to be a core vote choice, who says the top of her political wishlist is defeating the EU-US trade deal called TTIP - the transatlantic trade and investment partnership. She would also like to extend the Freedom of Information Act to cover all companies with public contracts, and is passionate about climate change, arguing the party "can't wait till after the revolution" to tackle it.
One of her definite backers is Joseph Grant, a 38-year-old IT consultant and a long-ago Labour supporter, who stops in the cold to chat, despite already being a convert. He is behind the Greens mostly on environmental grounds, over the "fracking debacle" and climate change. But even he is doubtful that the party will win in Norwich South: "I don't think they're going to. It will be Labour. People are voting for the leader."
In Bennett's favour, Green membership has doubled to more than 50,000 and the party is consistently outflanking the Lib Dems in the polls, following an outpouring of sympathy for the party at being excluded from the leaders' television debates. Now that Bennett has won a coveted invitation from the broadcasters, this is her chance to sell Green policies to the nation.
However, with recent success has come greater scrutiny, causing a bumpy few days for the Green leader as reporters pored over the party's online proposals to decriminalise prostitution, legalise cannabis, allow membership of al-Qaida and imposewhat has been branded a "Beyonce tax" on superstar performances.
Sheltering from the weather in a cafe, Bennett professes herself simply "delighted" with all the attention. In particular, she says, her spat with Labour's Tristram Hunt over the Greens' education policy shows the party is at last being taken as serious competition.
To those who read the articles picking holes in Green policies, she would "strongly urge everybody who comes across these to not believe everything you read". Many of these ideas came from the "ongoing guide" made collectively by Green members and may not make it into the final manifesto, she says, which is a document written by a Keele university academic and policy expert that will deal with the most immediate problems facing Britain in 2015.
This kind of intense spotlight is endured by all smaller parties at one point or another as they try to resolve the tension between the obsessions of their die-hard supporters and attracting a wider audience. It happened to Nick Clegg in 2010, and Ukip leader Nigel Farage last year, who found himself having to dismiss as nonsense his party's last manifesto that included making the circle line circle again and enforcing proper dress in the theatre.
But in light of this extra attention, the pressure is on Bennett to make an argument for her party as being both radical and realist - not allowing her critics to charge the Greens with being the left's version of "fruitcakes and loonies".
"We are a practical party," she insists. "We've got the evidence-based policies on the science, not just on climate change but drugs policy and education. And one of the things people are coming to recognise is that we've had a lot of government by focus group."
She still seems slightly on the defensive. Only days ago, Bennett was happy to talk about turning army bases into solar farms, and putting the Queen in a council house. Now she tries to steer away from controversial topics, like many a Westminster politician burned by one too many hostile interviewers. Asked about the Greens' arguments about whether the UK needs economic growth, for example, she says: "What I would like to talk about is doing the things we need to do and the things we need to stop doing. What we should be doing is the energy bill revolution."
She is also wary on the Greens' central economic policy - the universal Citizen's Income of £72 per week. It is another intriguing concept which has been championed by some on the firm left and others on the libertarian right, but one that has been challenged over the estimated £240bn cost, which could be offset by some combination of reductions in the benefit bill, replacing the personal allowance and higher taxes on the rich. Even more woundingly for the Greens, the policy's original architects at the Citizens Income Trust have realised that in its current form it could hurt the bottom 35% of society, unless it was means tested.
Bennett says the Green version of the Citizen's Income is different from the one put forward by the CIT. It will still be part of the manifesto and there is no way the Greens would ever advocate anything to make people poorer, she insists. However, she cannot say how it will be funded yet and now pitches it as an ambition rather than a concrete plan. "We are not talking about this anything like day one or anytime soon," she says. "It would obviously take a significant amount of time to work out."
Bennett warms up when moving away from policy detail towards talking about the Green party's general values, which mean "from day one, the immediate direction has to be reversing austerity that is making the poor, disadvantaged and young pay for the errors and fraud of the bankers".
"We have to ensure multinational companies and rich people pay their way," she says. "For multinationals, that means paying taxes and paying workers decently." She wouldn't care, for example, if a "certain coffee chain that I consider serves lousy coffee" left Britain and never came back.
The priorities, she says, are ending austerity, eliminating private sector involvement in the NHS, bringing in a £10 minimum wage by 2020 and scrapping Trident. The Greens will not, however, be in a position to demand any of these things, as Bennett categorically rules out any kind of coalition, even if offered the prize job of energy secretary.
The extreme likelihood of a win for either David Cameron or Ed Miliband is something Bennett acknowledges. But unlike her minor party rival, Farage, she cannot quite bring herself to dismiss them both as being just as bad as each other. When push comes to shove, the Greens leader is rooting for the Labour leader to walk into Downing Street in May. "If you're going to push me on that, yes, I would prefer Ed Miliband," she says.
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CORRECTION: Homophone corner: "However, with success has come scrutiny, causing a bumpy few days as reporters poured over the party's proposals" ( Amid talk of a Green surge, a question: can they win seats?, 31 January, page 14).
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The New York Times
January 31, 2015 Saturday
Late Edition - Final
Half in G.O.P. Say They Back Climate Action
BYLINE: By CORAL DAVENPORT and MARJORIE CONNELLY; Coral Davenport reported from Washington, and Marjorie Connelly from New York. Marina Stefan contributed reporting from New York.
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1175 words
WASHINGTON -- An overwhelming majority of the American public, including half of Republicans, support government action to curb global warming, according to a poll conducted by The New York Times, Stanford University and the nonpartisan environmental research group Resources for the Future.
In a finding that could have implications for the 2016 presidential campaign, the poll also found that two-thirds of Americans said they were more likely to vote for political candidates who campaign on fighting climate change. They were less likely to vote for candidates who questioned or denied the science that determined that humans caused global warming.
Among Republicans, 48 percent say they are more likely to vote for a candidate who supports fighting climate change, a result that Jon A. Krosnick, a professor of political science at Stanford University and an author of the survey, called ''the most powerful finding'' in the poll. Many Republican candidates question the science of climate change or do not publicly address the issue.
Nonetheless, 47 percent of Republicans still said they believed that policies designed to curb global warming would hurt the economy.
Although the poll found that climate change was not a top issue in determining a person's vote, a candidate's position on climate change influences how a person will vote. For example, 67 percent of respondents, including 48 percent of Republicans and 72 percent of independents, said they were less likely to vote for a candidate who said that human-caused climate change is a hoax.
The results came as climate change was emerging as a source of debate in the coming presidential campaign.
In 2012, all the Republican presidential candidates but one -- Jon M. Huntsman Jr. -- questioned or denied the science that determined that humans caused global warming, and opposed policies to curb greenhouse gas emissions. But over the past year, President Obama has proposed a series of Environmental Protection Agency regulations intended to reduce carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants, which Republicans in Congress have attacked as a ''war on coal.''
But those positions appear to be out of step with the majority of the electorate.
The poll found that 83 percent of Americans, including 61 percent of Republicans and 86 percent of independents, say that if nothing is done to reduce emissions, global warming will be a very or somewhat serious problem in the future.
But substantial differences remain between the two parties on the issue.
Democrats are much more likely than Republicans or independents to say that the issue of global warming is important to them. Among Democrats, 63 percent said the issue was very or extremely important to them personally. In contrast, 40 percent of independents and only 18 percent of Republicans said the same.
And while the poll found that 74 percent of Americans said that the federal government should be doing a substantial amount to combat climate change, the support was greatest among Democrats and independents. Ninety-one percent of Democrats, 78 percent of independents and 51 percent of Republicans said the government should be fighting climate change.
The nationwide telephone poll was conducted Jan. 7 to 22 with 1,006 adults and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
Over all, the number of Americans who believe that climate change is caused by human activity is growing. In a 2011 Stanford University poll, 72 percent of people thought climate change was caused at least in part by human activities. That grew to 81 percent in the latest poll. By party, 88 percent of Democrats, 83 percent of independents and 71 percent of Republicans said that climate change was caused at least in part by human activities.
A majority of Americans -- 71 percent -- expect that they will be personally hurt by climate change, although to different degrees.
''Some people think they'll be really devastated; some people think they'll be inconvenienced,'' Mr. Krosnick said.
Aliza Strauss, a Republican homemaker in Teaneck, N.J., said in a follow-up interview that climate change had affected her personally and she was concerned about the effect of climate change in coming years. ''A tree fell on my house during Hurricane Sandy, and in the future, it might be worse,'' she said. ''The stronger storms and the flooding will erode the coastline, and that is a big concern for me.''
Jason Becker, a self-identified independent and stay-at-home father in Ocoee, Fla., said that although climate change was not his top concern, a candidate who questioned global warming would seem out of touch.
''I don't think it's the No. 1 hot issue in the world,'' he said. ''There are some other things that should take precedent, like the ISIS issue,'' he said, referring to the Islamic State militants.
But he said of climate change: ''If someone feels it's a hoax, they are denying the evidence out there. Many arguments can be made on both sides of the fence. But to just ignore it completely indicates a close-minded individual, and I don't want a close-minded individual in a seat of political power.''
Political analysts say the problem for many Republicans is how to carve out a position on climate change that does not turn off voters like Mr. Becker, but that also does not alienate powerful conservative campaign donors. In particular, advocacy groups funded by the billionaire brothers Charles G. and David H. Koch have vowed to ensure that Republican candidates who support climate change action will lose in primary elections.
As a result, many Republicans have begun responding to questions about climate change by saying ''I'm not a scientist'' or some variant, as a way to avoid taking a definite position.
The poll found that that vague position might well help Republican candidates in primary contests, particularly among conservative voters. The poll found that 27 percent of Americans were more likely to vote for a candidate who took that position, and 44 percent less likely. But among those who support the Tea Party, 49 percent said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who said ''I'm not a scientist'' or a variant.
''It recruits more Tea Partyers than it repels,'' Mr. Krosnick said.
A pledge to fight climate change appears to have less attraction for older voters. The poll found that older Americans were slightly less inclined to support a candidate who calls for action to reduce global warming and similarly less negative toward a candidate who rejects the premise of global warming.
''Global warming hasn't much importance to me,'' said William Werner, 73, a retired sales manager in San Antonio. ''It is not man-made in my opinion because there have been cycles forever, and we can't do much about that.''
He added, ''If you're speaking about voting for someone in this country who says they can take actions that will affect global warming, I don't believe it, because we are just not that big a polluter compared to other countries.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/31/us/politics/most-americans-support-government-action-on-climate-change-poll-finds.html
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The New York Times
January 31, 2015 Saturday
Late Edition - Final
Federal Construction Projects Must Plan for Flood Risks From Climate Change
BYLINE: By CORAL DAVENPORT
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 12
LENGTH: 361 words
WASHINGTON -- President Obama on Friday continued to push his aggressive climate change agenda, signing an executive order requiring that all federally funded construction projects take into account the flood risks linked to global warming.
Planners of federally funded buildings, roads and other infrastructure will be required to account for the impact of possible flooding from rising sea levels or more extreme precipitation, effects that scientists say will result from a warming planet.
Agencies currently use historical flood data when creating building plans.
To meet the new standard, builders must meet one of three requirements. They can make plans using data and methods informed by the best available climate science; or build two feet above the current projected elevation for once-every-100-year floods for most projects, but three feet above that level for critical buildings like hospitals and evacuation centers; or build to elevations at which flooding is currently projected once every 500 years.
The standard would also make significant swaths of low-lying land ineligible for construction with federal funds.
The move is one of a series of actions taken by Mr. Obama as he seeks to build his legacy on climate change. He has already proposed a sweeping set of Environmental Protection Agency regulations aimed at reducing planet-warming carbon pollution from vehicle tailpipes and power plant smokestacks, and he is working with other world leaders to forge a global climate change accord by the end of the year.
But several scientific reports have signaled that the early effects of global warming -- particularly rising sea levels and more extreme storms -- are inevitable, based on the level of greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere.
Economists have begun to warn that policy makers must begin to plan for the costs of damages wrought by climate change. From 1980 to 2013, the United States suffered more than $260 billion in flood-related damages, according to the White House.
More than 50 percent of Americans live in coastal areas, where infrastructure and evacuation routes are increasingly vulnerable to higher sea levels.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/31/us/federal-construction-projects-must-plan-for-flood-risks-from-climate-change.html
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The Guardian
January 30, 2015 Friday 10:39 PM GMT
Climate change is lifting Iceland - and it could mean more volcanic eruptions;
Land moving upward faster than researchers expected at 1.4in every year, allowing 'hot potato' rocks to rise
BYLINE: Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 387 words
Iceland is rising because of climate change, with land freed by the melting of the ice caps rebounding from the Earth at a rate of up to 1.4in per year.
The downside? Researchers believe the extra uplift could be behind an increase in volcanic activity, with three Icelandic eruptions in the last five years shutting down flights and spewing ash in the air.
In new research published in Geophysical Research Letters, scientists from the University of Arizona and the University of Iceland found the earth's crust rising at a much faster rate amid the greater warming of the last 30 years.
At some sites in south and south-central Iceland, where five of the largest ice caps are located, ice loss resulting from that warming produced an uplift of 1.4in per year, the researchers said.
Researchers have known for some time that land freed from the weight of ice sheets tends to rise. But they did not anticipate just how swiftly the bounce in Iceland was occurring.
"It's similar to putting weights on a trampoline. If you take the weights off, the trampoline will bounce right back up to its original flat shape," said Richard Bennett, a geologist at the University of Arizona and one of the authors of the new research.
The bigger bounce was due to increased warming over the last 30 years, mathematical models showed.
"What we found is that the uplift is increasing. It's faster and faster everywhere because of the accelerated loss of ice mass," said Bennett.
The researchers relied on 62 GPS devices, deployed on rocks throughout Iceland, to track the changes in position. Some of the GPS receivers had been in position since 1995.
The danger is that increased melting and uplift could lead to a further uptick in volcanic activity. Iceland has experienced three eruptions in the last five years. When Eyjafjallajökull blew in 2010, flights across Europe were disrupted for a week.
The entire chain reaction of melting ice caps, rising earth surface and volcanic activity is still not entirely understood, Bennett said. But as the surface of the earth rises, so do rocks at depth, released from the pressure of the ice.
"They transport the heat like a hot potato as they move from high pressure to lower pressure and enter into conditions that promote melting," Bennett said. And that creates conditions that are ripe for eruptions.
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The Guardian
January 30, 2015 Friday 8:23 PM GMT
Climate change responsible for super-charging winter storms, scientists say;
Researchers say heavier storms of recent years such as current blizzard bearing down on US north-east carry imprints of climate change
BYLINE: Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 764 words
Winters may be getting shorter, but watch out when it does snow: climate change is super-charging storms like the blizzard engulfing the American north-east, scientists said on Monday.
The heavier storms of recent years - snowfalls that shut down cities and brought heavy flooding to coastal areas of New England - carried the imprints of climate change, as researchers get better at detecting the fingerprints of global warming, even from snow.
It was too soon to pin the current storm to climate change, but a trend line was emerging, the scientists said.
"The snow season is getting shorter," said Kevin Trenberth, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. "But the interesting thing is you can end up with heavier snows in part because of climate change."
In general, climate change produces more extreme precipitation in North America - and if it's cold enough, that produces snow.
"There is a little bit more oomph to these storms when they do develop, the so-called nor'easters in particular," said
Nor'easters pack their punch from the contrast between cold land temperatures and the warmer Gulf stream and surrounding waters. Five of New York's biggest snow storms have occurred since 2000, and 2014 was the hottest year in 130 years of temperatures records.
Ocean surface temperatures off the US Atlantic coast were unusually warm last year - about 2F above normal over huge expanses of the Atlantic off the east coast.
As result, there was about 10% more water vapour in the atmosphere, Trenberth said. Approximately half of that extra moisture was due to climate change, he said.
Every a 1F difference in temperature produces about 4% more moisture.
"You can easily get as much as 20% more snow out of a storm than you would otherwise, as long as it is cold enough so that all of that moisture gets converted into snow. And that is usually the case in the wintertime," Trenberth said.
Researchers identified a similar interaction inland, known as the lake effect - when cold air meets water that has still not frozen over - well before last November's white-out in Buffalo.
The current storm's projected accumulations - above 2ft in the New York area and around 3ft in Boston - could rank among the biggest in the 130 years since records began.
The so-called Juno blizzard is also bound to create impacts not traditionally associated with blizzards - storm surges and coastal flooding, especially in the Cape Cod area. Sea level rise off the east coast is already expected to be about 8in - or more - by the end of the century.
"Flooding is going to be a major issue for the Cape and New England," said Bernadette Woods Placky, a meteorologist at Climate Central. "The way this storm is just bombing out of there - just the intensity it's creating off the coast - it is going to add even more water and pull it on to shore," she said.
"It is everything interconnecting and exploding all at once."
Scientists hesitate to link individual storms to climate change and said repeatedly that this week's storm was not caused by climate change.
But scientists, zeroing in on the causes of individual storms, now believe about 35% of the rain that came down with hurricane Sandy was produced by climate change. On Monday, New York governor Andrew Cuomo reiterated his observations from that storm, citing "a pattern of extreme weather".
Researchers are also beginning to detect the hand of climate change on winter storms.
The so-called Snowmageddon of February 2010 also saw unusually high surface temperatures in the Atlantic, with temperatures up to 3F above normal that led to exceptional amounts of moisture being fed into the circulation of the storm and resulted in exceptional snow amounts in the Washington DC area.
The landmark United Nations IPCC report on climate change warned that nor'easters like this week's storm could grow stronger with climate change, because they are driven by the contrast between Arctic air and warming sea surface temperatures.
"There is no doubt that a component of that anomalous warmth is due to human-caused climate change. Those warm ocean temperatures also mean that there is more moisture in the air for this storm to feed on and to produce huge snowfalls inland," Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, said in a statement.
"Climate change is making these sorts of storms more common, much as it is making Sandy-like superstorms and unusually intense hurricanes more common."
Those storms were not created by climate change, Mann said. But, he added: "They were likely made worse by climate change."
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The Guardian
January 30, 2015 Friday 3:00 PM GMT
Looking back: Weather;
Hurricanes, climate change, and the benefits of sunbathing are just a few weather related stories that have found their way on to the pages of the Guardian down the years
BYLINE: Jason Rodrigues
SECTION: NEWS
LENGTH: 341 words
A warm winter in New England in 1890 caused dandelions to burst into bloom on Christmas day, leading meteorologists to suspect that something strange could be happening to our climate.
Back in England in 1910, the arrival of heavy snow meant thrill-seekers in Buxton, Derbyshire, could ride their home made toboggans down steep, icy roads.
During a period of fine weather in 1930, the Manchester Guardian encouraged workers to sunbathe in their time off. 'Limbs, like flowers, wilt and fade in darkness...', said a leader column.
The fog, and possibly pollution, that shrouded London on the day of the 1931 general election threatened to dramatically reduce voter turnout. Undeterred, some voters donned face masks to get to polling stations.
Thirty four people lost their lives and hundreds were left homeless after heavy rains caused flooding in the north Devon village of Lynmouth in 1952. A number of those who died were swept away in a river of flood water and rocks in one of the UK's worst disasters.
Eminent science writer John Maddox, writing in the Manchester Guardian in 1962, asked if a new ice age was on its way. Maddox thought the gradual warming of the earth's atmosphere in the first half of the century was about to give way to much cooler temperatures.
In 1976, the UK experienced the hottest, driest summers in years. With the nation gripped by a water shortage, the cheery slogan of "save water, bath with a friend" became a common sight on t-shirts and car bumper stickers.
She was never considered a friend of the environmental movement, but on her death in 2013, Margaret Thatcher was acknowledged by some as having helped put climate change (or global warming as it was known in the 1980s) on the political agenda.
Weather related catastrophes abroad, like those in the disaster stricken country of Haiti, have received varying degrees of coverage in the Guardian. One story that received a significant amount of attention was Hurricane Katrina, which left over 1,800 dead as it ploughed through central Florida to Texas in 2005.
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The Guardian
January 30, 2015 Friday 11:53 AM GMT
Shell urges shareholders to accept climate resolution;
Resolution brought by activist shareholders requires oil firm to test its business model is compatible with global targets to limit global warming
BYLINE: Damian Carrington
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 640 words
Shell is set to confront the risk that climate change may pose to its future, after backing a resolution from activist shareholders. The move came on the same day it announced $15bn (£10bn) in cost cutting due to plummeting oil prices and said it wanted to resume drilling for oil in the Arctic.
The resolution, filed by 150 investors who control hundreds of billions of pounds, requires the oil major to test whether its business model is compatible with the pledge by the world's nations to limit global warming to 2C.
The 2C target means only a quarter of existing, exploitable fossil fuel reserves are burnable, according to a series of recent analyses. That implies trillions of dollars of oil, gas and coal held by investors could become worthless and that continuing exploration for fossil fuels may be pointless.
The resolution, also filed with BP, includes a ban on corporate bonuses for climate-harming activities and a commitment to invest in renewable energy.
"This is a turning point and demonstrates the power of activist strategies to deal with climate change," said Catherine Howarth, chief executive of ShareAction, which helped coordinate the resolutions.
"We maintain our commitment to engage with shareholders in this area," said Shell's executive vice president JJ Traynor, in a letter to shareholders, in which he asked them to back the resolution. "We look forward to implementing the resolution should it be passed at the AGM." The proposal will need the support of 75% of shareholders to pass in May.
"This is a huge victory for the climate, which demonstrates the power of positive shareholder engagement," said Elspeth Owens, at environmental legal group ClientEarth, which also helped coordinate the resolutions. "The vast majority of Shell shareholders are now likely to vote in support. This throws down the gauntlet for BP to face up to its climate risk."
Some investors concerned about global warming have chosen to sell off their fossil fuels stocks in a fast-growing campaign of divestment that seeks to stigmatise the companies. They argue that current business models are unsupportable given that over $700bn a year is spent exploring for new oil, gas and coal, despite three-quarters of existing reserves being unburnable if climate change is tackled.
But other investors argue engaging with companies through shareholder resolutions, for example, has more effect.
"We think our supportive but stretching shareholder resolutions could help focus attention on this increasingly complex challenge for companies, investors and policy makers," said Helen Wildsmith, at CCLA, a UK-based fund manager for charities, churches and local authorities, many of whom co-filed the BP and Shell resolutions.
"We view Shell's decision as a potential turning point in investor engagement with the industry on carbon asset risk," said Andrew Logan, oil & gas program director at the sustainability group Ceres, whose Investor Network on Climate Risk has 110 institutional investors with collective assets of $13 trillion. "However, investors will be closely scrutinizing Shell's disclosures, particularly in light of its decision today to greenlight drilling in the Alaskan Arctic, one of the highest cost and highest risk projects in its entire portfolio."
Major funds around the world are becoming increasingly concerned that limits on carbon emissions will harm the finances of fossil fuel companies and lead to investors losing money.
One of the largest institutional investors in the world, the $177bn New York State Common Retirement Fund, issued a new warning on Thursday. "We are obviously very concerned about the wellbeing of the fund, which is heavily invested in energy stocks worldwide," said Pete Grannis, New York State deputy comptroller, whose office is the sole trustee of the fund, which has one million members.
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The Guardian
January 30, 2015 Friday 8:12 AM GMT
Republicans push through Keystone bill to set up showdown with Obama;
Bill in favour of pipeline's construction glides to 62-36 passage in the Senate, but the president has repeatedly said he will veto the proposal
BYLINE: Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 1071 words
Fresh from their first big legislative win in the new Congress, Republicans on Thursday called on Barack Obama to back down on his veto threat and sign into law a bill approving construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.
As the Keystone bill glided to a 62-36 passage in the Senate, with nine Democrats voting in favour, Republicans stepped up their challenge to Obama's authority and urged him to sign off on the pipeline project.
"The US Senate and House have now passed legislation approving the Keystone XL project, and the American people have repeatedly expressed their support for it," John Hoeven, the North Dakota Republican who introduced the Keystone bill, said.
"I encourage the president to sign this legislation and work with us not only to build this vital infrastructure project, but also to help us develop a comprehensive, all-of-the-above, energy plan for our nation."
With Thursday's vote, the Republicans have made good on their promise to make Keystone the first order of business of the new Congress - although it is highly unlikely to ever become law.
Instead, the Keystone vote produced three weeks of lively debate, with well over 200 free-ranging proposals on every aspect of energy and environmental policy, from solar panels to firearms for Environmental Protection Agency inspectors.
The Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski, who as chair of the energy committee presided over the debate, said the outcome showed that the Senate - under her party's leadership - could now get things done.
Republicans inCongress will now work together to produce a final bill, GOP leaders said.
But the White House has said repeatedly that Obama will veto the bill and Republicans do not have the support to overcome it.
However, Thursday's highly symbolic vote gave the Republicans a firmer platform from which to push Obama to fast-track the pipeline project.
Democrats - who had been anticipating a loss on Keystone from the start - claimed a silver lining in the procedures, saying three weeks of debate had for the first time forced the Republicans on the record about climate change.
"We did find out that the majority of Senate doesn't think that climate change is a hoax, couldn't quite agree whether [it]'s significantly caused by man, or just caused by man in some areas. But that was a step," said Maria Cantwell, a Democratic senator from Washington state.
The three weeks of debate over Keystone roamed the entire landscape of US energy policy, with Democrats proposing amendments to vastly expand solar power or force the pipeline to be built entirely with US steel.
Republicans proposed amendments to ban environmental inspectors from carrying weapons and to strip protections from the lesser prairie chicken.
By Thursday night, the three weeks of debate and 250 proposed amendments were wound up in the bill.
Related: Why are Republicans so obsessed with their Keystone pipe dream? For 35 jobs? | Rep Raul M Grijalva
Undeterred by the prospect of a veto, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, told reporters he was happy with the result, and that the Keystone vote was a step forward for jobs and energy independence.
Republican leaders said they will now work with the House, which voted on its own version of a measure earlier this month, to present a Keystone bill to the president.
Sixty- two senators - all of the Republicans and nine Democrats - voted in favour of the Keystone bill, according to a whip list compiled by the Hill. The nine Democrats were Tom Carper, Bob Casey, Joe Donnelly, Heidi Heitkamp, Joe Manchin, Claire McCaskill, Jon Tester and Mark Warner.
Republicans have not been able to muster the 67 votes needed to overcome a presidential veto.
Legislative procedures have now stretched over a period of more than six years since the Canadian firm, TransCanada, first proposed building a pipeline to deliver crude oil from the tar sands of Alberta to refineries on the Texas Gulf coast.
But they could - at last - be coming to a close, with the Department of State giving government agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department until Monday to weigh in with their view of Keystone's effects on the environment.
Democrats cast the Keystone vote as a handout to a powerful oil lobby and the conservative Koch brother billionaires.
They turned on McConnell for blocking amendments that would have put extra safety obligations on the pipeline.
"This bill is a disgrace," Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat who had formerly headed the Senate's environment and public works committee. "This waives every single law that is important to the American people to protect them."
Brian Schatz, the Hawaii Democrat behind one of the climate change bills, said that for all the sound and fury, the Keystone vote will have almost no effect.
"We vote on Keystone, it will be approved by the House, it will be vetoed by the president and that will be that," he said. "Legislation has a natural lifecycle, and Keystone is approaching the end of its natural lifecycle - and then we will have to deal with deeper, broader energy issues."
The Obama administration is expected to make its ultimate decision on whether Keystone is in the national interest in the first half of the year - although earlier such deadlines have slipped repeatedly.
"Given the fossil fuel industry's stranglehold on our political system, it's no longer even surprising that this Congress has made it their number one priority to try and force approval of an oil pipeline," said 350.org Executive Director May Boeve in a statement. "But thankfully, this vote is a farce - because Keystone XL is a decision for President Obama, not the Climate Denial Congress."
The Republicans' attention to Keystone consumed the first three weeks of their control of Congress - with senators proposing and disposing of 39 amendments to the Keystone bill.
The most significant of these could well be the measures brought forward by Democrats to test the Republican party line on climate change - which is showing signs of a shift.
In a series of symbolic votes, the Senate was asked whether climate change was real, and whether human activity was partly - or significantly - to blame.
The Senate voted overwhelmingly that climate change is indeed occurring - with only one senator, a Republican from Mississippi, dissenting.
But the senators voted down proposed amendments that said human activity was driving climate change.
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The New York Times
January 30, 2015 Friday
Late Edition - Final
Testing Obama, Senate Approves Keystone Bill
BYLINE: By CORAL DAVENPORT
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 16
LENGTH: 980 words
WASHINGTON -- The Senate passed a bill on Thursday to force approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, which President Obama is certain to veto in his first official clash with the new Republican-majority Congress.
The five-year fight over the Keystone pipeline has become a proxy for far broader fights over climate change, energy and the economy, and for the conflict between Mr. Obama and congressional Republicans.
When Republicans won control of the Senate late last year, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, chose the Keystone bill as the first measure Republicans would send to Mr. Obama.
The White House promptly said that Mr. Obama would veto the measure, which would force the approval of a proposed 1,179-mile oil pipeline from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. It would be just the third veto of Mr. Obama's presidency, but the opening shot in a fight over Republican-sponsored measures.
The Senate voted 62 to 36 in favor of building the pipeline. Nine Democrats joined 53 Republicans in passing the bill. The passage sends the measure back to the House, which passed a largely similar bill this month. House leaders are deciding whether to pass the Senate bill as is or to hold a conference merging the House and Senate versions into a new bill to be voted on by each chamber.
Either way, the bill is expected to reach the president's desk as soon as next week. It is unlikely, however, that either the Senate or House can muster the two-thirds majority of votes necessary to override a veto.
Mr. Obama, who currently retains authority to approve or deny the permitting of the pipeline because it crosses an international border, is expected to veto the bill because it would remove his executive authority to make the final decision. Senate Republicans said that if he vetoed the Keystone bill, they would add it on to another measure this year, like must-pass spending legislation or a broader energy bill.
But pressure is mounting on the president from both sides to make a final decision on Keystone construction, which has been pending since he took office.
Mr. Obama has repeatedly said that he is waiting for all reviews and processes to be completed before he makes a final decision. In 2013, he said that his verdict on the pipeline would be based on whether its construction would worsen climate change. But an 11-volume State Department environmental review of the proposed pipeline, released last year, concluded that its construction would not significantly increase the rate of planet-warming pollution into the atmosphere.
After that review was released, Mr. Obama said that he would not issue a decision until a court case in Nebraska over the pipeline's route was settled. Earlier this month, the Nebraska court cleared the way for the pipeline's construction through that state.
Mr. Obama has also said that he wants to wait until a series of reviews by additional cabinet agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency and the departments of Defense, Interior, Homeland Security and Commerce, are complete.
The deadline for those reviews, aimed at determining whether the project is in the national interest, is on Monday.
People on both sides of the debate are urging Mr. Obama to make a decision soon, and some people say that after the years of deliberation and delay, he could weigh in as soon as February.
Senator John Hoeven, a North Dakota Republican who is a chief sponsor of the bill, said: ''You've got Congress approving it on a bipartisan basis. All six states on the route have approved it. The Nebraska court decision is done. The American people overwhelmingly support it. The president has to consider all that when he makes his decision.''
On that point, environmentalist opponents of the pipeline agreed. ''This issue is ready for a decision,'' said Michael Brune, the executive director of the Sierra Club, one of the groups that has held hundreds of rallies outside the White House and around the country, urging Mr. Obama to reject the project. ''After the agencies have weighed in, this issue has been examined enough, and the president has everything he needs to make this decision.''
After all this time and deliberation, Mr. Brune expressed confidence that Mr. Obama would reject the pipeline.
''I bet your lunch he'll reject it,'' he said.
Mr. Brune said his confidence stemmed from recent public statements Mr. Obama had made that disparaged the pipeline project. In a December interview on ''The Colbert Report,'' Mr. Obama said he would weigh the project's effect on climate change against its potential for the creation of jobs.
''We have to examine that, and we have to weigh that against the amount of jobs that it's actually going to create, which aren't a lot,'' he said.
Despite the debate over the pipeline, and its potency as a symbol of energy and environmental policy, experts have pointed out repeatedly that the symbolism vastly outweighs its substance.
Still, the two-week Senate floor fight over the Keystone bill set the stage for debates on more substantial energy and climate change policy issues over the next year, and for the presidential election. Most notably, it forced Republicans into an on-the-record vote on their views on climate change: 15 Republicans voted in favor of a resolution declaring that humans contribute to climate change, and five Republicans voted in favor of a resolution declaring that humans contribute significantly to such change.
The Senate also voted in favor of an energy-efficiency amendment from Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, and Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire. The amendment, which aims to reduce energy use in commercial buildings, would go down in Mr. Obama's veto, but the senators are expected to reintroduce it as a separate measure this year, which has a good chance of congressional and presidential approval.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/30/us/politics/keystone-xl-pipeline-bill-senate-vote.html
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The Guardian
January 29, 2015 Thursday 7:00 PM GMT
Many Americans reject evolution, deny climate change and find GM food unsafe, survey finds;
Study points to worrying gulf between the opinions held by scientists and the general public in the US on key issues
BYLINE: Ian Sample, science editor
SECTION: SCIENCE
LENGTH: 784 words
A major survey of US opinions has revealed that huge numbers of people reject Darwinian evolution, consider GM foods unsafe to eat, and doubt that human activity is warming the planet.
The report by the Pew Research Center in Washington DC was conducted with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and sought to compare the opinions of a cross-section of the US public with those held by the AAAS's scientific members.
Published in the journal Science, the survey found that 31% of the US public believed that humans had existed in their present form since the beginning, with a further 24% stating that humans had evolved under the guiding hand of a supreme being. In contrast, only 2% of AAAS scientists said humans had not evolved in their time on Earth.
The proportion of the public who believed evolution had happened through natural processes, as described by Charles Darwin more than 150 years ago, was only slightly greater than a third at 35%. The survey drew on phone interviews with 2,002 US adults chosen to be representative of the nation, and online questions of 3,748 US-based members of the AAAS.
The US has embraced genetically modifed crops, with 69m hectares (170.4m acres) given over to their cultivation, but the survey suggests the technology is still regarded as contentious by a significant portion of US society. A striking 57% of the public surveyed by Pew believed that GM foods were unsafe to eat. The overwhelming view of the scientists, was that the food was safe, with 88% having no concerns about eating GM.
Perhaps the most contentious issue the survey touched on was climate change, where only half of the population agreed with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change view that climate change was mostly driven by human activity, such as the burning of fossil fuels. Nearly half said there was either no good evidence for global warming, or that the recent warming of the Earth was due to natural climate variability.
Scientists and the broader public disagreed most strongly about the safety of GM foods, though their views differed substantially on global warming too, with 87% of scientists believing that climate change was mostly caused by human activity.
Alan Leshner, the chief executive of the AAAS, said the survey revealed a worrying gulf between the opinions held by scientists and the general public. "There is a disconnect between the way in which the public perceives the state of science and science's position on a variety of issues," he said. "And that's a cause of concern."
Cary Funk, lead author of the report, said the number of issues that scientists and the public disagreed on, and the amount to which they disagreed, were both surprising. One of the few issues the two groups did agreed on was that the International Space Station had been a good investment for the country.
There were some other areas where scientists and the public shared concerns. Both delivered damning verdicts on US science education, the K-12 primary and secondary school system. Among the general public, 68% considered US science education average or below average, and an overwhelming proportion of scientists, 84%, agreed with them.
In some cases, a poor science education was at the heart of the differences in opinion, Leshner said. "Sometimes it's simply a lack of understanding, sometimes it's an economic or a politicial issue, and sometimes it's a conflict between, say, core religious belief, or core values, and what science is showing," he said. "In all of these cases, science is being trumped by these other factors and scientists need to do something to turn that around."
"It's not about whether the public is dumb or not. It's partly a function of the American educational system that does a terrible job... at educating young people in science, math and technology," he added.
Perhaps reflecting a common scepticism over climate change, the survey found greater support among the public for fracking and offshore drilling than among the scientists. Enthusiasm for building more nuclear power plants was far higher among the scientists than the public, with 65% versus 45% in favour.
In an accompanying editorial, Leshner issued a call to arms, urging scientists to strike up "respectful dialogues" with groups in community clubs, science museums and religious institutions. "The opinion gap must not be allowed to swell into an unbridgeable chasm," he warned.
"We need to have what scence is showing be represented accurately and for people to at least have that in their toolbox when they make their own decisions," Leshner said. "It works against the benefit of humankind for people to have distorted views of what the actual facts are."
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The Guardian
January 29, 2015 Thursday 2:00 PM GMT
New research reveals extreme oxygen loss in oceans during past climate change;
During global warming after the last ice age, we found evidence of extreme oxygen loss in the oceans
BYLINE: Sarah Moffitt
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 822 words
New research published this week reveals that vast stretches of the ocean interior abruptly lost oxygen during the transition out of the last ice age that occurred 17,000-10,000 years ago. This event was the most recent example of large-scale global warming, and was caused primarily by changes in Earth's orbit around the sun.
Past climate events provide informative case studies for understanding what is currently happening to the modern climate system. For this research, marine sediment core records across the Pacific Ocean were used to reconstruct the subsurface "footprint" of dissolved oxygen loss during abrupt global climate warming.
Like most of the life on the planet, the large majority of marine organisms need oxygen to live. Most marine life, from salmon, crabs, to shellfish, respires oxygen and many forms are intolerant of low oxygen seawater. Low oxygen zones have been incorrectly referred to as "dead zones." In reality, they are host to bizarre ecosystems of extremophiles: worms, bacteria, and specialized urchins and bivalves colonize these harsh environments.
But, importantly, few commercially significant species of fish or shellfish can live within the low oxygen zones. So, if you are a microbial biologist you might be very excited to find a low oxygen zone, but if you are a commercial fisherperson, that low oxygen zone represents a no-go environment for fishing.
I asked Dr. Tessa Hill, Associate Professor in the Department of Earth of Planetary Sciences at the University of California at Davis, and one of my coauthors on this research, to reflect on motivation behind this project. She said,
This study provides an excellent example of utilizing past periods environmental change to understand and predict the consequences of human-induced climate change, and where we may be headed in the future.
The new research, which I led, found that entire ocean basins can abruptly lose dissolved oxygen in sync with other global-scale climate change indicators: temperature rise, atmospheric carbon concentration increases, and sea level rise.
From the Subarctic Pacific to the Chilean margin in the Southern Hemisphere, we found evidence of extreme oxygen loss stretching from the shallow upper ocean to about 3,000 meters deep in some regions. The transition from the last ice age to today's warmer climate substantially reduced the oxygenated habitat of the global ocean and reorganized the distribution of marine life.
Low oxygen zones were not found in the upper ocean in the glacial world; once the deglaciation (i.e. the shedding of massive glaciers, the rise of global temperatures) was underway, ocean systems dramatically responded. Upper ocean ecosystems, which are those that are connected to the surface ocean and have high concentrations of dissolved oxygen, were compressed towards the ocean surface. Below these oxygenated ecosystems, vast and inhospitable low oxygen zones developed.
Major changes in the distribution of oxygen are already underway in the modern ocean. Modern losses of dissolved oxygen have been detected in every ocean basin by oceanographers and modern instrumentation. I asked Dr. Lisa A. Levin, Distinguished Professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California at San Diego for her perspective on climate-influenced oxygen changes. She told me,
It is important that oxygen appears on our 'radar screen' as we look into the future, for oxygen loss in the ocean exerts critical control on the numbers, types and distributions of fish and shellfish that we harvest. By understanding the coupling in the past between the global climate system and oxygen in the ocean we are better prepared to adapt human activities to future changes in oxygenation.
Oceanographers can anticipate that subsurface low oxygen zones have the capacity to rapidly expand to states that the Earth hasn't seen in 14,000 years. How do we manage and conserve an ocean that is moving towards a physical state that has never been observed in human history?
These are real and critical issues that modern fisheries, conservation and resource management will have to grapple with in the coming decades. The immense risk of ocean oxygen loss in a future of climate change essentially dwarfs the existing modern paradigms of ecosystem-level conservation and management action.
To reframe this information, not as a scientist, but as a citizen, a SCUBA diver and salmon eater: we really have a lot to lose in the face of climate change. We need a living, breathing ocean to sustain us, and to sustain the balance of our ocean's biodiversity, in the future.
It is my hope that this research can illustrate the risks to our living planet and our food system, which go hand-in-hand with of the need for political solutions to human-caused climate change that are thus far lacking.
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The Guardian
January 29, 2015 Thursday 12:46 PM GMT
British belief in climate change on the rise, research finds;
Poll finds 15% say climate change is major threat in next two decades, jumping to 29% for people with direct recent experience of flooding
BYLINE: Fiona Harvey
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 665 words
Britons are more likely to agree the climate is changing than at any time in recent years, with nearly nine in 10 people saying climate change is happening and 84% attributing this somewhat or entirely to human activity, new research has found. Two-thirds say they are concerned by global warming.
When asked to name major threats to the UK in the next two decades, 15% of those polled listed climate change without prompting, putting it in fourth position behind immigration, the economy and health. But among people who had direct recent experience of flooding, the number nearly doubled, to 29%.
Nick Pidgeon, professor at Cardiff University, who co-authored the research, said this showed that there was a clear link between last year's severe flooding incidents, which left thousands homeless, and the perception of global warming.
"An association between last year's winter flooding and climate change has been forming in the minds of many ordinary people in Britain, who also view these events as a sign of things to come," he said.
This link should be used by scientists and politicians to reinforce their message that action on carbon emissions is vital, he added. "In my view they [scientists] should be a bit more decisive in saying extreme weather is one of the risks of climate change," he said. A poll last August found the floods had caused 27% of the UK public to increase their belief that climate change was manmade.
The science of climate change "attribution" - linking specific extreme weather events to the effects of global warming - is making substantial progress, so it is becoming increasingly possible for scientists to tie particular weather patterns to climate change.
Across the UK, only 13% of the population take the opinion that climate change is not caused by human activity. That contrasts with 2011, when 21% of people said climate change was mainly or entirely the result of natural processes.
The Ipsos MORI survey questioned 1,002 respondents from across the UK, together with another 995 people from five areas of England and Wales that were afflicted by last year's winter flooding. Of the latter group, 135 respondents had suffered directly from the flooding last winter.
A large majority (75%) of the general sample said the floods were some of the worst events to have happened to the UK in recent years, and 82% said the country had not been prepared for them. Only 36% thought the affected regions had coped well with the impact of the floods. Nearly two thirds (63%) said the floods were caused, at least in part, by climate change.
Most people are also willing to take action on greenhouse gas emissions, and to have the government and businesses take action, the Cardiff poll found. More than eight in 10 said they would buy more energy-efficient appliances and cut down on energy use at home, while 53% said they would be willing to make significant lifestyle changes to address climate change. Four in 10 said they would reduce the amount they travel by car.
Related: UK flood victims less likely to be climate sceptics
Three quarters of people said they supported the UK signing up to international agreements to limit emissions, with 14% neutral and only 7% opposed. On subsidies for wind farms and other renewables, people are split down the middle: four in 10 people support tax increases to pay for more renewable energy, with a similar number opposed and a further fifth neutral. Nearly half support road pricing schemes, with 18% neutral and a third opposed.
When asked what they would do about climate change, including options to change to a green energy supplier or sign a petition, only 14% said they would contact their local MP on the issue. This could provide a clue as to why so many MPs, Conservatives especially, are able to be markedly more sceptical on climate change than the electorate - if voters are not telling them it is an issue they care about, they may be more likely to follow their own inclinations or be swayed by lobbyists.
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The Guardian
January 29, 2015 Thursday 9:32 AM GMT
UK flood victims less likely to be climate sceptics;
A new study finds that those directly affected by floods are more likely to agree climate change is a serious issue
BYLINE: Adam Corner
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 1172 words
Exactly one year ago, fierce winter weather was causing havoc across the UK. Large parts of the Somerset Levels were submerged, Wales had been battered by coastal storms, residents in the Thames estuary were on red-alert, and Cornwall was cut off by rail, as the line at Dawlish collapsed into the sea.
Although storms are an integral part of the great British winter, these floods were remarkable, leading the news agenda for weeks on end and causing disruption to thousands of people's lives. In a changing climate, floods like these will happen more often, and they will become more intense. But did people make the link between the flooding and climate change?
A new study released today by the Understanding Risk team at Cardiff University provides some fascinating answers to this question. In the months following the flooding, a nationally representative survey of around 1,000 people was conducted, asking about people's views on climate change, on the floods, and whether they saw a link between the two.
The results were striking. Most respondents (85%) felt that flooding had become more common, and that it would continue to get worse in the future. At the same time, scepticism about climate change was at its lowest for 10 years: very few people disputed the link between human activity and climate change.
Related: Your brain on climate change: why the threat produces apathy, not action
Two-thirds of respondents thought the floods were a sign that the impacts of climate change were already beginning to be felt, while an even clearer majority (72%) agreed that the floods were a sign of what we should expect in the future from climate change.
As would be expected, people also pointed to other important factors (such as insufficient investment, and poor river dredging) to explain the damage caused by the flooding. But climate change featured surprisingly strongly in the mix. So did the flooding act as a trigger, focusing people's minds on the risks of climate change?
A standard survey would be unable to answer this question. Tempting as it may be to make this inference, it is crucial not to confuse correlation with causation: perhaps people who were already concerned about climate change were more inclined to make a link to the floods, rather than the other way around.
But in this study, the nationwide survey was compared to a second group who lived in one of five areas of the country that had been directly affected by the flooding. This allowed the researchers to examine the impact that "being flooded" had on people's attitudes towards climate change.
Again, the findings were striking. People who had experienced flooding were not only more concerned about climate change, but also more likely to report that they had become more concerned about climate change in the past 12 months. In the national sample, around 15% of people spontaneously named climate change as one of the three most serious issues facing the country - in the flood-affected sample, this rose to nearly 30%. When asked whether their local area was likely to be affected by climate change, 61% of respondents who had been flooded said yes, compared to only 15% of the national sample.
Related: How framing can move climate change from scientific to social fact
It is perhaps not surprising that floods of this magnitude would leave a mark on the national consciousness. But the fact that the flooding also impacted on people's views about climate change is important. And from a communications perspective, the findings offer some crucial signposts for how to engage the public more effectively.
Firstly, events like these provide a chance to build public support for policies that will reduce climate risks in the future - provided communities are approached in a sensitive and respectful way. Climate change is a notoriously intangible risk for people to grasp. But when floods bring the problem closer to home, there is a window of opportunity for having a national conversation about climate change that is not usually open.
The survey findings also offer some guidance about what form this conversation could take. There were consistently high levels of agreement with statements about the increasing prevalence of flooding, attribution of the floods to climate change, the need to be better prepared in the future and the importance of supporting an international agreement to reduce carbon emissions.
To illustrate how these findings are relevant to public engagement, consider the following example narrative - the sort of statement that a campaigner, a policymaker or a community activist might make: "It's clear that the climate is changing - many of us have noticed the signs. In fact, after the economy, immigration and the NHS, climate change is one of the most serious issues facing the UK. Most people sense that flooding is already getting worse, and fear that it will keep getting worse in the future. The floods of 2014 show us what we can expect from climate change, but we were unprepared and understandably, people felt angry. The government should take steps to protect people from flooding in the future, by supporting an international agreement to limit carbon emissions in Paris later this year."
It is a powerful message - but every single sentence reflects the sentiments expressed by survey respondents, and draws on the exact wording of questions where there was agreement by more than 70% of those surveyed.
Because of the probabilistic and often indirect link between weather and climate, clearly worded statements about cause and effect - or confident predictions about climate impacts in the future - are often problematic for scientists to make. Data on public perceptions cannot overcome the challenges associated with the complexity of the relationship between weather and climate. But the survey findings suggest that appealing to popular opinion on the need to take climate impacts more seriously may be an effective alternative approach.
The message for politicians, campaigners and communicators is clear: scepticism is low, and concern about flood risks is high. The argument that climate change is a "vote-loser" is no longer a credible excuse for inaction.
Adam Corner is the research director for the Climate Outreach and Information Network (COIN), and is an honorary research fellow in the School of Psychology at Cardiff University. He was part of the research team that designed the survey described in this article.
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The Guardian
January 29, 2015 Thursday 9:00 AM GMT
Climate change on Valentine's Day: what might you lose that you love?;
Share what treasured things in your community could be affected by climate change or something you love about the planet that may be lost forever
BYLINE: Carla Kweifio-Okai
SECTION: GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT
LENGTH: 392 words
Environmental campaigners are calling for people to declare their love for the planet on 14 February - Valentine's Day.
The Climate Coalition, made up of more than 100 UK organisations campaigning for action on climate change, is asking people to submit photos of things they love that they fear losing due to the effects of climate change. Submissions so far include photos of rivers, coral reefs, wildlife and "the changing of the seasons".
The UN has acknowledged that people in developing countries will be among those most affected by climate change, with a gradual rise in sea levels, higher temperatures and more unpredictable rains. The coalition's campaign comes after the UN Development Programme head, Helen Clark, called for world leaders to acknowledge the impact climate change is having on the fight against poverty.
Mohamed Adow, senior climate change adviser at Christian Aid, a member of the coalition, said the campaign was an opportunity to capture the attention of world leaders in the lead-up to UN climate talks in Paris in December.
"This year is an important opportunity for tackling the ever-increasing threat of climate change," Adow said. "The Climate Coalition's show the love campaign aims to make sure that the government and big business know that people around the world care about climate change.
"The campaign aims to show politicians who are embarking on a general election campaign that tackling climate change is important to us because it will affect the things we love most, like our lifestyles, our children's futures, our hobbies, passions, safety and wellbeing, both here and globally."
We'd like to hear from you - what treasured things in your community could be affected by climate change? It may be a feature of your local environment, something your community relies on, or something more abstract. Upload your photos and stories via GuardianWitness and we'll choose our favourites to share on the site. If you're unable to upload photos, share your thoughts on how climate change could affect life in your community.
GuardianWitness is the home of user-generated content on the Guardian. Contribute your video, pictures and stories, and browse news, reviews and creations submitted by others. Posts will be reviewed prior to publication on GuardianWitness, and the best pieces will feature on the Guardian site.
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The Guardian
January 29, 2015 Thursday 5:54 AM GMT
Australian fish moving south as climate changes, say researchers;
University of Tasmania finds 35 species face shifts in their ranges and egg-laying patterns as the waters off south-east Australia warm faster than average
BYLINE: Oliver Milman
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 535 words
Australian scientists have assessed how 35 common fish species are coping with climate change, finding that most have to deal with new conditions and many are moving towards polar waters to find suitable habitats.
Research led by the University of Tasmania's institute for marine and Antarctic studies analysed the climate sensitivity of fish found off the south-east coast of Australia. The region is one of more than a dozen global ocean "hotspots" - others include off Brazil, in the Indian ocean and the North Sea - where the water is warming much faster than the global average for the world's oceans.
The 35 species of fish, ranked for their importance to the commercial fishing industry as well as their ecological significance, had a varied response to increasing sea temperatures and changing levels of nutrients and plankton.
Species such as abalone, blue swimmer crab, southern calamari, southern rock lobster and western king prawns will experience a high impact from changing temperatures.
Australian salmon will face similarly large changes due to altering winds and currents, while black bream will have to cope with changed freshwater flows.
Species were assessed on their distribution, how many eggs they lay and their capacity for movement.
Researchers stressed that not all of these changes would be disastrous for fish, but that most of the studied species will have to alter their habits or range of habitat in some way, with many shifting towards cooler waters near the poles to survive.
"We found a mixed bag - some positive and some negative," said Dr Gretta Pecl, lead author of the study. "Some species are shifting south and increasing their range, while others are already at their tolerance for temperature and as it warms, their range will shrink.
"In Tasmania, there's been an increase in snapper and yellow-tailed kingfish, which is great for the fishing industry. But in South Australia, there may be parts of the gulf regions unsuitable for snapper and it may decline there.
"Temperature will be the major factor and off the coast of Tasmania the rate of warming is four times the global average. For species that are highly sensitive to temperature, it will affect the rate of growth, the amount of energy it needs and its oxygen consumption. Almost no aspect will be unaffected."
Pecl said fish species were being increasingly sighted outside their traditional ranges, such as coral trout seen in New South Wales, a manta ray off north east Tasmania and whale sharks getting as far south as Perth.
International research published in 2013 found that fish species were being pushed towards the poles at a rate of 7kms every year as they chase the climates they can survive in.
The global sea surface temperature has increased by around 0.1C per decade since the 1970s. As well as warming waters, marine creatures have to deal with increasing acidification as excess carbon dioxide is absorbed and lowers the pH level of the oceans.
The research into how fish will cope with climate change was funded by state and federal government agencies and will be shared with other countries to help them manage their fisheries. US and Canadian authorities have already adapted and applied the data.
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The Guardian
January 28, 2015 Wednesday 10:06 PM GMT
US Senate refuses to accept humanity's role in global climate change, again;
Senators accept global warming is not a hoax but fail to recognise human activity is to blame, nearly 27 years after scientists laid out man's role
BYLINE: Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 852 words
It is nearly 27 years now since a Nasa scientist testified before the US Senate that the agency was 99% certain that rising global temperatures were caused by the burning of fossil fuels.
And the Senate still has not got it - based on the results of three symbolic climate change votes on Wednesday night.
The Senate voted virtually unanimously that climate change is occurring and not, as some Republicans have said, a hoax - but it defeated two measures attributing its causes to human activity.
Only one Senator, Roger Wicker, a Republican from Mississippi, voted against a resolution declaring climate change was real and not - as his fellow Republican, Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma once famous declared - a hoax. That measure passed 98 to one.
Related: White House unveils plan to open Atlantic waters to offshore oil drilling
But the Senate voted down two measures that attributed climate change to human activity - and that is far more important.
Unless Senators are prepared to acknowledge the causes of climate change, it is likely they will remain unable and unwilling to do anything about it.
Democrats had planned the symbolic, "sense of the Senate" votes as a way of exposing the Republicans' increasingly embarrassing climate change denial. Further climate votes will come up on Thursday.
Two were tacked on as Democratic amendments to a bill seeking to force approval of the contentious Keystone XL pipeline - despite a veto threat from Barack Obama.
The third, introduced by a Republican, affirmed climate change was real but expressed support for the Keystone XL pipeline.
The first vote, introduced by the Rhode Island Democrat, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, said only: "To express the sense of the Senate that climate change is real and not a hoax."
But Republicans have grown canny about being called out as climate deniers. For the Republican party leadership the current preferred phrase now is: "I am not a scientist" - which casts doubt but avoids outright denial. However, Obama made that line a butt of his jokes in the State of the Union address.
Related: Climate change responsible for super-charging winter storms, scientists say
Inhofe, the veteran climate denier in the Senate and incoming chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, stunned a number of Democrats when he asked to co-sponsor the amendment.
For a moment it looked like the ultimate climate denier had had a change of heart - but no. Inhofe was ready to acknowledge climate change was occurring but he was adamant it had nothing to do with human activity such as the burning of fossil fuels.
"Climate is changing and climate has always changed and always will," Inhofe told the Senate. "The hoax is that there are some people who are so arrogant to think they are so powerful they can change climate. Man can't change climate."
The quick thinking from Inhofe now leaves Wicker, the new chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, as the only Republican to still embrace the entire idea of climate change as a hoax.
Wicker did not immediately comment on his vote. But he has regularly said that there is no firm evidence of global temperature rise.
An amendment introduced by the North Dakota Republican and Keystone bill sponsor, John Hoeven, attributed climate change to human activity, but said the pipeline would have no significant impacts. Fifteen Republicans voted in favour - but Hoeven winded up voting against his own measure. The vote failed to gather the 60 needed votes, falling 59-40.
The final climate amendment, introduced by the Hawaii Democrat Brian Schatz, went further, stating: "human activity significantly contributes to climate change."
Only five Republicans supported it - Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Susan Collins of Maine and Mark Kirk of Illinois.
Rand Paul of Kentucky, Marco Rubio of Florida, and Ted Cruz of Texas - all thought of as leading Republican contenders for the 2016 presidential race - voted against. The bill was defeated 50-49.
Environmental groups claimed a partial victory - at least Republicans were admitting climate change was indeed occurring.
"I'm hoping that after many years of darkness and blockade that this can be a first little vote beam of light through the wall that will allow us to at least start having an honest conversation about what carbon pollution is doing to our climate and to our oceans," Whitehouse told the Senate.
But the Senate has acknowledged the existence of climate change before and, as long ago as 2005, voted to affirm that human activity was its driver.
Since 2005, there has been an entire decade of accumulating evidence in real-time of the effects of climate change - and its threat in the future.
"We are worse off than 2005," said Robert Brulle, a sociologist at Drexel University who writes about the climate denial movement. "The resolution saying that anthropogenic climate change is real and we need to act passed in 2005, and failed in 2015," he said in an email. "A similar resolution failed today. 10 years, more certain science, less political will."
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The Guardian
January 28, 2015 Wednesday 5:13 PM GMT
Prince Charles: business must stop blocking action on climate change;
The prince says time is running out and warns business leaders must address chasm between principles at home and at work
BYLINE: Jo Confino
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 852 words
Prince Charles has launched a blistering attack on companies that are actively seeking to delay progress on preventing runaway climate change. Highlighting the need for a radical shift in the way the economy is run, he said that over the past decade he has been met by either indifference from mainstream business leaders and economists, or outright opposition.
Pointing out that science had proved beyond doubt the terrifying impacts of inaction, he called on executives to collapse the chasm between how they acted at home and what they were prepared to do in the office.
"We need to start integrating the business public self with the private family self," he told a meeting of the Corporate Leaders Group. "So that when you go home in the evenings, perhaps you think a little bit about what you are doing and whether it is the right way to go."
Related: Tougher government attitudes on climate change key to business action
A decade ago, the prince said few businesses were contemplating the transformative changes required to achieve sustainability, with the majority "actively delaying progress by equating environmental action with damage to their balance sheets."
In the more than 100 meetings and seminars he has attended since then, the prince said he had "experienced every sort of reaction to the suggestions from myself and many others that time is running out. The negative reactions have ranged from polite indifference to the pronouncement by an economist - who else - that I was 'the enemy of the enlightenment'."
Saying that humanity is now in a battle about how we survive as a species, he called on executives to join forces with NGOs to put pressure on political leaders to be more courageous ahead of the Paris climate change talks in December. In particular, he welcomed the decision of the Corporate Leaders Group, which he founded a decade ago, to join forces with other business coalitions, such as We Mean Business, to bring more pressure to bear.
"Forward-thinking businesses are ever more determined that they are going to be a part of the solution to climate change, and they are acting to show that this is true," the prince said.
"So in the last ten years significant progress has been made and the consensus to strengthen climate action is broader and stronger than ever before. But is that consensus broad enough and strong enough?"
Related: Let's face it: we have to choose between our economy and our future
Speaking of the need to divert finances away from fossil fuels to a low carbon economy, the prince highlighted the importance of the insurance sector, pension funds and sovereign wealth funds.
"Once they are fully engaged - and it seems to be taking an inordinate amount of time to get to that point - they have the vision, the skills and the capacity to drive real change," he said.
The transition to a low carbon economy will, he added, require a complete transformation of our relationship with energy, and action is required on the distorting impact of the subsidies received by the fossil fuel industry.
He also urged for an acceleration in the implementation of a circular economy model in order to ensure a greater emphasis on resource efficiency, saying that the world needed to move "from the take, make and dispose approach adopted in a linear economic model to the make, use and recover of the circular economies. This whole process of transition will have to be undertaken with great care and sensitivity to manage the impact of changes on jobs and local economies."
Challenging those who argue changes in the economic model would cost a fortune, he said he had been told that well over half of the emissions savings required over the next 15 years to keep warming below 2C would create economic benefits that exceed their costs.
The prince complained about the negative impacts of siloed thinking that separated environmental issues from development goals and pointed to numerous examples of how these issues are interconnected.
In particular he referred to deforestation in the Amazon being almost certainly the prime cause of a desperate drought in Sao Paolo and how the survival of coastal communities in Africa and Asia is threatened by industrial-scale fishing.
"There are many, many more examples of just how desperate these inextricably linked social and environmental problems have become," he said. "Even in a world full of daunting perils and crises, it is hard to imagine greater challenges for humanity."
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The Guardian
January 28, 2015 Wednesday 4:12 PM GMT
Green news roundup: fracking curbs, monarch butterflies and beavers;
The week's top environment news stories and green events · Sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox
BYLINE: Environment editor
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 279 words
Environment news
· Tories forced into U-turn on fast-track fracking after accepting Labour plans· Lancashire council defers Cuadrilla fracking decision· Prince Charles: global pact on climate change could be Magna Carta for Earth· Yes, we can live well and avoid climate disaster, says UK government· Monarch butterflies rebound but levels in Mexico still at near-record low· China coal production falls for first time this century· Climate change will hit Australia harder than rest of world, study shows· Relocation of animals could drive some species towards extinction - study
On the blogs
· Queensland election: Climate science denied and ignored· Why is so little attention paid to Madagascar's incredible wildlife?· Climate change could impact the poor much more than previously thought· Eight months' wait for UK Mail to pay up for a crushed bike
Multimedia
· Smog journeys: A short film about air pollution in China - video· The week in wildlife - in pictures· Snapshots from Tanzania's wildlife reserves - in pictures
Features and comment
· George Monbiot: With this attack on community energy the big six win out over 'big society'· Why London is rubbish at solar· Smart thermostats reviewed: Which can save you the most?· Can anything stop the rhino poaching crisis?· Why Labour opposes this fanatical faith in shale gas· 'Fifty miles out we could smell the pollution': sailing amid the ocean litter
...And finally
· England's beavers allowed to stay in the wildGovernment rolls back on plan to trap England's first wild beavers in 300 years, saying they can be released into Devon's river Otter once they have been confirmed as disease free and of Eurasian origin
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The Guardian
January 28, 2015 Wednesday 10:51 AM GMT
The new yuppies: how to build a new generation of tech-savvy farmers;
If the highest calibre of young people become farmers it will improve food security and help solve the unemployment crisis. Can tech make farming cool?
BYLINE: Danielle Nierenberg in New Orleans
SECTION: GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT PROFESSIONALS NETWORK
LENGTH: 859 words
As farmers age around the globe - I estimate that the average age is 55 - we need to make sure that young people see the food system as a viable career option. These farmers are the future of food. They can help to mitigate and potentially reverse climate change, curb unemployment and provide more nutrient-dense crops to the world.
Unfortunately, farming is usually seen as a last-resort profession. Rural youth migrate to cities in search of employment, and lack of infrastructure and education leads to poverty and malnutrition. But investing in young agricultural leaders has the power to transform the entire food system. Government leaders, businesses, and farmers groups need to make agriculture something youth want to do, not something they feel forced to do.
Related: How to inspire a generation of farming entrepreneurs
Climate change presents complex challenges for farmers of all ages, but youth are eager to use technology to access community-driven networks that harness knowledge to help. The Agroecological Intensification Exchange, for example, connects online users to innovations all over the world. Agroecological intensification aims at improving productivity and efficiency through better farm management, improved stability and diversity of yields and enhanced use of local resources. The site's database, with case studies and research on topics from crop ecology to disease management, is a resource for practitioners and researchers in developing countries seeking to improve agricultural systems and adapt to the changing climate.
Networks with an explicit focus on youth are also crucial. The Global Forum on Agricultural Research and the Young Professionals for Agricultural Development (Ypard) are focusing on cultivating the next generation of farmers, researchers, scientists, agronomists and policymakers. Ypard has grown into a network of more than 4,500 members in 117 countries and young professionals share innovations and learn from farmers and researchers in other parts of the world. Ypard involves youth in critical conversations about agricultural research and policy including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations and other important meetings where youth typically don't have a voice.
Youth unemployment rates are on the rise in many developing countries - today, some 4.5 million youth around the globe are unemployed. But increasing the appeal of professions in agriculture can help solve this economic problem - creating social stability and food security. For farming to attract youth, it must become more profitable.
Related: Unlocking the power of women farmers
Luckily, the development of agriculture-focused cell phone applications is transforming the way people run their farms: sub-Saharan Africa has more 650 million cell phone subscribers, and the number is growing. Tigo Kilimo in Tanzania and Mobile Agribiz in the Democratic Republic of Congo provide small-scale farmers with crucial weather information and agricultural tips. And SokoniSMS64 in Kenya sends farmers texts with accurate market prices from around the country, helping them negotiate with traders and connect to markets. Access to this information can help farmers make the right decisions about what to plant and who to sell to - decisions that make a big difference about whether a harvest is profitable.
Achieving food security and combating malnutrition in the developing world also depends on improving the nutrient density of the crops. The International Fund for Agricultural Development (Ifad) emphasises that while increasing productivity and profitability are important, improving nutrition requires more attention. This can be achieved, in part, through changes in practices - including better storage, preservation and processing.
Related: Top six innovations for rural farmers
And instead of growing starchy staples, young farmers are diversifying crop production to increase nutrition and incomes. Developing Innovations in School Cultivation, or Project Disc, in Uganda, is working with nursery school to high school students to develop a better appreciation - and taste - for indigenous foods. Edie Mukiibi, the project's co-founder and now vice president of Slow Food International, says that "if a person doesn't know how to grow food, they don't know how to eat". By working with schools to get students excited about indigenous plants, cooking, and preserving foods, Project Disc is instilling a positive perception of farming and lifelong knowledge about nutrition.
Empowering youth in developing countries to bring their energy to the agricultural sector is an ongoing effort. This effort must begin again with each new generation to help nourish both people and the planet. And it requires the support of policymakers, consumers, and innovators worldwide - the future of food depends on it.
Danielle Nierenberg is president of Food Tank. Follow @DaniNierenberg on Twitter.
Join our community of development professionals and humanitarians. Follow @GuardianGDP on Twitter.
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The Guardian
January 28, 2015 Wednesday 10:43 AM GMT
Yes, we can live well and avoid climate disaster, says UK government;
We can fly, drive and prosper while avoiding dangerous global warming - but only if billions remain in poverty and huge changes are made in areas such as energy and agriculture, new analysis from Decc's Global Calculator shows
BYLINE: Fiona Harvey
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 862 words
The world can enjoy higher standards of living and more travel, while drastically cutting emissions to avoid dangerous climate change - but only with sweeping changes to our infrastructure, the natural world and agriculture, a new analysis has found.
The UK government analysis also assumes that billions of people will remain in dire poverty at mid-century, despite efforts to lift them to greater prosperity, as the population rises to an estimated nine billion people.
Dealing with greenhouse gas emissions will require a transformation of electricity generation, including an expansion of renewable energy and nuclear power, as well as more public transport and changes to the built environment, according to the key findings of the Global Calculator, an online software tool developed by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc), with partners.
The calculator is intended to show the likely outcomes of a variety of choices that policymakers and the public can make to tackle global warming, such as investing in nuclear, insulating houses, making electrical appliances more efficient and using electric vehicles.
Some of the findings are likely to be controversial. The analysis suggests that to cope with the food demands of a rising population, much more land will need to be brought under cultivation, which could have harmful side effects on biodiversity, and genetically modified crops may be needed to boost yields.
Far more intensive agriculture will be necessary, with the amount of beef raised in confined systems - vast cattle warehouses in which the animals rarely or never see grass - accounting for as much as 15% of the global herd by mid-century. Consumers must also switch away from eating beef to poultry and vegetables.
The analysis also found that deforestation must be halted and the extent of forested land increased by between 5% and 15% by 2050 - a mammoth task, given the failure of efforts so far to halt forest destruction.
However, the analysis depends on several key factors. For instance, within the emissions limits required to hold global warming to less than 2C above pre-industrial levels, in theory it ought to be possible for everyone in the world to travel 12,400km a year, up from an average of 8,300km a year at present.
Currently, people in the US travel an average of 16,000km a year, and in the EU about 10,000km, while the average Indian travels 6,000km and Chinese less than 2,000km a year. So the increases in air travel in the developed world seen in recent years, thanks to the proliferation of cheap flights, will have to be severely limited in future to stay within these levels.
Similarly, nutrition that fulfils our daily needs, of 2,100 calories a day, is possible for the entire planet, but is unlikely to reach everyone without a transformation in global equity. According to the models used to develop the calculator, billions of people are likely to remain in poverty at mid-century, and they are unlikely to benefit much in the form of the better nutrition, better housing or increases in travel which are theoretically possible.
Decc officials were unable to tell the Guardian what the emissions outcomes were likely to be if campaigners succeeded in "making poverty history".
The cost of meeting the 2C scenario was likely to be about 2% to 3% of global GDP annually, on average, between now and 2050, the officials said.
Anyone can use the tool to experiment with different possible future scenarios, for instance by seeing how much renewable energy would have to be generated in a future where nuclear energy was avoided, where other emissions cuts would have to come from if people took many more flights than they do today, or how much land could be freed up for forests if more people adhered to a mostly vegetarian diet.
Ed Davey, secretary of state for energy and climate change, said: "For the first time, this calculator shows that everyone in the world can prosper while limiting global temperature rises to 2C, preventing the most serious impacts of climate change. Yet the calculator is also very clear that we must act now to change how we use and generate energy and how we use our land if we are going to achieve this green growth."
Campaigners welcomed the tool as showing that action on climate change was compatible with prosperous lifestyles for much of the world.
Mike Childs, head of policy at Friends of the Earth, said: "The need for urgent action to avoid dangerous climate change is well accepted, but the steps we should take are often hotly contested. This excellent tool enables everyone to play the role of world leader and make decisions on the action we should take in key areas such as energy, manufacturing and farming.
"It shows we can still avoid the world warming by much less than 2C above pre-industrial levels - all we need is the will to act. This calculator demonstrates to our political leaders that a cleaner, safer, fairer world is possible."
The tool is being offered to other governments, for use in the run-up to crunch negotiations in Paris at the end of this year, at which a new global agreement on emissions, to come into force after 2020, is supposed to be signed.
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The Guardian
January 28, 2015 Wednesday 7:27 AM GMT
Queensland election: Climate science denied and ignored;
Climate change science has been a non-starter in the Queensland election, despite the state being on the front line of impacts
BYLINE: Graham Readfearn
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 1256 words
What does the Queensland election campaign and Nobel Prize winner the late Professor Sherwood Rowland have in common?
Nothing. And also everything.
Rowland's work leading to the 1995 chemistry prize was key to understanding the ozone layer.
Rowland's co-authored 1974 paper in Nature theorised that the gases in air-conditioners and aerosols - the now banned chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) - could deplete the ozone layer.
It would be over a decade later that a great big hole in the aforementioned region of the stratosphere was found hovering over the Antarctic. At the time of accepting his Nobel Prize, Sherwood is reported to have said:
What is the use of having developed a science well enough to make predictions if, in the end, all we're willing to do is stand around and wait for them to come true?
That might be a good question to ask the supposed leaders of the main political parties contesting the Queensland election this Saturday.
New climate modeling, same old story
Climate scientist Gavin Schmidt, the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, quoted Sherwood in a talk last year explaining the nuts, the bolts, the skill and the missing bits of climate models. You should watch it.
CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology have just released the latest results from a range of climate models to give policy makers and politicians an idea of what the future holds.
They make a range of predictions that depend on whether or not the world continues to burn fossil fuels like they're going out of fashion (the bureau doesn't put it in quite those terms, however).
If global emissions of greenhouse gases stay on their current high pathway, then by 2090 Australia's average temperature will have gone up by between 2.8C and 5.1C. Temperatures have already risen 0.9C since 1910.
Sea level rise will accelerate, extreme rainfall events that cause floods will intensify, weather patterns will become more conducive to raging bushfires and severe droughts will come along more frequently.
Those paying attention have heard this kind of thing all before, numerous times, over the last decade or two.
While the 2015 projections provided "greater levels of detail and confidence", BoM and CSIRO said they were "consistent with previous projections research and analysis for Australia".
In regions including Queensland, there will be an increasing number of extremely hot days and less cold days - continuing and accelerating the current trend.
In one example, the research looks at Amberley - 40 kilometres south of Brisbane - and how temperature extremes would change there.
In 1995, Amberley was experiencing an average of 12 days a year where the mercury got above 35C and only 0.8 days where it climbed above 40C.
If emissions remain high, then by 2090 Amberley will experience about 55 days a year with temperatures above 35C - a more than four fold increase.
That is almost two months worth of scorching temperatures compared to less than two weeks now. And those 40C-plus days? They increase by more than four-fold.
For the reef, the risk of coral bleaching increases. The ocean becomes more acidic in line with emissions. Not good at all.
Climate-free election
Queensland has much at stake from the impacts of climate change, but as a state election issue it has been a non-starter between the two main parties.
There's been plenty of promotion of the coal industry though - the world's leading contributor to greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change
Jayakumar Janakuraj, the chief executive of coal company Adani Australia, even turned up on the campaign trail with LNP leader Campbell Newman.
The Great Barrier Reef got a look in, with Labor leader Annastacia Palaszczuk [it's pal-a-shay] pledging the party would ban the ocean dumping of dredge at fossil fuel export developments.
Yet scientists at the Great Barrier Reef Authority and other scientific institutions have said that the greatest threat to the long term future of the reef is climate change, caused primarily from burning fossil fuels. The dumping ban was welcomed, but this still leaves the damage from the dredging itself and the impact of the fossil fuels that the port developments are trying to liberate.
The Newman Government has done all it can to promote and defend the coal industry during its term in government.
One of Newman's first moves as Premier was to scrap the state's Office of Climate Change
To get at the untapped coal in the Galilee Basin - one of the largest stores of fossil fuel carbon on the planet - the Newman government has offered royalty discounts and, to one mining company, a cash loans in the hundreds of millions to back a rail project to get the coal to port.
Analysis from the Australian Conservation Foundation has said if all nine proposed Galilee Basin mines went ahead, the burning of the coal would add 700 million tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere every year.
That's about 150 million tonnes more than Australia's entire annual greenhouse gas footprint.
Over the 30-year life of just two of the mines, my own numbers show emissions of about 3.7 billion tonnes of CO2e.
When Australia is at international climate change talks, the delegation says it wants to do its fair share on climate change, but this claim is at odds with its support and promotion of fossil fuels.
Ruling out science
Queensland's Deputy Premier Jeff Seeney has, however, come up with a novel way to tackle the science of level rise.
As a form of denial, it is spectacular.
Late last year Moreton Bay Regional Council, which borders Brisbane to the south, was trying to develop its planning rules for the future.
Councillors wanted to allow for future rises in sea levels caused by climate change.
The council wanted developers to make sea level rise allowances of an extra 0.8 metres by the end of the century (this figure is at the top end of the new predictions of mean sea level rise for Australia's east coast, but the reports say levels could be higher if ice sheets collapse and additional allowances should be made for events such as high tides and weather events).
Seeney didn't like the council's science and twice asked for meetings.
The council's mayor Allan Sutherland has signed a statutory declaration saying Seeney had described climate change in one meeting as a "semi-religious belief".
In the meeting minutes, the council explained its position.
Council noted the Deputy Premier's concerns, but indicated the inclusion of climate change factors, including sea level rise, based on the best scientific and technical information available to the Council was necessary in order to protect the Council against legal liability.
This led Seeney to use his ministerial powers to order the council to take the science out of the council's planning rules. Seeney wrote:
I direct council to amend its draft planning scheme to remove any assumption about a theoretical projected sea level rise due to climate change from all an any provision of the scheme, including strategic framework, zones and precincts, overlay assessment tables, codes and policies.
Later in the letter, Seeney wrote that any mandatory elements of the council's planning scheme "must reflect only proven historical data".
The Deputy Premier's approach exemplifies the Newman Government's attitude to climate change. Either ignore it or legislate against it.
Or to paraphrase Professor Rowland, what's the use in developing a science well enough to make predictions if all leaders are willing to do is make sure they come true?
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The New York Times
January 28, 2015 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
President Seeks Oil Exploration Off East Coast
BYLINE: By CORAL DAVENPORT
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1260 words
WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration moved Tuesday to open up a vast stretch of East Coast waters to oil and gas drilling, a decision that could have a profound impact on the economic and environmental future of states from Virginia to Georgia. The move also adds a new dimension to the legacy of President Obama.
In an announcement that outraged environmentalists and brought grudging cheers from the oil and gas industry, the Interior Department unveiled the latest part of its five-year plan for the government to sell leases for oil and gas development in federal waters from 2017 to 2022.
The plan would open up one lease sale area off the southeast stretch of the Atlantic Seaboard, an area the oil industry has long hungered to exploit. It would also open new portions of the Gulf of Mexico, which is already open to drilling. And in a move that appeased environmentalists but angered Alaskan Republicans, it will ban drilling in portions of the Arctic Ocean's Beaufort and Chukchi Seas.
''This is a balanced proposal that would make available nearly 80 percent of the undiscovered technically recoverable resources, while protecting areas that are simply too special to develop,'' the interior secretary, Sally Jewell, said in a statement.
Environmentalists said opening the Atlantic waters would put the coasts of Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia at risk for an environmental disaster like the BP spill that struck the Gulf Coast in 2010, when millions of barrels of oil washed ashore after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig. Advocacy groups in those states said that the drilling could harm tourism, fishing and other coastal industries that are already major drivers of the Southeastern economy.
But lawmakers from both parties in those coastal states have pushed for years to open their waters for drilling. The Interior Department estimates there are 3.3 billion barrels of recoverable oil on the Atlantic's outer continental shelf and 31.3 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
The estimates are based on seismic surveys done in the early 1980s, and energy industry experts say the true reserves may be far higher. In opening up the waters to drilling, coastal states see the opportunity for billions of dollars in new revenue and royalties to flow from oil companies to state coffers, which would help pay for roads and schools and fill in budget shortfalls left by the recession.
For the president, the proposal is a new chapter in his complex and evolving environmental legacy. In announcing the drilling now, he is trying to achieve a balancing act on energy and the environment that he failed to achieve in his first term, in large part because of the BP disaster. Throughout his six years in office, he has tried to push a sweeping, aggressive and controversial plan to fight climate change while offering an appeasement to his opponents in the oil industry and the Republican Party.
''He giveth, and he taketh away,'' said Kevin Book, an analyst at Clearview Energy Partners, a Washington analysis firm, of the president's strategy. ''The pairing of environmental policy with energy policy is something that, conceptually, this administration has done since the first term. Sometimes it looks like a balancing act, sometimes it's serendipitous.''
In early 2010, while trying to push a climate change bill through the Senate, Mr. Obama's Interior Department put forth its first five-year plan for oil and gas development, which opened up the Atlantic coast for offshore drilling. The pairing of the two policies was done to ease opposition from Senate Republicans to the climate change bill. But after the deadly April 2010 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon, Mr. Obama withdrew the proposal for Atlantic drilling. A few months later the climate bill died in the Senate.
Five years later he is trying again, this time trying to force through a historic climate change policy by using his executive authority to push Environmental Protection Agency regulations on planet-warming emissions from coal-fired power plants. The regulations, if enacted, could force states to shutter hundreds of coal plants in a transition to clean and renewable energy, and they have prompted fierce opposition from Republican governors.
But the new offshore drilling plan won praise from some of them. Gov. Pat McCrory of North Carolina, a Republican who is a fiercely conservative opponent of Mr. Obama's energy and climate change policies, said in a statement on Tuesday that Mr. Obama was ''taking a step in the right direction to help North Carolina become a significant energy-producing state.''
Mr. McCrory added that oil and gas drilling would ''create thousands of good paying jobs, spur activity in a host of associated industries, generate billions of dollars in tax revenue and move America closer to energy independence.''
Mr. McCrory and other Southeastern governors envision a future in which new offshore drilling stimulates job growth and new onshore industries that support it, aligning Virginia, North and South Carolina and Georgia with states like Texas and Louisiana as major offshore oil producers.
But local advocacy groups fear not only oil spills but also the destruction of a distinctive coastal economy.
''Risky drilling off our Southern coasts jeopardizes the communities, jobs and beloved beaches that are the very heart of our coastal states,'' said Sierra Weaver, a senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center. ''Our coastal economies are the backbone of hundreds of towns and cities along the Southern coast, providing thousands of jobs, multibillion-dollar tourism industries, multimillion-dollar fishing industries, and critical local tax revenues.''
Administration officials pointed out on Tuesday that the proposal would be subject to revision. Interior Department officials said that they expected to hold over 20 public hearings on the plan, but it does not require congressional approval. Ms. Weaver said environmental groups would gear up to fight the proposals.
Environmental advocates noted that since the 2010 BP spill, Congress has not passed any new law intended to tighten safety regulations on the offshore oil industry. But Interior Department officials said they were planning to put forth new regulations ahead of the new drilling.
''As a result of that incident, there were investigations to reduce the likelihood of problems in the future,'' said Janice Schneider, the Interior Department's assistant secretary for land and minerals management. Ms. Schneider said the agency was working with the industry to develop regulations on improved technology to prevent blowouts in offshore drilling rigs.
''We are working actively to get those proposed rules out on the street as soon as possible, and working with industry to ensure those rules reflect the best technology,'' she said.
Interior Department officials said the drilling in the Atlantic would take place a minimum of 50 miles offshore so that it would not get in the way of the Navy's military exercises, offshore wind turbines, and commercial and recreational fishing.
Ms. Jewell said that since so little was known about the proposed Atlantic lease sale areas, the coming years would be devoted to exploration of the area to determine the extent of its oil and gas resources and ecological sensitivity. She said that the government was unlikely to sell a drilling lease before 2021, meaning it could be a decade before new drilling begins.
''In the Atlantic, we know very little,'' she said.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/28/us/obama-plan-calls-for-oil-and-gas-drilling-in-the-atlantic.html
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GRAPHIC: MAP: Where Offshore Drilling Would Be Allowed: The Obama administration's latest plan would open up the Eastern Seaboard to leasing for oil and gas drilling, but ban exploration in some Arctic waters off Alaska. (Source: Bureau of Ocean Energy Management) (A13)
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The New York Times
January 28, 2015 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
As Visit Ends, Obama Presses India on Human Rights and Climate Change
BYLINE: By PETER BAKER and ELLEN BARRY
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Foreign Desk; Pg. 7
LENGTH: 1140 words
NEW DELHI -- President Obama concluded his three-day trip here Tuesday with a tough-love message to his hosts, as he vowed to be ''India's best partner'' in taking its place in the ranks of the world's great powers but urged it to do more to protect human rights and fight climate change.
In a pointed message wrapped in the language of friendship, Mr. Obama said India needed to combat human trafficking and slavery, elevate the status of girls and women in society, promote religious and racial tolerance and empower young people. He also argued that India had an obligation to curb greenhouse gases despite its economic challenges.
Mr. Obama's speech was aimed partly at his newfound friend, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has been criticized for not doing more to protect political dissent and to guard against sectarian discrimination and conflict. While the two shared a warm visit, Mr. Obama in effect was saying that their developing partnership did not mean Mr. Modi would get a free pass.
''America can be India's best partner,'' he told an audience of 1,500 mostly young Indians at Siri Fort Auditorium before departing the country. ''America wants to be your partner as you lift up the lives of the Indian people and provide greater opportunity.''
Mr. Obama spoke forcefully about India's responsibility to stop treating women as second-class citizens. ''Every girl's life matters,'' he said, as his wife, Michelle Obama, watched from the audience. ''Every daughter deserves the same chance as our sons. Every woman should be able to go about her day, to walk the street or ride the bus, and be safe and be treated with respect and dignity. She deserves that.''
In a country where human rights groups say tens of millions of people are subject to forced labor, Mr. Obama added that India needed to crack down. ''Together, we can stand up against human trafficking and work to end the scourge of modern-day slavery,'' he said. But he did not mention the case of an Indian diplomat who was arrested in New York after being accused of exploiting her housekeeper, an episode that roiled the countries' relationship for months.
Mr. Obama called for religious tolerance in a nation that, like the United States, is home to a wide array of beliefs. ''India will succeed so long as it is not splintered along the lines of religious faith -- so long as it's not splintered along any lines, and is unified as one nation,'' he said.
It was a notably sharp speech at the end of a trip dominated by displays of affection. But Mr. Obama had come under pressure from advocacy groups to deliver a strong appeal for human rights in a country proud of its democracy. Just before the speech, in fact, he met with Kailash Satyarthi, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who has long fought child slavery in India. Mr. Satyarthi told him there were still five million children living as slaves worldwide.
But as he often does, Mr. Obama couched his edged comments with an acknowledgment of American flaws, an effort to avoid seeming as if he were lecturing. He cited his own experiences as an African-American. ''Even as America has blessed us with extraordinary opportunities, there were moments in my life where I've been treated differently because of the color of my skin,'' he said.
For many Indian listeners, Mr. Obama's words on religious diversity were the most important, and the most delicate, part of his speech, said Siddharth Varadarajan, a veteran journalist in India, adding that the president's warnings ''will not go over well'' with leaders in Mr. Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party.
Since Mr. Modi's election last year, right-wing Hindu groups have tried to convert members of religious minorities, arguing that Muslims or Christians, or their forebears, were originally Hindu themselves. One of Mr. Modi's ministers recently asked an audience, in a play on words in Hindi, to ''decide whether you want a government of those born of Ram, or those born illegitimately,'' words interpreted as derogatory to Muslims.
Although Mr. Modi is said to have discouraged such rhetoric in private, he has so far made no public comment about it, though human rights activists have urged him to do so.
''In as gentle and as diplomatic way as possible, Obama was drawing attention to something that is really, really important to India,'' Mr. Varadarajan said. ''In saying so, he has inadvertently drawn attention to Modi's silence on the issue.''
For the last decade, Mr. Modi's own relationship with the United States was dominated by human rights, a fact that both sides now downplay. The United States government denied him a visa in 2005 over allegations that he had failed to stop religious riots in the state he led, in which 1,000 people were killed, most of them Muslim. An Indian trial court ruled that there was no evidence that Mr. Modi was responsible.
Mr. Obama was careful not to tread on any of Mr. Modi's sore points, such as by mentioning the 2002 riots, Mr. Varadarajan said. ''I don't think the United States is going to take this further,'' he said. ''There is too much riding on the commercial side for this to jeopardize anything. But I suppose somewhere down the line, the message goes out that in this globalized world, what you do at home is taken note of by your friends abroad.''
Others, though, bristled at what they considered a hectoring tone. Chetan Bhagat, a popular author, noted that Mr. Obama would not give such an address at his next stop, in Saudi Arabia, a country known for its repressive monarchy, a ban on women driving cars and a recent conviction of a blogger sentenced to 1,000 lashes and 10 years in prison for supposedly insulting Islam.
''He's not even going to get a chance to give a speech like that there, and he is much closer to them,'' Mr. Bhagat told the news channel NDTV. ''To say the prime minister took it really seriously is to go a little too far.''
On a morning when New Delhi was bathed in smog, the president's remarks on climate change touched on a central priority of his visit. While he and Mr. Modi agreed to cooperate in promoting cleaner energy, Mr. Obama left without the sort of specific commitment to curbing greenhouse gases that he won in China last year. Instead, he used the farewell speech to press India to take on the issue more robustly.
''I know the argument made by some -- that it's unfair for countries like the United States to ask developing nations and emerging economies like India to reduce your dependence on the same fossil fuels that helped power our growth for more than a century,'' he said. ''But here's the truth: Even if countries like the United States curb our emissions, if countries that are growing rapidly, like India, with soaring energy needs don't also embrace cleaner fuels, then we don't stand a chance against climate change.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/28/world/asia/obama-ends-visit-with-challenge-to-india-on-climate-change.html
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GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Indians watched speeches by their prime minister, Narendra Modi, and by President Obama on Tuesday. In his speech, Mr. Obama said that ''America can be India's best partner.'' (PHOTOGRAPH BY DIVYAKANT SOLANKI/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY)
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The Guardian
January 27, 2015 Tuesday 7:29 PM GMT
Bold ideas for a better world from Davos and beyond;
The world's challenges are huge, numerous and looming, and many innovative ideas will be needed to meet them. Contribute yours to our growing listBusinesses should act in the interest of seven generationsUnilever CEO says the company is considering becoming a B CorpPublic trust in business hits a five-year low
BYLINE: Jennifer Kho in New York and Jo Confino in Davos
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 2567 words
As the last day of the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, kicks off, we asked participants to share the ideas they are taking away about the real things they can do to help solve the world's top challenges.
But Davos has also taken plenty of flack for its exclusivity, and we also want to democratize the discussion.
Given the huge scope and scale of problems such as climate change, health and inequality, many big bold ideas are needed to really move the needle. We're looking for strong commitments from business leaders; inspiring ideas from academics, nonprofits and readers; and personal pledges from consumers.
Check out the wide-ranging responses readers already have contributed to the discussion, and share your own ideas here or in the previous post's comments. If you're able to make a personal or professional pledge, tweet #GSBDavos. We'll pull some of the most inspiring thoughts from both into this thread, and look for your responses to these ideas in the comments below this post.
Ideas from Davos participants:
· Start talking
What has stuck out most to us at Davos is two things: first, the impressive number of corporations that have made bold commitments to help curb climate change, and second, how few of those companies are talking to their consumers about it.
This is a gap, but also an opportunity for the vanguard of progressive companies surging to the forefront of this transition - working toward 100% clean energy, building sustainable technologies, and starting to replenish forests. If these efforts are to succeed, it is important for multinationals to build public trust and affinity - but most consumers still have little idea about the transformational strides these brands are taking.
Imagine how powerful a message that could be, if the world's leading companies coordinated to show their consumers how they're leading the transition to a clean, prosperous future. And if those same companies provided a way for consumers to support those commitments and take actions of their own? The impact could be game-changing.
At Purpose, we launched Here Now in October in part to close this gap by developing a flexible, shared platform from which companies may begin having these discussions in ways that are relevant to consumers. We believe companies stand to reap substantial rewards - both in branding boosts from association with this vanguard of leading consumer brands and in business impact from the ample opportunities to integrate climate commitments with key selling periods and sustainable product lines.
By joining the wider wave of mobilisation currently underway, these corporations can ensure that 2015 is the year climate action hits a tipping point. All they have to do is start talking, and invite others to join.
- Paul Hilder, executive director of Here Now, and Jeremy Heimans, CEO of Purpose
· Stop using words like 'product lifecycle'
In many discussions at Davos this week, I've heard company leaders and regulators refer to a product's "lifecycle" and its "end of life". But this illustrates old thinking in which products are born from resource-intense raw materials amid sophisticated global supply chains and die a crude, even toxic death in the form of refuse piles, followed by burial in land, in rivers, at sea or by cremation in burn piles or even "waste to energy" plants.
These are old stories of throwing things away in a world with more than enough. But now, as we recognize the limited growth of constrained resources in a shrinking world, perhaps we can see that "away" has gone away. We need a new vocabulary to fit in with that new reality: I'd like to replace "lifecycle" and "end of life" with thinking about "endless use" and " endless resourcefulness".
As an architect, I think about the old design directives: Less is More (and then Less is a Bore). Today, I am saying Endless is More.
- William McDonough, founder of McDonough Innovation and chair of the World Economic Forum Meta-Council on the Circular Economy
· Engage in peer pressure
CEOs play a key role in setting company strategy, so it's clear that any big corporate sustainability effort needs commitment from the top to succeed. Yet, in Davos we learned from our BCG/MIT Sloan Management Review study that only 21% of executives surveyed feel that their board is very supportive of their sustainability activity.
Compounding this finding, we know that many companies are too busy trying to cover a broad range of areas, when in reality meaningful impact comes from focusing on one or two key issues.
Equally important is the understanding that many of today's sustainability issues cannot be solved by one company or organization alone. Developing solutions requires collaboration - like we see happening with efforts to reduce deforestation in the palm oil industry - to ensure efforts have a meaningful, widespread impact.
Tackling sustainability issues on a company-by-company basis isn't enough; companies and industries need to start working together. Businesses should decide on one key issue on which to focus now, and get three of their peers to join a collaborative group - such as the UN Global Compact program - that is working on broader, more systemic solutions to the issue.
- Knut Haanaes, senior partner and global practice area leader for strategy and sustainability at BCG
· Strike the right balance between skepticism and optimism
Davos tends to cover a lot of subjects, and this year's edition is no exception. It occurs to me, though, that there are really two Davoses: Opportunity Davos and Threat Davos.
It's a tale of two cities. Opportunity Davos is represented by possibilities opening up due to technology, emerging economies and women's empowerment. Threat Davos is represented by risks from European economic malaise, cybersecurity and geopolitics.
Sustainability, particularly the challenges of decisive action on climate change and of achieving truly inclusive economic growth, is where these two Davoses meet. Al Gore's updated presentation underlined the rising economic and social risks of inaction. Unilever's Paul Polman is again playing the role of chief climate statesman from the business community, pointing to the innovation opportunities business can unearth as it works to mitigate impacts and prepare for changing climate.
Davos can generate extremes of both unwarranted optimism and pessimism. The broad attention to sustainable, inclusive prosperity seems to get the balance right, suggesting that this is where the real action is.
It is essential that the circle of companies prioritizing climate be widened. Businesses can do this by building more tangible collaborations, like 2014's commitments on deforestation and a price on carbon. These deliver measurable impacts that improve business to demonstrate what's possible outside of the ideological cheerleading and skepticism that too often marks our debates.
- Aron Cramer , president and CEO of BSR
· Set goals based on scientific targets
As I conclude another World Economic Forum, it's positive to again see climate change high on the agenda of corporate leaders.
As CEOS are preparing for Paris where a global climate agreement is set to be reached, three issues have emerged from the various sessions here in Davos as critical for success: making the case for carbon pricing, corporate goal setting aligned with science targets, and transparency on corporate reporting on emissions.
What's still missing from the conversation is the important role of emerging markets. The time has come to show true leadership in all areas. Only with strong business support can we lay the foundation for the climate challenge to change markets and reverse political positions.
- Georg Kell, executive director of the UN Global Compact
·Produce benefits and assets, not liabilities and detriments
From inequality to climate change, the hot topics at Davos make it clear that commerce has created a legacy of problems, the solutions to which are either deferred for generations or impossible within any reasonable number of human lifetimes.
One might say our first industrial revolution production model - take, make, waste - has used unprincipled commerce as a weapon to wage unintentional war with the planet and all its creatures, and now, almost like a fearful retreating army, it is continuing to lay it all to waste.
Any thinking person today recognizes the urgent calamity of climate change and pollution. Now is the time to fiercely and intentionally wage peace on the planet, with commerce - as the only human institution big enough, creative enough and fast enough - as the engine of principled prosperity and beneficial change.
The job of business now is to support customers by producing benefits and assets for society, not liabilities and detriments.
- William McDonough, co-author of Cradle to Cradle and The Upcycle and chair of the World Economic Forum Meta-Council on the Circular Economy
· Commit to all the UN sustainable development goals
Here in Davos I've been asking myself, what's the most important issue being discussed: economic inequality, gender equality, climate change, human rights.
It's occurred to me that this year's World Economic Forum is not about these issue taken separately, but rather bringing them all into one set of global, moral, and political commitments. It's about world leaders collaborating to bring about the changes so desperately needed.
The sustainable development goals are a great example of this. Thousands of businesses from around the world will commit to action towards a more sustainable world. And it's more than lofty goals and talk: they will also measure results, and communicate their progress to the world.
- Michael Meehan, CEO of the Global Reporting Initiative
· Support a high-priority water goal
There was a danger, with the economic and political outlook so uncertain, that immediate challenges would crowd out discussion at Davos of long-term challenges. I am glad to say - at least as far as the issue of global water supplies goes - this danger was avoided.
We were helped by the WEF's own annual Global Risk Report which, for the first time, made water the number one threat to the world's stability and prosperity. This would come as no surprise to the third of the world's population already living in water-stressed areas.
Are we taking this threat seriously enough yet? No, but discussions at Davos revealed an increased determination from governments and businesses to work together to respond to the challenge.
Many businesses - including SABMiller - are not only reducing our own water usage, but actively joining partnerships to conserve supplies well beyond our operations.
As the Millennium Development Goals have shown, though, global focus is essential to deliver the scale of change needed.
Businesses must back calls for water to be a high priority in the post-MDG framework to be agreed upon this autumn - and then commit ourselves to do all we can to meet these targets.
- Mark Bowman, managing director of SABMiller Africa
Ideas from readers:
(read more responses here )
· Don't contribute to climate change
1. Pledge that each process, product, services will be delivered which do not cause negative climate change
2. Pledge to make each individual at the age above 18 as employable by imparting certain skills
- Ravi, a Guardian reader in Pune, India
· Put sustainability first
An unlikely pledge to put the apparently insurmountable social and environmental issues first, whatever the cost for economic growth and corporate interests.
- Luiz, a Guardian reader from Curitiba, Brazil
· Support a carbon tax
Given the new fiscal space opened up by the oil price collapse, the time is now right for a bold pledge from business to get behind a global carbon tax. If it has to happen, and happen soon, why not now?
- Chris, a Guardian reader in the UK
· Shift to renewable energy
I would ask business leaders to shift to renewable energy sources for 80% of their energy requirements in the next 10 years, covering energy requirements of every aspect of their business lifecycle - from procurement, to production, to marketing & distribution, to end lifecycle.
- Aditi, a Guardian reader in New Delhi, India
· Pay for waste and environmental damage up front
The environment is being trashed at every level. Businesses must lead in reversing this trend which includes climate change, water, food, economic inequality, gender inequality, etc. It is all connected. The downstream cost must be included in all production, and waste and damage to the environment must be paid for up front. It is very difficult to clean up the mess we have created, and future generations and many other species will suffer because of this negligence. We have a short period of time to change our ways. Don't waste any more time.
- Alex, a Guardian reader from Sydney, Australia
· Take a risk on sustainable investments
I would urge enterprises to take a risk on sustainable investments that take more than one year to show returns.
I'd also ask them to consider how inequality will increase if climate change is not attended urgently and how markets will collapse if inequality is not levelled.
- Karina, a Guardian reader in Nuevo Leon, Mexico
· Commit to real consequences for rule breaking
A commitment to wind up corporations who flout the laws that the rest of the world must live by. In general, if a corporation breaks the law, then send it to jail in the same way an individual is denied liberty.
The corporation would then be either wound up or given over to the employees of said corporation.
- Kris, a Guardian reader in Australia
· Stop having the World Economic Forum meetings in Davos
I'd like the WEF to pledge to leave Davos after 2015 and take the annual conferences to the front lines of unsustainable development, so that the challenges are up close and personal to its delegates.
I'd like to the WEF to say: "We will meet in the mega-cities of the global South. We will meet in Detroit. We will meet in New Orleans. We will meet in the favelas. We will meet the people most affected by the unsustainable developments in our environment, societies and economic systems."
- Ian, a Guardian reader in London
Ideas from the twittersphere:
This year's Davos coverage is funded by The B Team. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled "brought to you by". Find out more here .
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January 27, 2015 Tuesday 5:18 PM GMT
What will it take to get businesses to support the EPA's pollution rules?;
As it celebrates its 25th anniversary, sustainability advocate Ceres sets its sights on winning corporate support for the proposed US power plant rules
BYLINE: Marc Gunther
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 891 words
As the US political fight over climate change moves from Washington DC to 50 state capitals, companies that are serious about sustainability need to support the EPA's proposed rules to curb carbon pollution from existing power plants.
So, at least, says Mindy Lubber, the president of Ceres, a nonprofit that brings together companies, investors and public-interest groups to advocate for sustainability.
"Companies have the strength and power - the footprint to make a huge difference," Lubber told me at a lunch earlier this month. Ceres celebrates its 25th anniversary Tuesday.
It's hard to overstate the importance of the proposed power plant rules, which are the cornerstone of President Barack Obama's climate agenda. Power plants account for nearly 40% of all US greenhouse gas emissions.
The EPA is asking each state to develop a plan to meet federally mandated carbon limits. But 29 of 50 states are now led by Republican governors, most of whom are likely to oppose the new rules. If the EPA effort falls flat, there's no way the US can lead the way to a global climate agreement.
Ceres and Lubber have set out to persuade corporations to support the EPA and the president, and overcome their habitual, instinctive resistance to government regulation. "It is going to be long and tedious and complicated," Lubber admits. "And really hard."
Boston-based Ceres, one of a handful of US green groups to focus on business, has never shied away from complex, unglamorous environmental work.
Formed in 1989 in the wake of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, Ceres has helped make sustainability reporting a common practice, developed best practices for corporate sustainability, promoted corporate buying of renewable power and spotlighted climate risk in the insurance industry, all in an effort to find common ground among capitalists and environmentalists.
"Our mission is to integrate sustainability into capital markets," Lubber says. "And we've never deviated from that."
By some measures, Ceres has had considerable impact. Corporate responsibility reports - an idea birthed by Ceres in the late 1990s - are now widespread.
Increasingly, big mainstream companies - Lubber cites General Electric, PepsiCo, Disney and the Detroit automakers, along with the usual suspects like Unilever and Ikea - regard sustainability and climate change as core business issues that require the attention of top executives and corporate boards.
"The conversation has changed," Lubber says. "It's remarkable."
Ceres' work with institutional investors has made a difference, too. Some investors, particularly those who take the long view, have come to see climate change and water scarcity as financial risks that need to be disclosed and addressed by corporates.
"I can tell you with certainty that the [US Securities and Exchange Commission] would not have mandated the disclosure of climate risk if it had not been for the investors coming to them, petitioning, lobbying," Lubber says, even if compliance with the SEC guidance has been spotty.
Yet Lubber makes clear that neither companies nor investors are moving far enough or fast enough. "We've got to ramp up, materially, investments in clean energy and decrease carbon emissions," she says.
Even among the biggest companies, many of whom have pledged to curb their environmental footprint, carbon emissions are rising at an unsustainable rate. Scientists say emissions need to decline sharply to avoid catastrophic climate impacts.
But instead of shrinking, self-reported greenhouse gas emissions from the world's 500 largest businesses - companies that are often noisy about their sustainability commitments - actually grew by 3.1% between 2010 and 2013, according to a worrisome Thomson Reuters report released last month.
That's why it's important for companies to support the EPA's power plant rules, Lubber says. Mandating that existing power plants cut US carbon-dioxide emissions by 30% by 2030 from 2005 levels would bend the emissions curve downwards.
Last month, Ceres released a statement supporting the rules that was signed by more than 200 companies, many small or midsized. Big firms to sign on included Ikea, Kellogg, Levi Strauss, Mars, Nestle, Nike, Novelis, VF and Unilever.
By contrast, the American Farm Bureau Federation, the America Petroleum Institute, the National Association of Manufacturers, the National Mining Association and the US Chamber of Commerce, which represents many thousands of businesses, have formed a coalition called the Partnership for a Better Energy Future to oppose the EPA rules.
The group says the EPA's rules will raise electricity costs, increase blackouts, destroy jobs and damage America's competitive position in global markets.
It's this kind of position - pitting the environment against the economy - that Ceres and Lubber hope to head off by persuading more companies to speak out about the need for climate action. She holds out hope that business voices can help turn political conservatives' opinions around.
After all, she says, liberals and conservatives alike "would throw themselves in front of a bus to save their grandkid. And we've got this bus coming at us".
The values-led business hub is funded by SC Johnson. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled 'brought to you by'. Find out more here.
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The Guardian
January 27, 2015 Tuesday 4:56 PM GMT
The UK needs a Climate Change Act for nature and wellbeing;
All parties should back legislation to protect the natural systems that sustain our health, wealth and security, says Tony Juniper
BYLINE: Tony Juniper
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 973 words
We - and every other generation before us - have depleted the country's natural systems and wildlife. First we wiped out the big animals, then we destroyed or heavily modified nearly every bit of natural habitat and plundered vital resources, including soils and fish stocks. Today even the small things are disappearing, including many kinds of songbirds, insects and plants (pdf).
Related: Can a new form of accounting save animals from extinction?
The challenge for our political leaders is to develop a strategy for the protection and recovery of nature to enable us to be the first generation to leave the UK's natural environment in better shape than we found it - an official goal adopted by the coalition government back in 2011 (pdf).
In its third and final report, the Natural Capital Committee, an independent advisory body to George Osborne and the Treasury, signals a new and important departure. Its message is not only that wildlife can and should be conserved, but that this can be achieved in the national economic interest if we can mobilise and harness the necessary partnerships and resources.
The report builds on the committee's previous two and sets out the basic building blocks of a plan for the conservation and more rational use of the natural systems that sustain us: namely through better measurement, more realistic accounting and proper valuation of what nature does for us.
Should we succeed in laying these foundations, through new rules and officially accepted methods, then the investments needed to rebuild our natural systems would likely follow. The committee sets out some of the social and economic returns that might accompany such investment. For example, it is estimated that planting a further quarter-million hectares of new forests, particularly near to towns and cities, could generate social benefits worth in excess of £500m per year.
Related: We could end up with 'as much plastic in our oceans as fish'
Restoring the health of 140,000 hectares of upland peat-forming ecosystems could deliver net gains worth £570m over four decades in carbon values alone. Co-benefits arising in cleaner water, reduced flood risk and tourism make the overall value much bigger.
The report also points to the huge potential to improve health in towns and cities through urban green spaces. In this regard the committee believes billions of pounds could be saved through reduced health treatment costs. The benefits would be bigger if combined with investments to reduce urban air pollution, which kills thousands of us each year, costing at least £20bn in the process.
The report drives yet another nail into the coffin of the myth that looking after nature is against the interests of people and the economy (a theme developed several times by George Osborne ). The new and positive message is made all the stronger when the potential sources of finance are laid out.
The committee says that a combination of private-sector money, revenues from taxes and charges, and redirected subsidies can all contribute. It says that government should particularly focus on encouraging private-sector owners and managers of natural assets to invest in their maintenance and improvement by using the corporate accounting framework developed and tested by the committee.
Related: We all win when new trees are planted. Let's make it an election pledge
During the course of writing my book, What Nature does for Britain, I reached conclusions that point to the potential scale of finance available. For example, during the next 15 years or so the combined expenditure in the UK arising from official farm subsidies, investments by water companies, flood defences and cleaning up after flooding will be in the order of £100bn. If that money were spent in a more strategic and intelligent manner we'd gain much more value from it.
So, having broadly identified the scale of the opportunity, the basic building blocks for moving toward it and some of the sources of finance, what will it take to actually achieve the inspiring aim of restoring nature in a generation?
An increasing number of experts believe the answer lies in framework legislation, comparable to that which governs the UK's similarly ambitious and visionary approach to climate change. The committee reached a similar conclusion: "The strategy should be given effect in legislation," it says.
The 2008 Climate Change Act embodies a long-term target and, through an influential expert body, helps to guide other legislation, spending and policy. If nature is to recover within a generation (25 years), an official aim of comparable stature and with adequate official architecture to support it will be needed. Without that the task of reversing the centuries'-long decline will prove impossible to achieve, leaving us poorer and more vulnerable.
Related: Al Gore: oil companies 'use our atmosphere as an open sewer'
The Natural Capital Committee today sets out the vision and some of the steps toward reaching it. What is needed now is an official framework to make it happen. Politicians from all parties should follow the lead and put into their manifestos a promise to introduce a nature and wellbeing act. This would not be a fluffy feel-good law, but one to promote and protect our health, wealth and security in a fast-changing world, a law to help make nature our ally, and not - as is widely perceived at the moment - our enemy.
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The Guardian
January 27, 2015 Tuesday 2:00 PM GMT
13 ways the arts and sport can inspire action on climate change;
Isn't it time creative types and sports stars did more to tackle climate change? Our expert panel suggest how
BYLINE: Katherine Purvis
SECTION: GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT PROFESSIONALS NETWORK
LENGTH: 977 words
Don't underestimate the power of an image: We worked with a community to develop a photo-story of their understanding of how climate change affects them. Most of these folks had never been to school, but the images they took tell their story and how much debate they elicited in their presentation attests to the power of an image. These photo-stories were instrumental in understanding the communities' livelihoods, their challenges and opportunities, and climate-change vulnerabilities. Njenga Kahiro, programmes manager, Zeitz Foundation, Nanyuki, Kenya, @njengakahiro, @ZeitzFoundation
Use football as an icebreaker: Football is a household staple on all continents; everyone has strong opinions, everyone is engaged, and the passion and energy is there. The topic of football is one of the easiest icebreakers on business trips or in casual get-togethers (as long as you can keep your team loyalties to yourself) and can be used to start a conversation about climate change. Leszek Sibilski, consultant, Connect4Climate, Washington DC, US, @Connect4Climate
Related: 10 ways to sustain momentum after the People's Climate March
Help museums go green : We began a relationship with the National Association of Museums, which is also interested in green programming for its members. Helping your local museums to go green is essential, especially when they educate the public about what they are doing to save money and also create relevant green programmes. Kathleen Rogers, president, Earth Day Network,Washington DC, US, @Kathleenedn, @EarthDayNetwork
Lead by example : Closing the gap between what we say and what we do is important. But I would certainly listen to a person who acknowledges the difficulties of achieving a sustainable lifestyle and was honest about the discrepancies and challenges that we all face. Julie Doyle, reader in media, University of Brighton, Brighton, UK, @JulieDoylej
Go guerrilla : Instead of going against "the establishment", we need to find new ways and think outside the box. We have taken over public spaces where people have a more democratic opportunity to be exposed to the action, and to gain awareness of the issues. Yvonne Senouf, co-founder, Meld, Athens, Greece, @yvonnegabrielle, @meldcc
Use the world as a medium: If artists can see the world as a social medium, instead of creating representational works about climate change they would be actively engaging with the real-world narratives and systems that make up this complex crisis. Kevin Buckland, artivist coordinator, 350.org, Barcelona, Spain, @change_of_art, @350
Consider the complexities of climate change: When I screen The Age of Stupid to my students, they are moved and affected by the story and facts presented but many say they don't know what to do about the issue, that it is too overwhelming. We have to think about what kinds of responses might be evoked, and in what ways these feelings can be used to promote behavioural change. Julie Doyle
Related: Gallery: 12 climate messages for global leaders
Make sustainability fun: Coaching for Conservation uses sport to highlight the importance of protecting local wildlife in Botswana. Mathare Youth Sports Association organises weekly litter collections in a Nairobi slum and encourages participation through a points-based reward systems. Sports projects can generate learning and create a fun way for people to see their communities in a new light. Paul Hunt, project officer, sportanddev.org, Biel, Switzerland, @sportanddev
Work with celebrities: This is an essential part of creating a cohesive culture on climate change. People in the public eye have extended reach and can rally supporters who might not identify as environmentalists. The secret is to diversify the environmental movement across society, bringing together people with different backgrounds and interests to a common goal. Kathleen Rogers
Collaborate across disciplines: Climate change is not just about science and policy, it relates to our way of life. Cop 21 needs to discuss how to better use culture and communication to make climate change more meaningful to people's daily lives, and to bring people along with the necessary social changes to address climate change. It is up to all of us - artists, communicators, educators, scientists, policymakers, students - to relate climate to culture and sport and to work together through collaboration to make this happen. Julie Doyle
Related: Top 10: climate change campaigns
Ban advertising from climate change contributors: We could ask sports teams and stadiums to ban advertisements by companies and corporations contributing to climate change from their commercials, stadiums and uniforms. We need to take away the social license of the fossil fuel industry. Kevin Buckland
Coordinate an artistic response : Artists need to become more involved and more active in their art. Two years ago, for Earth Day, 500 syndicated cartoonists around the world created really hard-hitting but funny climate change cartoons. Those cartoons reached tens of millions of people. We need a more coordinated response from artists - famous and not so famous. Kathleen Rogers
Recognise football as a force for good : What if a new stadium in a country facing water scarcity also acted as a giant water reservoir (underneath the playing surface) and all the stands were collecting water to be used for greening community spaces? Njenga Kahiro
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The Guardian
January 27, 2015 Tuesday 12:52 PM GMT
Climate change: how can we move beyond the committed few?;
A decade on from a landmark letter arguing for business and government to work together to address climate change, there's still a long way to go says Polly Courtice
BYLINE: Polly Courtice
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 1014 words
"The government is risking the sacrifice of UK jobs to the altar of green credentials," proclaimed the Confederation of British Industry in 2004. Just a few years later it was arguing that "green is a vital driver of growth".
Related: Five ways to achieve climate justice
Over the last decade the business community's approach to climate change has transformed; the progressive voice has become more mainstream and carbon emissions are firmly on the agenda. With the Paris climate talks approaching at the end of this year, business influence is more important than ever. But are we going far and fast enough?
In 2005, the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership brought 13 pioneering business leaders together to challenge the CBI's original claim. In an open letter to the prime minister, they called for ambitious and long-term climate legislation, and offered to work with the government to achieve it. It was a watershed moment, helping to create the conditions needed for the UK's world-leading Climate Change Act and future ground-breaking legislation across the European Union.
With the support of CISL's patron, the group became established as The Prince of Wales's Corporate Leaders Group and reflected the need in a growing number of companies for long-term policies that would give them the certainty to start investing in low-carbon technologies and more efficient supply chains.
Related: Business leaders are not taking sustainability seriously
The CLG's communiqué to UN negotiators gathering in Bali in 2007 was the first time a major business group had called for a strong outcome from international climate talks. Two years later, more than 900 companies signed the group's Copenhagen Communiqué - a remarkable consensus among the world's most senior corporate leaders, even if the final outcome left many impatient and frustrated. Just last month, the Trillion Tonne Communiqué, calling for cumulative CO2 emissions to be kept below 1trn tonnes, was amongst the business calls that led to a target for net zero emissions being included in the Lima Call for Climate Action - a concrete step forward towards Paris.
The CLG has also worked hand in glove with José Manuel Barroso in his former role as president of the European Commission, on EU climate commitments, most recently galvanising businesses to support at least a 40% emissions cut by 2030. And the group's 23 member companies, including Skanska and Unilever, which span industrial sectors from construction to consumer goods, are influencing climate policy around the world.
In the meantime, many businesses are grasping the commercial opportunities that are already out there: low-carbon is good for the bottom line. Global investment in clean energy reached $310bn in 2014, and innovation in technologies like LED lighting and solar power has led to major new growth areas.
But an even greater number of businesses are still failing to factor carbon constraints into their strategic planning. The speed and scale we need requires mass mobilisation of companies that recognise the risks and seize the opportunities, not just action from the committed few.
And it's no easier for the policymakers: the failing UK Green Deal and the less than perfect EU emissions trading scheme are proof that they can't get it right on their own.
Related: International law is coming up short in its response to climate change
CLG members feel the answer lies in greater collaboration between governments and business to ensure we get pro-green, pro-business policies that drive forward the innovation we need. That's why the CLG supported the establishment of the Green Growth Platform in 2013, which allows investors to engage with progressive EU member-state governments to develop and promote the ambitious decarbonisation of their economies.
Collaboration holds the key for unlocking solutions to sustainability challenges that will strengthen the economy and create new jobs, while keeping goods and services affordable and accessible. In my view, there is an important role for academic institutions like the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership to bring groups like these together and add valuable research and thought leadership to the mix.
Today, marking 10 years since that ground-breaking business letter to Tony Blair, The Prince of Wales will gather more than 300 business leaders, policy-makers, MEPs, academics, environmentalists and the media to call for strong business leadership on climate change. At the same event the CLG will launch its vision for the UK economy. It envisages a secure, efficient and decarbonised power sector, a resilient and low-carbon built environment, a cleaner and integrated transport system, and support for more sustainable consumption. Who wouldn't aspire to such a world?
Related: From urban aquaponics to fruit jerky: meet London's green entrepreneurs
In this pivotal year, business needs to act with a sense of urgency in securing a transformative outcome from Paris. The alternative risks seriously undermining future global prosperity and inflicting unnecessary social, economic and environmental costs on the world.
Polly Courtice is director of the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership. She is also founder-director of The Prince of Wales's Business & Sustainability Programme and Academic Director of CISL's Master's in Sustainability Leadership.
The leadership hub is funded by Xyntéo. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled 'brought to you by'. Find out more here .
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The Guardian
January 27, 2015 Tuesday 11:07 AM GMT
Tories forced into U-turn on fast-track fracking after accepting Labour plans;
Proposals ban drilling in national parks, areas of outstanding national beauty and areas of drinking water collection
BYLINE: Damian Carrington
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 762 words
The government made a major U-turn on plans to fast-track UK fracking on Monday after accepting Labour proposals to tighten environmental regulations.
David Cameron had previously said the government was " going all out " for shale gas development, but widespread public concern and a looming defeat by worried Tory and Liberal Democrat backbenchers forced ministers to back down.
The Guardian revealed on Monday that George Osborne, the chancellor, was demanding "rapid progress" from cabinet ministers, including delivering the "asks" of fracking company Cuadrilla.
But the changes accepted by ministers would ban fracking in national parks, areas of outstanding natural beauty and in areas where drinking water is collected, ruling out significant regions of the UK's shale gas deposits. The new regulations will slow down exploration by, for example, requiring a year of background monitoring before drilling can begin.
However, an attempt to impose a moratorium on shale gas exploration, as recommended by a report from MPs, including former Conservative environment secretary Caroline Spelman, was defeated after Labour abstained. The infrastructure bill, which contains the new rules for fracking, now goes to the House of Lords, where further changes could be made.
"This is a huge U-turn by the government and big victory for the protection of Britain's environment," said Caroline Flint, the shadow energy and climate change secretary.
"Labour has always said shale gas extraction cannot go ahead unless there is a system of robust regulation and comprehensive inspection, but David Cameron has repeatedly ignored people's genuine and legitimate environmental concerns over shale gas."
Related: A county divided: is Lancashire ready for its fracking revolution?
Labour did not oppose the change to trespass laws, which allow fracking under people's home without their permission
A government spokesman said: "Successfully extracting shale gas can create a new British industry, creating jobs and make us less reliant on imports, but we recognise the need for a measured approach for this nascent industry."
Donna Hume, from Friends of the Earth, said: "Public opinion and increasing concern from MPs has forced the government into retreat on fracking. Everywhere fracking is proposed, local communities say no." Hundred of protesters gathered outside parliament earlier on Monday as the issue was discussed and 360,000 people signed a petition opposing government plans.
"But these concessions do not go far enough," said Hume. "The only way to safeguard our climate, local communities and their environment from the fracking threat is to halt shale gas completely."
Green party MP Caroline Lucas, one of the MPs who wrote the environment audit committee's report that backed a moratorium, said the Commons debate was farcical after discussion of dozens of amendments was confined to two hours.
She criticised the Labour amendments as weak. "When it came to a freeze on fracking, Labour abstained. Instead they served up their own superficial tweaks, lacking in detail and riddled with loopholes," she said. "The strength of public feeling on this issue is palpable and I think it's intensified still further in the face of the astonishing lack of transparency and lack of regard for the views of voters. People won't be silenced on this."
The shale gas industry welcomed the rejection of a moratorium. Ken Cronin, chief executive of industry group UK Onshore Oil and Gas, said: "It is good news that MPs have rejected the misguided attempts to introduce a moratorium. Most of the amendments agreed are in line with best practice in the industry or codify the directions of regulators, which the industry would naturally comply with. We now need to get on with exploratory drilling to find out the extent of the UK's reserves."
The 13 Labour changes accepted by ministers included independent inspection of the integrity of wells, monitoring for leaks of methane and informing residents individually of fracking in their area. The government proposal to allow "any substance" to be used in fracking wells was also overturned.Climate change minister Amber Rudd committed the government to cancelling shale gas licences if their official advisers, the Committee on Climate Change, concluded that shale gas would damage climate change goals or make a written statement to parliament explaining the reasons for not doing so. But she refused to release in full a heavily redacted government report on the impact of fracking on the rural economy, claiming it could "mislead" the public.
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The Guardian
January 27, 2015 Tuesday 8:12 AM GMT
Prince Charles: global pact on climate change could be Magna Carta for Earth;
Prince of Wales said this year marked potentially the last chance to save the world from the perils of global warming
BYLINE: Fiona Harvey
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 756 words
A new global pact on climate change, due to be signed this year in Paris, should be a "Magna Carta for the Earth", Prince Charles has urged.
He said this year marked potentially the "last chance" to save the world from the perils of global warming, with the Paris conference and the United Nations' plan to replace the millennium development goals with a new set of sustainable development targets. "We simply cannot let this opportunity go to waste. There is just too much at stake, and has been for far too long."
He told a meeting of forestry and climate experts in London: "In the 800th anniversary year of the Magna Carta, perhaps this year's agreement of the new sustainable development goals and a new climate agreement in Paris should be seen as a new Magna Carta for the Earth, and humanity's relationship with it."
But he warned of difficulties ahead as the negotiations build up: "[This is] an absolutely crucial opportunity, if not the last chance before we end up in an irreversible situation, for the international community to establish a new set of interlocking, coherent and ambitious frameworks governing human development, poverty, disaster risk reduction, the natural environment and climate change. We could, and should, see an agenda set for the coming decades that is capable of transforming the prospects for humanity by improving and nurturing the state of the planet upon which we all depend."
His insistence that 2015 will be a make-or-break year for the climate, and environmental sustainability, were echoed by Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and now the UN's special envoy for climate change, charged with bringing nations together for a successful outcome at the Paris conference in December.
She told the Guardian: "This is the most important year since 1945. In 1945, at the end of the second world war, we got the charter for the United Nations, the international institutions [that embodied it], the Marshall Plan, and a few years later we got the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This year we have to get a similar order of decisions, which will determine the future for decades, and longer."
She pointed to the possible Paris agreement and the sustainable development goals as twin aims that would complement each other in building a more environmentally and socially secure future for the world.
At Paris, governments are expected to sign a new global pact by which nearly all of the world's nations, both developed and developing, would set out clear targets and measures to curb greenhouse gas emissions, to come into effect from 2020. These goals would replace the current targets, set out in 2009 at the Copenhagen summit, to curb emissions - and, in the case of industrialised nations, to make absolute cuts in carbon output - by the end of this decade
Already, the world's two biggest emitters and economies - the US and China - have set out carbon targets, in the case of the US to cut by 26% to 28% by 2025, compared with 2005 levels, and in China's case to cause emissions to peak by 2030. The EU has also set out its plans for a 40% cut in emissions by 2030, compared with 1990 levels. Other major economies are expected to come forward with their proposals by April, followed by a period in which the plans will be evaluated before the crunch negotiations take place over two weeks in December.
However, emissions targets - and the crucial question of whether they will be adequate to stave off the worst effects of global warming - are not the only sticking point. Developed countries are also being urged to reassure poorer nations that they will provide financial assistance to help them cut carbon and cope with the effects of climate change, amounting to more than the $100bn a year that should be flowing to the developing world by 2020. As yet, there is no agreement on this.
Separately, but also under the auspices of the UN, governments are expected to pass a set of goals on issues as diverse as poverty, environmental protection, water, nutrition and health, to take over from the millennium development goals that expire this year.
Robinson said both were needed. "On Paris, I am increasingly hopeful that we will get an agreement. But that will not come into effect until 2020. The sustainable development goals will come into effect next year, and they will be vital to the pre-2020 period," she explained.
She added: "This is the most important year of my lifetime, for the sake of future generations and to see intergenerational justice. We cannot miss this opportunity."
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The Guardian
January 27, 2015 Tuesday 5:59 AM GMT
Tony Abbott still lives in the 18th century on climate change, says Labor;
Opposition climate change spokesman Mark Butler says prime minster is more concerned with awarding knighthoods than tackling global warming
BYLINE: Shalailah Medhora
SECTION: AUSTRALIA NEWS
LENGTH: 531 words
Tony Abbott is "living in the 18th century" when it comes to tackling climate change, Labor has said, after the release of a new report warning that Australia's temperatures could rise substantially in coming decades.
Modelling by the national science agency the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology has predicted average temperatures in Australia could rise by more than 5C by 2090.
It warned that the "business-as-usual" approach of burning fossil fuels will contribute to soaring global temperatures.
Labor's climate change spokesman, Mark Butler, criticised Abbott for focusing on the issue of knighthoods which he said "doesn't reflect national priorities".
"Instead of indulging his strange personal fascination with the British royals ... Tony Abbott would have been much better served spending some time on a serious climate change policy," Butler said on Tuesday.
"But we know Tony Abbott still lives in the 18th century and refuses to join the rest of us to face this challenge."
The Greens leader, Christine Milne, said potential changes in climate will derail plans for Australia's future.
"Australia's future is grim in the climate sense," Milne said in Hobart on Tuesday. "All the projections they [the government] want to talk about - about the economic growth, about food and agribusiness - will come crashing down unless we get serious about global warming."
The Climate Institute has urged the government to invest more in decarbonisation and improve environmental resilience.
The head of the institute, John Connor, said: "This new data reinforces earlier analysis for Treasury that showed large chunks of the Australian economy will be whacked by global warming."
"Under scenarios of unchecked or part-checked pollution, sectors like agriculture, health, and ecosystems are hit well beyond their ability to adapt."
"This shows starkly how deep pollution reductions and decarbonisation of the economy is squarely in Australia's national interest," Connor said. "This needs to be the guiding principle in the government's decision this year on Australia's post-2020 pollution reduction targets."
The Australian Conservation Foundation warned that "some parts of Australia could become uninhabitable".
"These projections show Australia will suffer more extreme heat and drought, having massive implications for agriculture, tourism, water supply and liveability," Victoria McKenzie-McHarg, the foundation's climate change program manager, said. "The number of hot days in the country is set to increase substantially."
"It makes you wonder what it will take to get the federal government to take this issue seriously," McKenzie-McHarg said.
"This year must become the year our government starts to play a constructive role in the global effort to tackle climate change."
A spokesman for Ian Macfarlane, the industry minister, said: "The Australian government is committed to tackling climate change and is delivering strong, effective and practical action through its direct action plan and $2.55 bn emissions reduction fund.
"Unlike Labor, the Coalition is tackling climate change without a painful carbon tax that hurts Australian pensioners, families and businesses."
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The Guardian
January 27, 2015 Tuesday 2:08 AM GMT
Climate change will hit Australia harder than rest of world, study shows;
Science agency the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology predict temperature rises of up to 5.1c in Australia by 2090 in their most comprehensive forecast yet
BYLINE: Oliver Milman
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 1025 words
Australia could be on track for a temperature rise of more than 5C by the end of the century, outstripping the rate of warming experienced by the rest of the world, unless drastic action is taken to slash greenhouse gas emissions, according to the most comprehensive analysis ever produced of the country's future climate.
The national science agency CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology have released the projections based on 40 global climate models, producing what they said was the most robust picture yet of how Australia's climate would change.
The report stated there was "very high confidence" that temperatures would rise across Australia throughout the century, with the average annual temperature set to be up to 1.3C warmer in 2030 compared with the average experienced between 1986 and 2005.
Temperature projections for the end of the century depend on how deeply, if at all, greenhouse gas emissions are cut. The world is tracking at the higher emissions scenario, meaning a temperature increase of between 2.8C and 5.1C in Australia by 2090.
According to the report, this "business-as-usual" approach to burning fossil fuels is set to cook Australia more than the rest of the world, which will average a temperature increase of 2.6C to 4.8C by 2090.
Australia's surface air temperature has already increased 0.9C since 1910, with the number of extreme heat records outnumbering extreme cool records nearly three to one since 2001.
Australia experienced its third-warmest year on record in 2014, with 2013 its warmest year on record. The heat experienced in 2013 was "unlikely" to have been caused by natural variability alone, the report stated, with such temperatures now five times more likely due to humans releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Other findings of the wide-ranging analysis, the first such Australian climate projection made since 2007, included:
The interior of Australia is set to warm more rapidly than coastal areas. Alice Springs will experience an average of 83 days a year over 40C in 2090, up from just 17 in 1995.
Melbourne will swelter through an average of 24 days above 35C by 2090, up from 11 in 1995. Sydney will experience 11 days above 35C by 2090, an increase from three days in 1995.
Australia is on course for a sea level rise of 45cm to 82cm by 2090, if emissions are not curbed. The report warned that if the Antarctic ice sheet was to collapse, sea levels would be a further "several tenths of a metre higher by late in the century".
Extreme rainfall events will increase but overall rainfall is expected to drop in southern Australia, apart from Tasmania, during the winter and spring months - by as much as 69% by 2090.
There will be more extreme droughts, with the length of droughts increasing by between 5% and 20%, depending on how quickly greenhouse gases are cut.
Rising temperatures will result in a "greater number of days with severe fire danger". Meanwhile, soil moisture will fall by up to 15% in southern Australia in the winter months by 2090.
Snow cover will decline, with the report stating there was "high confidence that as warming progresses there will be very substantial decreases in snowfall, increase in melt and thus reduced snow cover".
These changes are likely to produce some benefits, such as enhanced agriculture in Tasmania and fewer deaths from cold weather. But they will be overshadowed by the negatives, such as rising numbers of deaths from heatwaves, water resource challenges, impacts upon agriculture and risks posed to coastal infrastructure by rising seas.
Some of the most profound transformations are set to take place in the seas that surround Australia, which will warm by a further 2C to 4C unless emissions are cut.
Excess carbon dioxide absorbed by the oceans causes the water's pH level to drop. This acidification makes it more difficult for corals to form hard reef structures and other creatures such as oysters, clams, lobsters and crabs to develop their shells.
This phenomenon poses a major risk to ecosystems such as the Great Barrier Reef and is, according to the report, "likely to impact the entire marine ecosystem from plankton at the base to fish at the top".
Kevin Hennessy, a principal research scientist at the CSIRO, said it and the Bureau of Meteorology now had a greater confidence than ever in their forecasts of Australia's climate.
"We expect land areas to warm faster than ocean areas, and polar regions faster than the tropics," Hennessy told Guardian Australia.
Given Australia's geographical position, that would mean much of the country was expected to warm faster than the global average.
"Australia will warm faster than the rest of the world," Hennessy said. "Warming of 4C to 5C would have a very significant effect: there would be increases in extremely high temperatures, much less snow, more intense rainfall, more fires and rapid sea level rises."
Hennessy said even the internationally agreed limit of 2C of warming on pre-industrial times would cause severe problems for Australia.
"That intermediate emissions scenario would have significant effects for Australia," he said. "Coral reefs are sensitive to even small changes in ocean temperature and a 1C rise would have severe implications for the Great Barrier Reef and Ningaloo reef.
"The situation is looking grim for the Great Barrier Reef unless we can significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. A 2C future would be very challenging."
Hennessy said Australia should prepare for this altered climate by ensuring hospitals, transport infrastructure, construction codes and fire planning all considered the rising temperatures.
Cutting emissions would also help head off the worst of climate change, with nations set to convene in Paris later this year for crunch talks aimed at agreeing emissions reductions beyond 2020.
"Achieving that intermediate, rather than higher, emissions path would require significant reductions in global greenhouse gases," Hennessy said. "It's difficult to say what will be achieved, there are a lot of negotiations to come in Paris. We hope there will be an agreement until 2050 at least, but who knows what will happen in the coming decades."
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The New York Times Blogs
(Dot Earth)
January 27, 2015 Tuesday
A Climate Hawk Separates Energy Thought Experiments from Road Maps
BYLINE: ANDREW C. REVKIN
SECTION: OPINION
LENGTH: 1706 words
HIGHLIGHT: A progressive “climate hawk” says simplified road maps for solving the climate challenge are counterproductive.
David Roberts, the progressive environmental blogger who coined the phrase "climate hawk," has done the environmental community a great service with a Grist post stressing the difference between a vision of a climate-safe energy future and a strategy for making that vision a reality.
One of his core lines is:
[M]ost decarbonization scenarios are thought experiments, not practical roadmaps. But when they are reported to the public, that distinction is often lost.
Marking the difference is essential unless you want to give the public a false sense that it'll be easy to satisfy the world's energy needs without overheating the planet.
This is particularly true given the "super wicked" nature of this issue, which is complicated by competing societal concerns, embedded special interests, huge gaps between human energy needs and clean-energy menus and other impediments to swift change.
The piece, titled "We can solve climate change, but it won't be cheap or easy," is important in many ways. One is that he's created an opening for constructive crosstalk between camps that too often seem to be at each others' throats - progressive environmentalists and people associated with the innovation-focused Breakthrough Institute, founded by the "Death of Environmentalism" authors Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus.
He centers the piece on a recent paper - "A critical review of global decarbonization scenarios: what do they tell us about feasibility?" - by four authors including Jesse D. Jenkins, an energy policy analyst long associated with Breakthrough who's currently pursuing his doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I'm glad Roberts sees value in varied approaches to energy and climate progress. (For the record, I've participated in Breakthrough meetings and hung out with Grist staff.)
But the prime value lies in Roberts's simple reminder, amid floods of glossy optimistic rhetoric, that taking the climate-warming carbon out of a growing global energy menu is a challenge requiring far more than better messaging or political tactics. My guess is he'd agree with my notion that energy progress will only come with an odd combination of "urgency and patience."
The piece starts with Roberts's critique of those, including Paul Krugman of The Times and Joe Romm of the Center for American Progress, who embraced a finding in last year's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report that even a very aggressive global push to cut carbon dioxide emissions would trim a barely perceptible 0.06 percentage points per year from global economic growth.
As with all such analyses, fine print matters and just one panel caveat such enthusiasts didn't mention was this:
Under the absence or limited availability of technologies, mitigation costs can increase substantially depending on the technology considered.
One of the technologies the scenarios took as necessary was rapid global adoption of technologies that capture and store carbon dioxide from power plants - a technology that has not been tested at anything remotely close to a scale the atmosphere would notice. (See "Scaling up carbon dioxide capture and storage: From megatons to gigatons," a 2009 paper by Howard J. Herzog at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for just one of many sobering takes on what's needed.)
On Twitter and in a Grist comment, I cheered Roberts on. I've long said (and I've often been punished for saying) such thought experiments are valuable ways to delineate how something might get done, but that's just a starting point. It's up to citizens, communities and experts on energy and innovation policy, human behavior and politics to dig in on how it might get done.
Here are three more examples showing the tough realities hidden by breezy bullet points.
In 2011, I posted two pieces on California's ambitious plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050.
Is it a road map or thought experiment?
See what you think after reading what Nate Lewis, a solar energy researcher at the California Institute of Technology, said in one of the posts:
California could get roughly halfway to that goal in a perfect world - one without impediments such as higher costs, nimby fights and resistance from consumers and industries wedded to fossil fuels.
But even in that perfect world, Lewis says, citing the reviewed literature, fundamental leaps in basic energy sciences would be required to get all the way - and the nation and world are not investing at anywhere the level that would be required in the related sciences and in development and demonstration of promising technologies.
Looking beyond California to the nation, Lewis cited a National Academy of Sciences report he co-authored with 40 experts in energy technology on a path to getting more than half of the country's electricity from renewable sources by mid-century:
"Everybody agreed that if we were going to get more than half of our electricity in our country from renewables by 2050 we were going to have to do things that we simply don't know how to do today at all and fundamentally change the way we use, generate and consume energy [relevant section here]. That's completely in agreement with the California report. And it's different than people who would tell you that we have all the technology we need and we just need the political will and let's be done with it. That's not what any technically knowledgeable panel concludes."
Another example is the 2012 Renewable Electricity Futures study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The study is waved around frequently by campaigners for wind and solar power. And why not, given the main bullet point:
Renewable electricity generation from technologies that are commercially available today, in combination with a more flexible electric system, is more than adequate to supply 80% of total U.S. electricity generation in 2050 while meeting electricity demand on an hourly basis in every region of the country.
But then there's that darned fine print, including this disclaimer:
[A]lthough RE Futures describes the system characteristics needed to accommodate high levels of renewable generation, it does not address the institutional, market, and regulatory changes that may be needed to facilitate such a transformation.
That's precisely the gap Roberts says needs to be the focus. I agree.
Finally, there was the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change synthesis report last fall. Here's one (widely quoted) bullet point:
As I wrote at the time, you'd have to dig deep and long in the background chapters to learn that "many of these technologies exist today" hides huge gaps, particularly at the scale that would be needed to blunt emissions of greenhouse gases.
For a far better description of the challenge and gaps, see Pathways to Deep Decarbonization, a report released last fall by two groups trying to help the United Nations advance sustainable development.
Here's one blunt bullet point:
Very few countries have looked seriously at the operational implications of staying within the 2°C limit.
The word "operational" denotes the difference between a thought map and a plan.
And the executive summary included this sobering statement on an issue I first explored in a front-page article in The Times in 2006:
[T]he technical feasibility of deep decarbonization rests on the large-scale deployment of several low-carbon technologies, some of which are not yet fully commercialized or affordable. For this reason, countries and the international community as a whole must undertake a major research, development, demonstration, and diffusion (RDD&D) effort to develop low-carbon technologies and ensure their widespread availability and their cost-competitiveness with high-carbon alternatives, when the social cost of carbon is taken into account by means of carbon pricing, which, however, need not be uniform across countries.
Let's circle back to the climate panel's November report. As I wrote at the time, with all the graphics and lists and other content attending the report release, "Somehow the panel failed to fit in a single graph like this one from the International Energy Agency showing how utterly inconsequential energy research is in advanced democracies (the O.E.C.D.) compared to budgets for science on other things we care about":
There are plenty of other examples, of course. Read this post for my look at a zero-carbon vision of my home state: "Can Wind, Water and Sunlight Power New York by 2050?" Thought experiment or road map? I'm sure views will vary.
I'll give David Roberts the last word. Please read his post and explore the paper he cites, which was written by Peter Loftus of Primaira LLC, Armond Cohen of Clean Air Task Force, Jane Long, formerly of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Jesse Jenkins.
Here's Roberts's kicker, which sums things up well:
[W]e are past the time when thought experiments are enough. We need to start thinking in practical terms about how to get the technologies we need ready - as the authors say, "deep energy system decarbonization is likely to require an ambitious, focused agenda of rapid innovation and improvement in every critical technology area, even those commercially available today, as well as substantial 'demand pull' efforts and policies to ensure early demonstration, industry maturation, scale-up, and 'learning by doing.'"
We need to think about the costs and who is going to pay them; even if the benefits outweigh the costs, the costs are going to be enormous. We need to think about the systemic changes required to integrate a large amount of variable renewables into an infrastructure that wasn't designed for it. And most of all, we need serious, realistic thinking about the social and political buy-in necessary to drive wholesale energy transformation. In the fallen world we live in, such social and political barriers are likely to be more difficult to overcome than technology or modeling challenges.
It's great to have these studies in our back pocket, as they refute the conservative mantra that a clean-energy transition is impossible. It is possible. But possible is a long way from practical or likely, and farther yet from "cheap" or "easy." Let's not fool ourselves about the huge task ahead.
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The Guardian
January 26, 2015 Monday 7:35 PM GMT
New York governor says massive storms are 'part of the changing climate';
Andrew Cuomo says frequency of extreme weather, such as hurricane Sandy and current blizzard sweeping across north-east, 'is a pattern never seen before'
BYLINE: Alan Yuhas in New York
SECTION: US NEWS
LENGTH: 497 words
Massive snowstorms such as the one sweeping into the US north-east on Monday are "part of the changing climate", New York's governor, Andrew Cuomo, declared at a press conference announcing a state of emergency.
Cuomo said on Monday that "there is a pattern of extreme weather that we've never seen before" - reiterating his comments in the wake of hurricane Sandy, when he said that "anyone who says there's not a dramatic change in weather patterns is probably denying reality."
"We have to find ways to build this city back stronger and better than every before," the governor said in 2012.
Despite the protestations of climate change deniers that extreme cold weather must mean global warming is not real, a single storm cannot be taken as evidence of anything with regard to climate: weather is not the climate.
But Cuomo was referring to how increasingly intense storms fit "a pattern of extreme weather" - and that pattern evinces the reality of climate change. As the globe continues to heat up over the long term - 2014 was the hottest year on earth since human beings started keeping records - more and more energy enters the atmosphere, charging it for extreme events.
The atmosphere's qualities vary hugely around the world - depending on geography, weather events like El Niño and the interaction of other factors. So the outcome of what all that charged energy actually does can vary from year to year, too. But one of the most likely consequences of this buildup of energy is a pattern of extreme weather events: not necessarily more storms, hurricanes, droughts and blizzards, but a pattern of increasingly dangerous and intense weather events.
Climate change could actually lead to more blizzards and less snow, since a warm atmosphere - full of energy and moisture soaked up by all that charged air - dumps more snow in brief, severe bursts. So while overall accumulation of snow may decrease, the frequency of intense storms may increase. This looks especially likely to happen as areas where snow should fall, in places like the Arctic, Andes glaciers and mountains around the world, rapidly lose snow due to global warming ; and then that same snow deluges another part of the world as a brutal rain or snowstorm.
Like a broken pendulum swinging from one extreme to another, faster each year and increasingly threatening to break off on the hot side of the continuum, climate change could produce increasingly severe weather events every year: not just hurricanes and droughts but unstable polar wind systems let loose on the east coast by heat, cold " bomb cyclones " striking Texas, and torrential rain in the south-east while California dries out completely.
Extreme precipitation - a weather event - is hard to link directly to climate change, but Cuomo has a viable point: cold weather records decrease every year, even as evidence quickly mounts that the heat in the atmosphere is making storms more intense and making both the climate and the weather more chaotic.
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The Guardian
January 26, 2015 Monday 3:30 PM GMT
Matt Ridley wants to gamble the Earth's future because he won't learn from the past;
Ridley argues against climate action because he believes zombie myths
BYLINE: Dana Nuccitelli
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 1149 words
Have you ever watched a zombie movie and wondered if the protagonists will grow physically tired from having to repeatedly kill zombies that inevitably rise once again from the dead? That's how people often feel when confronted with climate change myths that were debunked years ago. These myths never seem to stay dead, inevitably being revived by climate contrarians no matter how conclusively and repeatedly they've been debunked.
And so we have writer Matt Ridley once again published in the London Times complaining, " Rather than attack my arguments, my critics like to attack my motives." That's undoubtedly because when an individual keeps repeating the same myths over and over again, people eventually grow tired of debunking those myths and naturally question the motives of the individual who keeps making them.
Let's look at a few examples from Ridley's latest article. He claims not to be worried about global warming for a few reasons, including,
The failure of the atmosphere to warm anywhere near as rapidly as predicted was a big reason: there has been less than half a degree of global warming in four decades - and it has slowed down, not speeded up.
This is incorrect - average global surface temperatures have warmed between 0.6 and 0.7°C over the past 40 years (lower atmospheric temperatures have also likely warmed more than 0.5°C, though the record hasn't yet existed for 40 years). During that time, that temperature rise has temporarily both slowed down (during the 2000s, when there was a preponderance of La Niña events) and sped up (during the 1990s, when there was a preponderance of El Niño events). Climate models accurately predicted the long-term global warming trend. Ridley continues,
Sea level has risen but at a very slow rate - about a foot per century.
Given that sea level has risen faster than predicted, if you're arguing against the dangers posed by global warming, sea level is a poor choice. Climate research projects a sea level rise in the ballpark of 1 meter (3 feet) by the year 2100 if we follow the business-as-usual path advocated by folks like Matt Ridley.
Also, I soon realised that all the mathematical models predicting rapid warming assume big amplifying feedbacks in the atmosphere, mainly from water vapour
Here Ridley is again quite wrong. We know that water vapour (as a greenhouse gas) will amplify global warming because a warmer atmosphere can hold more of it. Observations have confirmed this is exactly what's happening in the real world. This isn't an assumption of models - it's based on scientists' understanding of basic atmospheric physics.
Another thing that gave me pause was that I went back and looked at the history of past predictions of ecological apocalypse from my youth - population explosion, oil exhaustion, elephant extinction, rainforest loss, acid rain, the ozone layer, desertification, nuclear winter, the running out of resources, pandemics, falling sperm counts, cancerous pesticide pollution and so forth. There was a consistent pattern of exaggeration, followed by damp squibs: in not a single case was the problem as bad as had been widely predicted by leading scientists. That does not make every new prediction of apocalypse necessarily wrong, of course, but it should encourage scepticism.
At least Ridley admits that this is a poor excuse for dismissing the threats posed by climate change, but it's a far poorer excuse than he realizes. The reason that the worst possible consequences from acid rain, ozone depletion, pesticide pollution, and so forth weren't realized is that we took action to mitigate those threats. Specifically, we put a price on the pollutants that caused acid rain and ozone depletion, and regulated pesticide use. Those are precisely the solutions proposed to mitigate global warming. Ridley makes a similar error when discussing IPCC global warming projections,
My best guess would be about one degree of warming during this century, which is well within the IPCC's range of possible outcomes.
A further 1°C global warming by 2100 is only a possibility in one of the scenarios considered by IPCC (called RCP2.6 or RCP3-PD, where 'PD' stands for a rapid peak and decline of carbon emissions).
It's the scenario in which there is an immediate and aggressive global effort to cut carbon pollution. Specifically, human global carbon emissions peak in 2020, after which they decline at a rate of around 3.5% per year, reaching zero in 2070 and continuing to fall as we remove carbon pollution from the atmosphere.
Matt Ridley opposes immediate aggressive efforts to cut global carbon pollution. It's disingenuous at best for him to argue that his beliefs about modest global warming are consistent with the IPCC projections whilst advocating against the relevant pathway. It's like arguing, "My belief that I can lose weight while eating lots of cake and ice cream is well within medical doctors' range of my possible health outcomes."
There are numerous other errors and zombie myths in Ridley's piece that I won't go into. For example, he revives long-debunked myths about the 'hockey stick' and ' Climategate.' Worst of all is the conclusion to which Ridley's flawed arguments lead - that we needn't take serious action to mitigate global warming because he doesn't believe climate consequences will be serious.
One need only read the climate science literature ( summarized by the IPCC ) to see how dangerous the potential consequences of climate change are if we fail to take serious action to avoid them. Ridley believes future warming will be relatively small and hence the impacts relatively bearable, but it's just that - his (non-expert) belief. He argues that rather than mitigate the immense risks posed by global warming, the world should share his belief and take the gamble on the best case scenario that climate change doesn't turn out to be too terrible.
This is the part of the story where we're obligated to recall that Matt Ridley was the non-executive Chairman of Northern Rock, a British bank that in 2007, was the first in over 150 years to experience a run on its deposits. Under Ridley's chairmanship, the bank pursued a high-risk, reckless business strategy that eventually backfired, and had to be bailed out by British taxpayers to the tune of £27 billion ($41 billion).
Ridley apparently didn't learn from that fiasco, and wants to repeat the same high-risk strategy with the global climate. His reasoning is based on zombie myths, and if he's wrong again, this time nobody will be able to step in and bail out the Earth's inhabitants.
· The original photograph on this article was changed on 26 January 2015 because readers found it offensive.
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The Guardian
January 26, 2015 Monday 3:09 PM GMT
David Cameron rejects call for fracking ban;
Prime minister renews his support for exploiting shale gas as MPs call for moratorium and anti-fracking campaigners protest in Westminster
BYLINE: Damian Carrington
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 976 words
David Cameron has rejected calls for a moratorium on fracking from senior MPs, including his former environment secretary Caroline Spelman, saying the US shale gas revolution can be repeated in the UK.
The prime minister's renewed backing for increasingly controversial shale gas exploration comes at the start of a pivotal week for the industry, with key votes by parliament on Monday and Lancashire County Council from Wednesday.
Monday also saw the revelation in the Guardian of George Osborne's instructions to cabinet minister to make "personal priorities" of dozens of interventions to fast-track fracking, including the delivery of numerous "asks" from shale gas company Cuadrilla.
"I want to see unconventional [shale] gas properly exploited in our country," said Cameron, during a visit to Hampshire on Monday. "I think there are good reasons for doing this. We want to have greater energy security, we want to keep prices down, we also want to tackle climate change."
"The most important thing that needs to happen is for some exploratory wells to be dug and all would see local communities are benefiting from it," added Cameron, who has previously said the government is " going all out " for fracking. "I think it's only then that we will see that people in this country see that it works in America and it can work here."
Opponents of fracking argue that high-pressure fracturing of rocks to release gas risks health and environmental impacts and will undermine the country's climate change goals. Lord Nicholas Stern has dismissed the idea that fracking will cut UK gas prices as baseless.
Hundreds of protesters gathered outside parliament on Monday to oppose law changes aimed at easing fracking, such as removing the right of homeowners to object to fracking under their properties. John Ashton, until recently one of the government's top climate change diplomats, told the crowd that the government-industry fracking drive was not just an attack on the environment but also on democracy.
The Environment Audit Committee report published on Monday calls for a temporary ban on shale gas exploration on the grounds that it is "inconsistent" with the UK's stated climate change targets. The EAC report also concluded that, by the time any fracking industry was able to produce significant gas, legal limits on carbon emission would be too strict for it to be burned and that "an extensive range of uncertainties" remained over water and air pollution risk.
The Labour party will also force a commons vote on a ban on Monday unless 13 regulatory issues it sees as loopholes are closed, including fracking in nature reserves and drinking water catchment areas.
The EAC's call for a fracking ban has split academic experts, with some seeing its report as showing "refreshing integrity" while others dismissed is as "ill-informed".
"Shale hydrocarbons are becoming a textbook example of how to develop England backwards," said geologist and carbon-capture-and-storage expert Prof Stuart Haszeldine, at the University of Edinburgh. "The government has imposed development from the top, to help companies, against the wishes of residents, and whilst unresolved conflicts and uncertainty remain with scientific and health evidence. Even though it's possible that drilling, fracking, production, and borehole sealing can be achieved safely, residents need to feel included, not excluded."
"Public trust in regulations is absolutely essential if shale is to play any significant role in the UK," said Prof Jim Watson, at the UK Energy Research Centre and who has previously warned against fracking hype. "This may not require a blanket moratorium, but it may mean delays to licensed shale gas activities to allow such monitoring to be carried out."
Prof Paul Ekins, at University College London and whose work recently showed three-quarters of existing fossil fuel reserves are unburnable if climate change is to be tackled, said he supported a moratorium until it was clear fracking was consistent with carbon emission targets and environmental protection. The should be clear policy ensuring the gas replaced more polluting coal and confidence that leaks of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, could be stopped.
However, the proposed moratorium was opposed by Prof Michael Bradshaw, at Warwick Business School: "It will do nothing to resolve the current stalemate over the question of developing the UK's shale gas potential. What is required is a precautionary approach that judges each drilling application on its merits and monitors its impact, which, in time, will result in a much more informed debate than we currently have."
He said: "The real problem is that David Cameron's statement that: 'This government is going all out for shale' appears to have thrown caution to the wind."
"All fossil fuel production involves risk to the environment, and that is managed," said Prof David Manning, president of the Geological Society of London. But he said large shale gas production would need carbon capture and storage technology to be rolled out to bury climate-warming emissions.
Quentin Fisher, professor of petroleum geoengineering at the University of Leeds, said: "It is disappointing to see [the EAC] putting the ill-informed views of anti-fracking groups ahead of evidence-based scientific studies. In particular, the report totally overstates the dangers of shale gas extraction such as groundwater pollution, health risk and geological integrity."
But Prof Kevin Anderson, a climate change expert at the University of Manchester, said: "Numerous reports have conveniently sidestepped how the UK government's enthusiasm for shale gas is incompatible with its international commitments on avoiding "dangerous climate change". It is therefore refreshing to witness the integrity of the EAC in putting science and maths ahead of short-term political goals."
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The Guardian
January 26, 2015 Monday 2:00 PM GMT
Climate change could impact the poor much more than previously thought;
A new study is the first to incorporate empirical estimates of climate change impacts on economic growth in models
BYLINE: Dana Nuccitelli
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 934 words
It's widely accepted that climate change will have bigger negative impacts on poorer countries than wealthy ones. However, a new economic modeling study finds that the economic impacts on these poorer countries could be much larger than previous estimates.
As a result, they suggest that we should be aiming to limit global warming to near, or perhaps even less than the international target of 2°C. This conclusion is in sharp contrast to current economic models, which generally conclude that the economically optimal pathway results in a global surface warming around 3-3.5°C.
Current economic models mainly treat economic growth as an external factor. In these models, global warming and its impacts via climate change don't significantly affect the rate at which the economy grows. However, several economic studies have concluded that this is an inaccurate assumption, with a 2012 paper by Melissa Dell and colleagues taking the first stab at quantifying the effects of climate damages on economic growth.
The new study by Frances Moore and Delavane Diaz of Stanford University calibrates the climate 'damage functions' in one of these economic models ( DICE, developed by William Nordhaus at Yale) using the results from the Dell paper. They grouped the world into rich and poor countries, finding that while the economies of rich countries continue to grow well in a warmer world, the economic growth of poor countries is significantly impaired.
As a result, Moore and Diaz conclude that the economically optimal pathway could be very similar to the most aggressive scenario considered by the IPCC ( called RCP2.6 ). In this scenario, human carbon emissions peak almost immediately and then decline until they reach zero around the year 2070.
Moore and Diaz find that if climate change does affect GDP growth in this way, then the best path for society would limit temperatures to between 1.6 and 2.8°C warming in 2100, with a best estimate of around 1.7°C warming.
The study estimates the impact on economic growth in poor countries if we continue on a business-as-usual carbon pollution and rapid climate change path:
The average annual growth rate in poor regions is cut from 3.2% to 2.6%, which means that by 2100 per-capita GDP is 40% below reference.
One challenge is that there are two factors that may contribute to the bigger impact of climate change on economic growth in poorer countries, and we don't know which effect is bigger.
As poor countries are, on average, hotter than rich countries, they are exposed more frequently to damaging temperatures and therefore show higher sensitivity to temperature. Under this mechanism, the sensitivity of rich countries would increase as they warm. Alternatively, higher temperatures may be more damaging in poor countries because their economies are reliant on climate-exposed sectors such as agriculture and natural resource extraction, or because risk management options such as insurance or air conditioning are not as widely available. In this case we would expect the sensitivity of poor regions to warming to decrease as per-capita GDP increases.
In other words, poorer countries may have the resources to adapt to climate change as they become wealthier in the future. On the other hand, if their economic growth is sensitive to global warming mainly because they're located in hotter parts of the planet, then their economies will struggle in a hotter future world.
The 'social cost of carbon' is an estimate of the costs of carbon pollution to society via climate damages. It's an important number in terms of setting federal policy. In May 2013, the US government revised its estimate of the social cost of carbon from $22 per ton of carbon dioxide emitted to $37 per ton, to great consternation from the Republican Party. The new figure was based in large part on the average of the estimates from current economic models.
However, Moore and Diaz conclude that when accounting for climate impacts on economic growth, the social carbon cost rises to between about $70 and $400, with a best estimate of over $200 per ton. This suggests that even the new, higher US government estimate is too low. Frances Moore told me,
Our estimate of $200 per ton includes the assumption that there will be fairly rapid and effective adaptation to climate change impacts. If there is no adaptation, then the social cost of carbon is substantially larger. So its not an either / or choice between adaptation and mitigation policy.
The results of this study also suggest that estimates of the social cost of carbon to date have underestimated the already large uncertainty in its value. This suggests that climate policies should focus on risk management, as Delavane Diaz explains,
Rather than attempt to identify a single exact value for the social cost of carbon, mitigation policy should be designed with the goal being to manage uncertain climate risks.
There's another important take-away from this study. There have been a lot of arguments, based on current economic models, that the costs from climate damages won't be so large, and that we should instead focus on other problems. By failing to account for the impacts of climate damages on economic growth, to date these models appear to have significantly underestimated their costs.
When accounting for the full impacts of climate damages, there's a strong economic case for immediate aggressive efforts to cut carbon pollution.
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The Guardian
January 26, 2015 Monday 8:59 AM GMT
George Osborne urges ministers to fast-track fracking measures in leaked letter;
Chancellor's list of requests, including responding to 'asks' from Cuadrilla, laid out in letter to cabinet colleagues · Read George Osborne's letter in full
BYLINE: Damian Carrington
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 1174 words
George Osborne has requested that ministers make dozens of interventions to fast-track fracking as a "personal priority", including the delivery of numerous "asks" from shale gas company Cuadrilla.
The list of requests are laid out in a leaked letter to the chancellor's cabinet colleagues. They include interventions in local planning, and offering public land for potential future drilling. Anti-fracking campaigners claim the letter reveals collusion with the industry, while Labour said it showed the government was an "unabashed cheerleader for fracking".
The revelations come on the day of a Commons vote on fracking - the first MPs have had on the issue - and just hours after an influential cross-party committee of MPs published a report calling for a fracking moratorium because of potential risks to public health and climate change.
The UK's first planning applications for full-scale fracking are also set be decided this week, with Lancashire county councillors to begin deliberations on Wednesday - having already been advised to refuse the proposals by planning officials.
David Cameron has said the government is " going all out " for shale gas in the UK, claiming it would create thousands of jobs, benefit community investment and cut reliance on imports. But opponents argue that high-pressure fracturing of rocks to release gas risks health and environmental impacts and will undermine the country's climate change goals.
In Osborne's six-page letter, dated 24 September, to the high-level cabinet committee on economic affairs, the chancellor demands "rapid progress" on "reducing risks and delays to drilling" from Ed Davey, Eric Pickles, Vince Cable, Liz Truss and other ministers.
Related: A county divided: is Lancashire ready for its fracking revolution?
Top of the list is to "respond to the asks from Cuadrilla", the company intending to frack in Lancashire. The "asks" include contacting the Health and Safety Executive and Lancashire county council about planning applications, and the Ministry of Defence over granting Cuadrilla trucks access to military land. In his preamble, the chancellor writes: "I expect to see rapid progress" on the recommendations.
The letter, leaked to Friends of the Earth and seen by the Guardian, also includes moves to enable full shale gas production in future, such as ensuring that Pickles, whose communities department oversees planning, can "at his discretion" take the power to overrule planning decisions.
Osborne asks for improvement in public relations by, for example, building on an "existing network of neutral academic experts available to provide credible evidence-based views". He has already committed £5m of taxpayer funding to providing independent advice to the public. Osborne also envisages "demonstrating the concept" of safe fracking by "focusing on a small number of sites in less contentious locations" including "public sector land (particularly MOD owned)".
Friends of the Earth campaigner Tony Bosworth said: "This letter shows government and industry working hand-in-glove to make sure fracking happens. Such collusion with a highly unpopular industry will just make fracking an even more politically toxic issue. The government should follow other countries and call a halt so we can assess the risks to the environment, people's health and our climate."
Tom Greatrex, Labour's shadow energy minister, said: "Cameron and Osborne have repeatedly ignored genuine and legitimate environmental concerns - they seem prepared to accept shale gas at any cost, and this letter demonstrates that to be the case. Osborne's shale gas wishlist reveals a Tory government that wants to halve the number of public consultations, turning the government into an unabashed cheerleader for fracking rather than adopting a robust and evidence-led approach."
A Treasury spokeswoman said: "The Treasury and government speak with a wide range of stakeholders to inform policy."
The government's all-out drive to kick-start shale gas exploration received a significant blow on Monday from an influential cross-party committee of MPs, which published a report demanding a halt to all fracking. Joan Walley, chair of the environmental audit committee (EAC), said: "Fracking cannot be compatible with our long-term commitments to cut climate changing emissions unless full-scale carbon capture and storage technology is rolled out rapidly, which currently looks unlikely. There are also huge uncertainties around the impact that fracking could have on water supplies, air quality and public health."
Walley, former Tory environment secretary Caroline Spelman, and six other EAC members will attempt to instigate a moratorium during Monday's vote in the Commons. Walley also criticised ministers' plans to allow fracking in nature reserves and to change trespass laws to allow companies to frack under people's homes without permission. "This is profoundly undemocratic," she said.
A spokesman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change said: "We disagree with the conclusion of the EAC report. We have one of the most robust regulatory regimes for shale gas. UK shale development is compatible with our goal to cut greenhouse gas emissions and does not detract from our support for renewables, in fact it could support development of intermittent renewables."
The EAC report was criticised as "rushed" by Ken Cronin, chief executive of industry body UK Onshore Oil and Gas. "Calling for a moratorium achieves only one thing - increasing the gas coming from outside the UK at a substantially higher environmental cost and with significant economic consequences," he said.
Related: Why Labour opposes this fanataical faith in shale gas | Caroline Flint and Maria Eagle
The Labour party will also attempt to block all fracking unless 13 regulatory "loopholes" it has specified are closed, including allowing companies to drill in areas where drinking water collects and to inject "any substance" into the ground.
Greatrex said: "The potential [energy security] benefit cannot come at the expense of robust environmental protections or our climate change commitments. Labour will force a vote on Monday to prevent shale gas developments in the UK unless these loopholes are closed."
Professor Jim Watson, research director of the UK Energy Research Centre, said: "Public trust in regulations is absolutely essential if shale is to play any significant role in the UK. This may not require a blanket moratorium, but it may mean delays to licensed shale gas activities to allow monitoring to be carried out."
Climate scientist Prof Kevin Anderson, at the University of Manchester, said: "With unequivocal scientific evidence that burning fossil fuels is the principal cause of [climate change], the EAC's conclusions are a beacon of light in a sea of expedient half truths."
But petroleum engineer Prof Quentin Fisher at the University of Leeds, said: "It is disappointing to see a government committee putting the ill-informed views of anti-fracking groups ahead of evidence-based scientific studies."
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The Guardian
January 26, 2015 Monday 8:30 AM GMT
Correction Appended
2014 officially the hottest year on record;
Nasa and Noaa scientists report 2014 was 0.07F (0.04C) higher than previous records and the 38th consecutive year of above-average temperaturesInteractive: 15 of the hottest spots around the world in 2014
BYLINE: Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 1144 words
The numbers are in. The year 2014 - after shattering temperature records that had stood for hundreds of years across virtually all of Europe, and roasting parts of South America, China and Russia - was the hottest on record, with global temperatures 1.24F (0.69C) higher than the 20th-century average, US government scientists said on Friday.
A day after international researchers warned that human activities had pushed the planet to the brink, new evidence of climate change arrived. The world was the hottest it has been since systematic records began in 1880, especially on the oceans, which the agency confirmed were the driver of 2014's temperature rise.
The global average temperatures over land and sea surface for the year were 1.24F (0.69C) above the 20th-century average, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) reported. Nasa, which calculates temperatures slightly differently, put 2014's average temperature at 14.67C - 0.68C above the average - for the period 1951-80.
The scientists said 2014 was 0.07F (0.04C) higher than the previous records set in 2005 and 2010, and the 38th consecutive year of above-average temperatures.
That means nobody born since 1976 has experienced a colder-than-average year.
"Any one year being a record warm one is not in itself particularly significant, but this is one in a series of record warm years that are driven by the continuing underlying long-term global warming," said Gavin Schmidt, director of Nasa's Goddard Institute of Space Studies. "We expect that heat records will continue to get broken - not everywhere and not every year - but increasingly, and that does not bode well for a civilisation that is continuing to add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere at an increasing rate."
"It is not just 2014, but the long-term trend, so we may anticipate further records in the years to come," Schmidt said.
The odds of that temperature shift occurring because of natural climate variability were less than one in 27 million, according to the Climate Central research group.
"The data from Nasa and Noaa is the latest scientific evidence that climate change is real, and we must act now to protect our families and future generations," said Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat and climate champion. "Deniers must stop ignoring these alarms if we are to avoid the worst impacts of climate change."
The findings from Nasa and Noaa were in line with reports from the United Nations weather organisation, the UK Met Office and Japan's meteorological agency confirming the steadily upward march of temperatures over the last decades. Thirteen of the 15 hottest years have occurred since 2000. "Nineteen eighty-eight was also a record warm year at the time. Now it doesn't even rank in the top 20," Schmidt said.
"We can safely say it's probably the warmest year in 1,700 and 2,000 years, and I think it's probably safe to say 5,000 years," said Don Wuebbles, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Illinois who has worked on a number of IPCC reports. "You have a continuous upward trend over the last century and that is telling us something. We have a clear signal that our climate changing, and when you look at the evidence it's because of human activities."
"The evidence is so strong I don't know why we are arguing any more," Wuebbles said. "It's just crazy."
The last record cold year was more than a century ago in 1911.
The scientists noted that the 2014 record occurred without the help of a strong El Nino, a global weather phenomenon known for pushing more heat into the atmosphere.
Campaign groups said the milestone ought to spur new efforts to fight climate change. "The Obama administration must back international efforts to achieve zero carbon emissions by 2050," said Shaye Wolf, the climate science director with the Center for Biological Diversity. "We need a global agreement that keeps most dirty fossil fuels in the ground and provides ample support for developing nations to leapfrog into clean energy economies."
On the current emissions trajectory, the world will attain warming of 4 or 5C by 2100, which climate scientists say would be catastrophic.
Ocean surface temperatures were far warmer in 2014 than any year on record, especially in the northern Pacific. In April, westerly winds began spreading that very warm water out along the equator to the eastern Pacific and around to the Gulf of Alaska - releasing heat that had been locked in the depths for nearly a decade. The unusually warm waters shifted hurricane tracks, weakened trade winds, and led to widespread bleaching of coral reefs in Hawaii. Vast expanses of the north-western and south-eastern Atlantic, most of the Norwegian Sea, and parts of the central to southern Indian Ocean were also extraordinarily warm. Global sea-surface temperatures were 1.03°F (0.57°C) above the 20th-century average.
On land, temperature records toppled almost everywhere.
Much of Europe and parts of North Africa sweated out heatwaves. England saw its hottest year in three and a half centuries, according to the Central England Temperature data set. Nearly every weather station set new records. Transport crew in Norway had to hose down runways to prevent them buckling in the heat. Finns were warned they may soon face Decembers without snow. Australia had a series of heatwaves.
"Every continent had some aspect of record high temperatures," Thomas Karl, director of Noaa's National Climatic Data Center.
For North America - aside from California and Alaska - it was the opposite story. The year was so cold it spawned two new meteorological terms: polar vortex for the Arctic blast at the beginning of the year and lake effect, for the 2ft of snow dumped on Buffalo in November.
But California saw its hottest year, with annual average temperatures 4.1F (2.3C) higher than 20th century average, and scant relief for a punishing drought.
Elsewhere, Argentina was plagued by water shortages and power blackouts as extreme heat engulfed South America, setting new temperature records in Brazil and Bolivia.
The year also brought heavy rainfall and flooding in some countries.
Parts of Turkey saw five times the normal amount of rain, and France experienced its wettest summer since 1959. Rivers broke up earlier than ever recorded in Siberia. Millions of people were affected by heavy rains and severe flooding in northern Bangladesh, northern Pakistan and India.
Sea ice extent was below average on the Pacific side of the Arctic and near-average on the Atlantic side.
It was another year of declining sea ice in the Arctic. However, Antarctica actually saw the highest sea ice extent. "There are some interesting things going on in Antarctica," Nasa's Schmidt said.
· This article was amended on 26 January 2015. An earlier version said incorrectly that "Britain saw its hottest summer in three and a half centuries" last year.
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CORRECTION: A report about rising global temperatures ( 2014 confirmed as hottest year on record, 17 January, page 9) erred in one section that focused on more local records: we said that last year Britain had experienced its hottest summer in 350 years. What we should have said is that England saw its hottest year in three and a half centuries, according to the Central England Temperature data set.
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The New York Times
January 26, 2015 Monday
Late Edition - Final
Obama Clears a Hurdle to Better Ties With India
BYLINE: By PETER BAKER and ELLEN BARRY; Hari Kumar contributed reporting from New Delhi, Coral Davenport from Washington, and Steve Lohr from New York.
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NEW DELHI -- President Obama and his Indian counterpart broke through a five-year impasse on Sunday to pave the way for American companies to build nuclear power plants here as the two countries sought to transform a fraught geopolitical relationship into a fresh partnership for a new era of cooperation.
Opening a three-day visit amid pomp and pageantry, Mr. Obama moved to clear away old disputes that have stalled progress toward an alignment between the world's largest and most powerful democracies, a goal that has eluded the last three American presidents. Few obstacles to that have been more nettlesome in recent years than the deadlock over nuclear power.
''Today we achieved a breakthrough understanding on two issues that were holding up our ability to advance our civil nuclear cooperation, and we're committed to moving towards full implementation,'' Mr. Obama said at an appearance with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Hyderabad House, the princely palace used by the government. ''And this is an important step that shows how we can work together to elevate our relationship.''
The details remained vague, and it was unclear whether the understanding would convince American companies, such as GE and Westinghouse, to invest in India's civilian nuclear development. The companies had pressed India to rewrite its liability law, which Sunday's understanding did not call for, and so they will have to judge whether it is enough to resolve their legal concerns. But the fact that both governments were willing to dispense with a dispute that has frustrated them since 2010 underscored the mutual desire to reinvent the relationship.
Mr. Obama and Mr. Modi also renewed a 10-year defense pact, agreed to joint military hardware production and resolved to reduce the threat of greenhouse gas emissions to the world's climate. The climate agreement included mostly minor initiatives, none of the scale of the deal that Mr. Obama struck in November with China. But American officials were encouraged that after years of India's disavowing responsibility to help curb emissions, Mr. Modi told Mr. Obama that climate change was ''an article of faith'' for him and expressed determination to fight it.
The amity between the two leaders was palpable from the start as Mr. Modi broke with protocol to greet Mr. Obama at the airport with a warm handshake and hug. During their later public appearance, Mr. Modi referred to the president as ''Barack'' and thanked him for his ''deep personal commitment'' to their friendship. In a toast at a state dinner Sunday evening, Mr. Obama returned the favor, calling Mr. Modi ''my partner and friend.''
''This new partnership will not happen overnight,'' Mr. Obama said at the earlier appearance. ''It's going to take time to build and some patience. But it's clear from this visit that we have a new and perhaps unprecedented opportunity, and deepening our ties with India is going to remain a top foreign policy priority for my administration.''
Mr. Obama's visit, his second as president, is a major event in India. Despite lingering distrust over Washington's history of support for rival Pakistan, the United States enjoys widespread popularity here. For weeks, the Hindi news media has dissected details of Mr. Obama's visit, running half-page graphics of his limousine and airplane, broadcasting a detailed report about his BlackBerry and advising Michelle Obama on couture saris to wear.
Mr. Obama's visit was marred by his decision to cut it short by several hours and skip a tour of the Taj Mahal on Tuesday to fly to Saudi Arabia to pay respects to the family of King Abdullah, who died on Friday. But that was quickly set aside as Mr. Obama was welcomed with a red carpet, an honor guard and a 21-gun salute. He threw flowers on the memorial to Mahatma Gandhi at Rajghat. He and Mr. Modi took a walk through a garden and shared tea. And Mr. Obama was announced by trumpets at the state dinner.
Mr. Modi's reference to Mr. Obama by his first name drew notice. ''It's never been done before in India, to my knowledge,'' said Baijayant Panda, an Indian lawmaker. ''This is clearly sending signals to a lot of people, a lot of heads of government that matter.''
Still, the spectacle outweighed the substance in most cases. On climate change, India agreed to move to phase down hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, according to a treaty known as the Montreal Protocol. But more broadly, India set no specific goals limiting greenhouse gases, as Beijing did in November. India is the third-largest carbon polluter behind the United States and China but has resisted bolder measures, citing its need to lift hundreds of millions out of poverty.
Instead, the two sides agreed to promote solar, wind and other clean energy, and Mr. Modi said he would support a global climate pact to be shaped in Paris this year. Mr. Modi said he felt no pressure to match China's commitment. ''Climate change itself is a huge pressure,'' he said. ''Global warming is a huge pressure.''
The nuclear understanding may finally bring to fruition an agreement that President George W. Bush reached with India in 2006 to end a moratorium on sales of nuclear fuel and reactor components to India, stemming from its first nuclear test in 1974. The promise of a thriving new nuclear trade never materialized because of a 2010 Indian law that would hold American companies liable for accidents in a way that they said went beyond an international convention, a delicate issue in a country still scarred by the Bhopal chemical disaster 30 years ago.
Obama aides said Indian officials had provided reassurances that their liability law conformed to the international convention and that it should provide what one American official called ''extra security'' for foreign companies. Moreover, India indicated it would set up a government-backed insurance pool to cover some of the risk, but not all of it.
American officials said they had also worked out an understanding of how to track American-provided nuclear materials, as required by law. Critics said it appeared Mr. Obama had given in on the tracking requirement. Officials denied that, but details of both agreements were scarce, and they still needed to be translated before being signed.
Westinghouse and GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy, a partnership with a Japanese industrial corporation, welcomed the agreement without declaring whether it offered enough protection.
In a statement, GE said the test would be whether it ''brings India into compliance with the International Convention of Supplementary Compensation,'' a global liability accord. Westinghouse praised the progress toward resolving issues ''that will enable Westinghouse and other U.S. companies to participate in India's growing nuclear energy market.''
Daniel Roderick, the chief executive of Westinghouse, is in New Delhi to attend a business leaders' meeting with Mr. Obama on Monday, but it was not known whether he had been consulted.
Some analysts said the understanding sounded vague and inconclusive. ''It's a deal on principles rather than specifics, which as far as I'm concerned is not a deal at all,'' said Abhijit Iyer-Mitra, a security analyst at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi. ''A lot of it's just, you know, blowing the trumpet.''
Sujatha Singh, India's foreign secretary, insisted that was not true. ''Let me underline: We have reached an understanding,'' she said. ''The deal is done.''
C. Raja Mohan, another analyst at the Observer Research Foundation, said it showed Mr. Modi's determination to resolve issues with the United States: ''The traditional reluctance to be seen with the Americans is over.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/26/world/asia/obama-lands-in-india-with-aim-of-improving-ties.html
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GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: President Obama participating in a wreath-laying ceremony during his reception at Rashtrapati Bhavan, the presidential palace.
Mr. Obama and Michelle Obama greeting guests before dinner ceremonies hosted by President Pranab Mukherjee, left. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY STEPHEN CROWLEY/THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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January 25, 2015 Sunday 1:26 PM GMT
Climate change is not a concern for CEOs? That should keep us all awake;
Apart from insurers, the future of the planet is not something that most chief executives lose sleep over
BYLINE: Observer
SECTION: BUSINESS
LENGTH: 313 words
The first day of the World Economic Forum in Davos was dominated by calls for 2015 to be a year of action on climate change. But while some in the business community worry about sustainability, there is plenty of evidence that the vast bulk of business executives give it no consideration at all.
"We are seeing the accelerated impact of climate change," World Bank boss Jim Yong Kim said in a speech on Wednesday. "Last year was the hottest on record. That matters. Extreme weather is real. It's a complete no-brainer to move towards cleaner, more livable cities."
Former US vice-president Al Gore teamed up with pop star Pharrell Williams to launch a second round of Live Earth concerts to raise awareness before crucial UN talks in November.
He accused fossil fuel companies in particular of using the atmosphere as "an open sewer" for carbon emissions, which are in danger of driving global warming to ruinous levels.
Yet according to PwC's 18th annual survey of global chief executives, climate change is not among the top 19 risks that keep them awake at night.
"Overregulation" is their top worry - government policies that interfere in business and undermine growth prospects. Skills, tax systems and cybersecurity are also among their concerns, but the future of the planet is not something that most chief executives lose sleep over.
The odd organisation, such as insurance market Lloyd's of London, which is seeing a huge increase in weather-related claims, understands the risks of doing nothing about climate change. But a far wider pool of executives still seem to think no further than their next quarterly financial results.
Gore has a seven-point programme that involves fighting for a moratorium on new coal-burning power plants, cutting dependence on oil, and people and corporations making themselves "carbon neutral". Will business respond with a sense of urgency? No.
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January 24, 2015 Saturday 4:14 PM GMT
Businesses still aren't feeling immediately threatened by climate change;
Businesses have a fundamental role to play in securing a climate deal, Christiana Figueres says, but don't yet feel immediately threatened by the situationWorld Bank chief makes climate action pleaAl Gore: 'oil companies use our atmosphere as an open sewer'World leaders failing on 'social cohesion'
BYLINE: Jo Confino in Davos
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 1010 words
Christiana Figueres, who heads up the global climate change talks, was visibly moved as she urged business leaders to take action to avoid runaway climate change at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos on Thursday.
"This is the first generation that is becoming aware of what we have done, because the previous generation had no clue," said the executive director of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. "We can't blame them, we can't blame ourselves because we've been put in this situation, but we do have a responsibility to do something about it and not to pass it on to the next generation."
Looking at her daughter sitting nearby, Figueres' eyes well up. Her desire to secure a meaningful climate deal later this year in Paris is clearly as much a personal concern as a global one.
While it is incumbent on the world's politicians to secure a deal, it's apparent they need help: just yesterday, the US Senate failed to pass resolutions acknowledging that climate change is the result of human activity. The private sector can play a pivotal role in giving politicians the confidence to act, Figueres said.
Related: US tech giants launch fierce fightback against global tax avoidance crackdown
"I don't think anybody can question the fact the role of business is fundamental, independently of [on] what side of the spectrum business stands," she said.
Engagement from the private sector, Figueres says, needs to come in three forms: vision, action and voice.
Vision is about business leaders understanding the consequence of climate change for their companies and ensuring they align their operations with staying within a 2C rise in global temperatures.
Executives then need to think through what they need from governments at both national and international level in order to pursue that path.
"This is about vision, not short-termism," Figueres said. "It's not just about energy efficiency measures today, which represents only a tiny, tiny little first step. It's about starting there but then understanding where we have to be over the next 50 years."
Once companies have a clear destination, they need to focus on closing the distance between where they are now and where they want to be, she says. The final step is to become much more vocal about the need for transformational action.
"It is no secret that we have a very small number of corporations that are being very vocal, and that there's a huge number of companies - the silent majority - that are not participating in this discussion and are not engaging with governments with respect to the very clear guidance and regulatory certainty that they need," she said.
Figueres believes the lack of advocacy by companies is due to the fact that most of them still do not feel immediately threatened by climate change. In a PwC survey this week, global warming didn't even make the list of CEO's top priorities or concerns.
Related: 'It is profitable to let the world go to hell'
But Figueres warns that if executives continue to focus only on what's in front of their noses, they will put their companies' long-term survival at risk.
They can see that in the long run, having a stable planet and economic system is actually better for them in their operations and their business continuity, and that there is a huge opportunity for growth and for new profit, for new jobs, new industries and new technologies," she said. "But that is not compelling enough to actually have the CEO get up there and use his voice and leadership because the pain in the shoe is not enough. There is this abstract sense of yeah, we all want to be better off, but maybe somebody else should be doing something about that. In the meantime, I have my payroll to worry about. Whereas those companies that are very active and do have a voice perceive that they're immediately threatened."
Businesses, regardless of their size, have largely failed to look deeply at the impacts of fossil fuels, she said: "They just use electricity and that's the sum total of their engagement in this process."
Despite the need for more action, Figueres said she was heartened by the number of major businesses that attended the climate change summit in New York last year, and in particular by the engagement by whole sectors, such as insurers and more progressive sections of the investment industry.
There has also been a sea change in the attitude from governments about the need to collaborate with the private sector.
"There has been quite an evolution in the understanding of the very positive contribution that the private sector can make," she says. "I remember when I got to the secretariat five years ago that the private sector was a taboo word that never would have appeared in any text of governments. Yet now you have the text actually inviting quite openly the participation of corporations.
She acknowledged that there's still a long way to go in what she calls "an evolutionary process". But with just 10 months to go before the Paris talks open, Figueres also recognised the need for urgent action and referred to having a time bomb on our hands.
Related: How concerned are CEOs about climate change? Not at all
When one strips everything away, Figueres says that what business leaders need to do most is get in touch with their common humanity.
We speak of business as though there was a head there, a thinking brain, and that's not so," she says. "We have a role to play in life, whether that is being the head of a Fortune 500 company, or being a junior professional in an NGO, and we must step up to those roles. "However, what cuts across all of those differences is the fact that we're all human beings, all of us, and we all are either parents or aunts and uncles or grandparents and we all have a responsibility to the future."
This year's Davos coverage is funded by The B Team. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled "brought to you by". Find out more here .
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January 24, 2015 Saturday 2:20 PM GMT
Mark Carney warns ECB QE could fuel risk-taking - Davos 2015 live;
Highlights of the final day of the World Economic Forum in Davos, including a debate on the global economic outlook this afternoonCarney: Investors mustn't be recklessIMF: Japan must reform fasterWatch the debate live hereNobel Prize winner warns Davos of dangers of climate changeLarry Elliott on Davos Groupthink
BYLINE: Graeme Wearden in Davos
SECTION: BUSINESS
LENGTH: 4301 words
block-time published-time 2.20pm GMT
Sir John Sawers: Snowden leaks have hurt co-operation with tech firms
Elsewhere in Davos....Sir John Sawers, chief of M16 until last year, has appeared on a panel at Davos to talk about the future of intelligence agencies.
Jill Treanor writes:
Sawers said the way technology companies reacted to the criticism which followed the Snowden leaks has led to reduction in corporation with the security services and added to the threat posed to society.
He told the audience in Davos the securities agencies performed a "public good" and insisted that friend-on-friend collection of the kind exposed by Snowdon was a "very small proportion" of the surveillance conducted by the agencies.
He said there needed to be discussion about the supervision and oversight of agencies. He said the laws had been strengthened to give he parliamentary committee chaired by Sir Malcom Rifkind greater oversight, more power to two judges providing oversight. "It's like having an on-going judge-led inquiry into the work of the intelligence agencies," said Sawers.
He said the reduced cooperation from technology companies in the wake of Snowden leaks meant "intelligence collection was not as good as before".
But he defended the need to collect data. "Our lives would be much simpler if they used a simple system badguy.com ".
It was not just about collecting data,he said, as people still mattered, as did having a diverse workforce, They individuals involved, he said, were phenomenally brave and committed.
It is not the first time he has spoken since leaving the agency. He told the FT last week that there should be restrictions on the availability of totally encrypted communications that are inaccessible to governments.
"We've never wanted to have no-go areas for the police in our communities but [totally private means of communication] would be creating no-go areas for evil doers of any sort online - terrorists, criminals, paedophiles - to carry out their business," he said last week.
block-time published-time 2.17pm GMT
The panel is wrapping up now. Nothing sensational, but I suspect Mark Carney's comments about QE fuelling risk-taking, inflation coming back to target, and cheap oil helping growth will all make some headlines. Or at least a few more tweets.
block-time published-time 2.15pm GMT
The panel now moves onto technological issues, and the impact that innovation is having on the financial sector.
Mark Carney says that we must avoid an Uber-style situation in the financial systems.
If technology is going to displace lots of jobs, impact will be most immediate on US, UK, due to flexible labour markets, says Carney #WEF
- Matthew Bishop (@mattbish) January 24, 2015
block-time published-time 2.10pm GMT
Carney: We have noticed that wages are rising
Heads-up, UK readers. Mark Carney just told Davos two significant things about UK monetary policy and future interest rate rises.
We currently have very low inflation in the UK ( just 0.5% ).
We have the will and responsibility to look through this period of low inflation, and we will get inflation back to target in the forecast horizon.
And secondly, Carney adds that "It is not lost on us that wages are picking up, as we forecast, in the most recent data".
That adds up to a hint that UK interest rates may not stay at their current record low for as long as some in the markets now expect, I think.
"We will return inflation back to the 2% target" says Mark Carney, adding "it's not lost on us that wages are rising." Remember rate rises?
- Richard Edgar (@ITVRichard) January 24, 2015
block-time published-time 2.03pm GMT
Kuroda says he's fully confident about the US economy, given how broad-based its growth is.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 2.11pm GMT
block-time published-time 2.02pm GMT
We've not heard much about the US yet, says moderator Larry Fink. That minor colony.
We'll have it back, Mark Carney jokes.
He seems in quite a good mood today...was in great form when we ran into him earlier today
block-time published-time 1.59pm GMT
Bank of England governor Mark Carney at Davos. Photograph: Ruben Sprich/Reuters
block-time published-time 1.58pm GMT
Carney: Oil price may be lower for longer
Mark Carney also cites the adjustment in the energy markets that we have all seen.
He says: it is realistic to expect....that oil is lower for longer. Given where cash costs actually are across the globe and given where demand is likely to b e.
That creates an opportunity that is considerable and possible undervalued for the global economy.
In Europe, there is a transition from everything being about monetary policy to everything being about stuctural policy.
And in the UK, there is a transition from household spending driving growth to investment driving growth, he adds.
block-time published-time 1.53pm GMT
Carney: I'm cautiously optimistic
Mark Carney says he is cautiously optimistic about global economic prospects this year - if the IMF is right that the world GDP will increase by 3.5%.
He cites the prospect of a rise in US interests as a crucial factor (assuming it happens).
As the BoE governor puts it:
The increased diverge in monetary policy will lead to a benign increase in volatility and will test capital flows across the global economy, including to emerging economy.... And it will test the strength of the financial system.
block-time published-time 1.47pm GMT
In a hundred years time, when we return to this podium, we probably will not remember this financial crisis, as it is just one among many, argues the IMF's Min Zhu.
But this will remember that this is the year that emerging markets take half of the global GDP.
block-time published-time 1.43pm GMT
Via Twitter, a quick summary of Mark Carney's comments ( full details here )
In an environment of low interests rates and QE there can be excessive risk taking: Mark J. Carney #wef15http://t.co/6jbHqsxbfe
- World Economic Forum (@Davos) January 24, 2015
Mark Carney welcomes ECB move but warns against reckless risk taking #wef15
- Kamal Ahmed (@bbckamal) January 24, 2015
#Davos2015#wef15 Carney: all monetary policy has distributional consequences. But biggest risk is that people remain unemployed too long
- jeremy warner (@JeremyWarnerUK) January 24, 2015
block-time published-time 1.37pm GMT
Kurodo also agrees that Japan needs to have its deficit in hand, given its huge national debt pile.
Haruhiko Kuroda: it's "quite necessary" to get rid of Japanese govt debt by 2020 - we'll have a real plan soon #wef15#Davos2015
- Lawrence Delevingne (@ldelevingne) January 24, 2015
block-time published-time 1.37pm GMT
IMF's Zhu ticks off Japan over structural reforms
Kuroda also insists that Japan is making pretty good progress in implementing Prime minister Shinzo Abe's third arrow, of structural reforms.
He cites progress in getting more women into work, new laws to increase competitiveness are coming. We hope people are slightly more patient.
We should not be patient, the IMF's Min Zhu shoots back, taking the opportunity to give Kuroda an economics lesson.
Japan has received a big stimulus from the fall in oil prices, he points out:
I think there is a good window for Japan to firmly implement structural reforms. I think the Japanese should not be that patient.
And you are also also very sensitive to rises in borrowing costs, the IMF senior policymaker warns. Another reason to ast fast.
That's quite a ticking off for Japan from Zhu. Larry Fink, the moderator, jokes that he hopes he's as strict with other countries too.
Kuroda responds. Yes we shouldn't be too patient when pushing these structural reforms through. But the impact will take time..
The higher female participation rate in Japanese labor market is 'really important' sign of structural reform in Japan, says Kuroda #WEF
- Matthew Bishop (@mattbish) January 24, 2015
block-time published-time 1.29pm GMT
Japanese finance minister welcome Eurozone QE
Governor Haruhiko Kuroda of the Bank of Japan says delegates have been too gloomy this year.
He welcomes the ECB's new asset-purchase scheme, and also points to the drop in the oil price. Together they could "greatly improve global economic outlook"
#davos2015#wef15 Japan's Kuroda calls the mood in Davos too pessimistic, citing ECB QE and lower oil prices as reasons for more upbeat view
- jeremy warner (@JeremyWarnerUK) January 24, 2015
block-time published-time 1.26pm GMT
Britain has been in a race against time to strengthen the economy before people become trapped in unemployment permanently, Mark Carney says.
He says the job is going well, citing the jump in employment over the last couple of years. Isn't that the Chancellor's trumpet he's tooting?
"We have created 600k jobs" says Carney on Davos panel, apparently claiming credit. I wonder how Osborne feels about that...
- Richard Edgar (@ITVRichard) January 24, 2015
block-time published-time 1.24pm GMT
Mark Carney: all monetary policy has distributional consequences. Low interest rates good for borrowers, affects savers #wef15
- Kamal Ahmed (@bbckamal) January 24, 2015
block-time published-time 1.22pm GMT
Mark Carney points out that monetary policy always has an impact on the way income is distributed.
"Monetary policy always has distribution effects" BoE gov Mark Carney tells @wef panel at #davos2015
- Richard Fletcher (@fletcherr) January 24, 2015
(In the case of QE, the ECB will be buying assets, pushing up their value and benefitting those who are already relatively wealthy).
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 1.23pm GMT
block-time published-time 1.21pm GMT
We will be tougher regulating banks in future, says Coeuré.
And he cites the need to tackle unemployment, particularly among young people, in Europe.
block-time published-time 1.19pm GMT
Mark Carney: QE can lead to extra risk-taking
Next question to Mark Carney - will the ECB's new QE programme fuel financial instability?
The Bank of England governor welcomes the ECB's move, but warns that it might cause more risk taking.
We know that stimulus packages can lead to excessive risk-taking, Carney agrees. His concern is that people may make two false assumptions.
1) That there is a "central bank put" (which means that a central bank steps in to save the day when markets tumble; the original was the Alan Greenspan put).
2) That there is an illusion of liquidity in certain markets. We have seen sudden moves to illiquidity in some markets, even the US Treasury markets
What's the solution?
Steps have been taken, Carney continues. We have shored up the banks at the core of the financial system, with recapitalisation and stress tests.
And Carney, as head of the Financial Stability Board as well as the Bank of England, he can get a mark-to-market view of the major banks each day.
And we must reduce the amplification channels from the core of the system outwards.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 1.20pm GMT
block-time published-time 1.11pm GMT
ECB's Coeuré: It's been a momentous week
First question goes to the ECB's Benoît Coeuré, just two days after the new Quantitative Easing programme was announced.
Its been a pretty momentous week, Coeuré smiles. It was clear that we had to do something about inflation.
We learned from the QE packages in US, UK, Japan, but those experiences aren't really comparible as the ECB is setting monetary policy over 19 countries.
And the ECB cannot do anything to raise Europe's growth rate in a lasting way, he warns. Only structural reforms and government action can do that.
block-time published-time 1.07pm GMT
Lawrence Fink is introducing the panel, and reminding them that a year ago this panel didn't talk about ISIS, or Ukraine, or Oil. And the feeling of the panel was quite optimistic.
I hope we'll do better this time, Fink adds.
block-time published-time 1.06pm GMT
And we're off..
Panel with Mark Carney on global economy about to start pic.twitter.com/0izHOzp0hl
- Philip Aldrick (@PhilAldrick) January 24, 2015
block-time published-time 1.00pm GMT
Global Economic Outlook debate - watch it live
Bells are ringing across the conference hall - it's nearly time for the session on the Global Economic Outlook.
On the panel....Bank of England governor Mark Carney, his Japanese counterpart Haruhiko Kuroda, IMF deputy managing director Min Zhu, the ECB's Benoît Coeuré and Brazil's finance minister Joaquim Levy.
There's a live feed here:
block-time published-time 12.59pm GMT
Davos unimpressed with UK's encryption plans
The Telegraph's Ambrose Evans Pritchard has collared some of the experts on the Davos cybersecurity panel, and found little time for David Cameron's push to let security services access encrypted data.
He writes:
President Toomas Hendrik Ilves of Estonia, a cyber-expert whose country was subjected to a crippling attack for 24 hours in 2007, said Mr Cameron's plan is pointless unless it is part of a co-ordinated global push by all the main powers. "It is not going to make any difference if Britain does it alone," he told the Telegraph.
And Microsoft's Brad Smith also warned that encryption is too important to mess with:
The path to Hell starts at the back-door. It compromises protection for everybody on everything.
block-time published-time 12.43pm GMT
It's lunchtime at Davos, ahead of the big afternoon session on the state of the global economy.
Lunch at Davos Photograph: Guardian
Mexico are sponsoring the event, so delegates are munching through black bean croquettes, pumpkin in sweet mole, octopus in veracruz sauce, duck breast, fish with roasted cauliflower, and a beef dish.
Lunch at Davos Photograph: Guardian
Alas, no time to try the tequila....
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 12.48pm GMT
block-time published-time 12.29pm GMT
Davos Photograph: Guardian
block-time published-time 12.28pm GMT
There are still police officers manning the entrances of the World Economic Forum today:
Davos Photograph: Guardian
block-time published-time 12.10pm GMT
Nobel Prize winner: We must communicate risks of climate change
Some of the world's top scientists have been talking at Davos today, explaining their challenges and goals.
Professor Mario Molina, who won the Nobel Prize for his work on the damage that CFCs cause to the ozone layer, warned that scientists must do more to help the public understand the threat of climate change.
Speaking to former US vice-president Al Gore, Molina warned that the environment is vulnerable, while the climate system is complex.. It doesn't take much to do a lot of damage.
Molina also called on fellow scientists to speak out:
"We in science are doing a lousy job in communicating the extent of the risks we are facing."
Molina also called for a global solution to tackle global warming, which would force companies around the world to pay for their carbon emissions.
Congress needs to work towards a planetary solution - need to impose price on emissions: M Molina #wefhttp://t.co/WLYTRx8WhG
- World Economic Forum (@Davos) January 24, 2015
Many scientists in the past believed ozone layer depletion was natural phenomenon: Mario Molina #climatechange#wef15http://t.co/oKK26NsJdV
- World Economic Forum (@Davos) January 24, 2015
Climate change has been a major theme at Davos, ahead of a major conference on Paris.
Yesterday, French president Hollande urged businesses to help tackle the threat of climate change. He called for a "huge investment" in green tech to help tackle the biggest challenge of the 21st Century.
But finding solutions for such huge problems take time. As Brian Schmidt, Professor, Australian National University, Australia, put it:
Science is this great tool for predicting knowledge, but it's not guaranteed to come up with solutions fast enough.
And science can suffer because research progresses at a slower pace than politics, warned Konstantin Novoselov, Research fellow at the Mesoscopic Physics Research Group at the University of Manchester:
"Scientific research works on a longer cycle than the election cycle....We have to fight for the money from the people who don't get the benefits."
block-time published-time 11.43am GMT
RT @flahertyrob : Melinda French Gates @wef The lives of the poor will change more in the next 15 years than in all... pic.twitter.com/ru9P9Cfwb5
- erik willey (@erikwill) January 24, 2015
block-time published-time 10.51am GMT
Unilever CEO: High-performing businesses must be equal
Unilever chief executive Paul Polman is also banging the drum for gender equality today, alongside Melinda Gates.
He's making some unarguable points, that companies simply have no excuse for not treating women completely fairly, especially if they want to perform well:
@Unilever Polman women bring purpose, partnership and long view to biz to any Organization #wef15#gendergap
- Mike Barry (@planamikebarry) January 24, 2015
@Unilever CEO Polman you cannot be a high performance biz without being fair and equal #gendergap.
- Mike Barry (@planamikebarry) January 24, 2015
"Anybody with a decent set of brains can figure out it's better to include 100% of the population than 50%" -Paul Polman @wef#Davos2015
- GBA for Women (@GBAforWomen) January 24, 2015
block-time published-time 10.47am GMT
The results are in.....
Many delegates have been trotting around Davos with Fitbits on their wrist; they're from Swiss bank UBS, which promised to buy African schoolkids bicycles if delegates walked at least 6km on average.
And our own Larry Elliott has racked up almost 27km since donning his. Enough for a bike, but not enough to come first :
So, while at Davos, Larry Elliott has walked 26,589 metres - 87th of 1,000 delegates who participated in a charity walk. The winner did 63k
- Jill Treanor (@jilltreanor) January 24, 2015
A total of 2,500 bicycles are now heading to Africa - so that's one good thing to come out of Davos.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 10.47am GMT
block-time published-time 10.38am GMT
Back inside WEF, Melinda Gates is telling delegates that you could boost Africa's GDP by 12% by giving women "parity of employment."
And the key to improving gender equality in the developing world is to ensure that money passes to women.
The research shows that they are much more likely to use every extra dollar to help their family, she explains.
If you invest in a woman you invest in everyone else. She is the centre of the family: Melinda French Gates #wef15http://t.co/M2YbjVDtE2
- World Economic Forum (@Davos) January 24, 2015
And she also flags up that progress is being made to cut infant mortality:
Incredible.... @Davos : Cut number of children dying under age of 5 by half since 1990: Melinda French Gates #wef15http://t.co/RWlnWzNPto "
- Kim Hudson (@Hudson_Gretel) January 24, 2015
block-time published-time 10.30am GMT
Outside the conference hall, the task of packing up is beginning.
Aberdeen Asset Management is clearing out of its prime spot on the Promenade. Locals may be relieved; Aberdeen have stationed a bagpiper outside the stand all week to serenade passer-bys. ( see our Davos Diary for a Vine of him in action )
They're packing up the @AberdeenAssetUK cafe in #Davos. It will be a crystal shop again next week pic.twitter.com/YO5XYLssLs
- Richard Fletcher (@fletcherr) January 24, 2015
Bobble-hat-tip to The Times's Business Editor, Richard Fletcher.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 10.30am GMT
block-time published-time 10.16am GMT
Estonian president defends recommending taping over your webcam Estonia's president Toomas Hendrik Ilves today Photograph: WEF
Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves has defended telling his citizens to put sticky tape over the webcams on their computers to thwart hackers.
Last April, Ilves claimed that surveillance was enabled in every computer and iPad unless you taped over the camera.
He's unrepentant about recommending this DIY approach to cybersecurity, which he apparently follows too.
He told the Davos panel on cybersecurity that:
My domestic newspapers laughed at me and made me look like an idiot. I said "tape over the camera"....and they went <he chuckles>. And, yeah, well....<shrug>.
Professor Jonathan Zittrain, moderating the session, is with President Ilves; I tape over my camera too, he says.
Microsoft's Brad Smith, and internet security guru Eugene Kaspersky, do not.
We have special functionality to make sure the camera is turned off, Kaspersky declares, adding:
I smile, I smile to the camera.
The session is online here .
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 10.19am GMT
block-time published-time 9.30am GMT
Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the president of the Estonia, is also speaking on the cybercrime panel at Davos.
He urges users to upgrade old systems:
If you've still got Windows XP, you're in trouble....It's like Swiss cheese.
Brad Smith, Microsoft's general council shoots back that XP is 14 years old, and no longer supported. Of course people should be upgrading.
But a survey last year suggested there are still millions of machines running XP, despite Microsoft's attempts to lure them into buying a new operating system....
block-time published-time 9.16am GMT
Kaspersky: Cybercriminals are now very professional
The recent Sony hack shows the perils of not setting up your security properly, Kaspersky adds.
It seems that it was not a very sophisticated attack. The enterprise was protected, but it was not protected in the right way.
But saying that, banks spend an awful lot of money on IT security and they are still occasionally the victim of very sophisticated hacks, he says.
The game has changed. Fifteen years ago, cybercriminals were working alone, targeting individuals
I said before there is criminal malware, and there is state-sponsored malware, and the difference is between a car and a space shuttle, reiterates Kaspersky, adding:
And now, unfortunately, the evolution of cybercrime has come to a level where they are very professional. And they develop extremely complicated, highly professional attacks, and that makes my work more difficult.
block-time published-time 8.59am GMT
But how can a user actually be sure that a security product is only doing what it should?
Eugene Kaspersky says that individuals can check their web traffic to see if anything unusual is happening.
And he'll roll the red carpet out for government ministers:
If you're a state you are welcome to come to our company and check the source code.
block-time published-time 8.56am GMT
Russian security expert Eugene Kaspersky is speaking on the cybercrime panel now.
He cites Smart TVs are the next target for hackers.
So are you keeping up, asks moderator Jonathan Zittrain.
Unfortunately, my business is very good
No, Zittrain says - I don't mean are you keeping up with orders. Are you actually covering the threats?
Yes, I use my products on my computers, and I'm completely connected.
Kaspersky adds that "you need your brain turned on all the time when you're on the internet"
But what about governments? If I install Symantec antivirus on my machine, am I installing the US government with it, and if I pick a Russian product, am I installing Vladimir Putin with it?
Kaspersky chuckles, then denies it. I'm sure you're not, he says, adding that "We don't collect private information from the computers
block-time published-time 8.53am GMT
Not many takers for cybersecurity session @davos despite presence of @e_kaspersky. Davos Saturday = skiing
- Richard Carter (@rdcparisAFP) January 24, 2015
block-time published-time 8.44am GMT
Davos would have been better this year if three people had joined the throng -- Thomas Piketty, Mario Draghi and Vladimir Putin.
They're all had better things to do this week, which is a shame as collectively they have set the debate this year.
So f you're reading, chaps, there's plenty of space this morning.
block-time published-time 8.42am GMT
Larry Elliott: Danger of Davos groupthink
It's been clear this week that some of our readers have a pretty mediocre view of Davos.
The whole concept of powerful people gathering to "improve the state of the world", or fret about problems which are either beyond their control..or their fault, certainly grates with some.
My colleague Larry Elliott has been coming to WEF since the 90s. He writes that one problem with Davos is that most people have a shared world view :
There was nobody at this year's WEF, for example, arguing that Europe would be better off without the euro. Nobody gives it to the status quo with both barrels. Al Gore on climate change was as radical as it got.
This groupthink is potentially dangerous but perhaps inevitable. For Davos man and woman, life is pretty sweet. Which is why there are some who say the true motto of the WEF should be: committed to improving the state of the world provided nothing much changes.
Is Davos just an excuse for the 1% to have a bonding session? | Larry Elliott http://t.co/5OxYeNaJKv
- alan rusbridger (@arusbridger) January 24, 2015
block-time published-time 8.28am GMT
The Agenda: The World Economic Outlook,and more.... British Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, on Friday at Davos. Photograph: RUBEN SPRICH/REUTERS
Good morning from Davos. It's the fourth and final day of the World Economic Forum, the annual shindig of leaders, businesspeople, campaigners and economists.
It's a quieter day, really. No big keynote speeches by world leaders are scheduled
But we do have one setpiece event - a big session on the World Economic Outlook at 2pm CET, or 1pm GMT.
On the panel, Bank of England governor Mark Carney, his Japanese counterpart Haruhiko Kuroda, IMF deputy managing director Min Zhu, the ECB's Benoît Coeuré and Brazil's finance minister Joaquim Levy.
There are also various discussion groups and debates happening around the Davos conference centre, on issues such as cybercrime, science and inequality.
We'll be covering the main events as we can, and also trying to work out what - if anything - Davos has achieved this year.
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The New York Times
January 24, 2015 Saturday
The New York Times on the Web
U.S. and India Appear Ready to Try to Hash Out Differences
BYLINE: By NIDA NAJAR
SECTION: Section ; Column 0; Foreign Desk; Pg.
LENGTH: 952 words
NEW DELHI -- Differences that the United States and India have been grappling with for years are expected to dominate talks between President Obama and Prime Minister Narendra Modi when they meet in New Delhi next week.
Climate Change
India is the world's third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, behind China and the United States. But Indian officials have consistently prioritized economic growth and the eradication of poverty over reducing carbon emissions.
Prakash Javadekar, India's environment minister, has indicated that the burden of addressing climate change should rest squarely on developed, industrialized nations. The power minister, Piyush Goyal, has aggressively pursued coal mining as a way to provide power to nearly 300 million Indians who have no access to electricity. The country, which has the fifth-largest coal reserves in the world, plans to double its coal production by 2019.
Mr. Obama has made an agreement on climate change a policy priority for his second term. But American officials played down expectations of a breakthrough on climate change, saying they were at an earlier stage with Indian officials than they were with Chinese officials before striking a deal last year with Beijing. The potential, the officials said, seemed worth another trip to India, making Mr. Obama the first American president to visit twice during his tenure.
Mr. Javadekar said during a meeting on climate change last year in Lima, Peru, that the Indian government would submit a proposal by June that would show how it plans to lower the rate at which India produces pollution.
Mr. Modi has promised to build an array of solar power stations, and projects have already begun, taking advantage of India's favorable weather conditions, with more than 300 sunny days a year. The United States has developed technology on solar panels, and a State Department official expressed interest in coming to an agreement on solar power projects.
Nuclear Energy
The United States and India have long been engaged in a complicated dance over nuclear energy. In 2008, the United States Senate gave final approval to a deal allowing sales to India of nuclear power equipment and fuel for civilian energy production. But American companies have not been able to benefit from the deal, partly because of India's nuclear liability law, passed in 2010, which places a financial burden on contractors in the event of an accident.
American critics of the deal said it was too permissive and could allow India to continue to stockpile nuclear weapons while failing to ratify the nonproliferation treaty.
Mr. Modi has expressed interest in resolving the disputes that stalled the civilian energy deal with the United States. India's vast energy needs are hardly being met by nuclear energy -- it has 20 reactors, just nine of which are operating at capacity. India aims to drastically increase its nuclear energy capacity, and it has been pursuing agreements with other partners, including Japan and Australia.
Military Hardware Sales
India is the world's largest arms importer, and it is interested in developing a domestic supply chain. But it is saddled with inefficient public companies that are unable to meet the country's demands for weapons. To build its own capacity, India will need the help of foreign companies. Most of its imports come from Russia.
In the five years ended in 2013, Russia supplied three quarters of India's arms imports, and the United States only 7 percent, according to the Stockholm International Peace Resource Center. Russian sales, however, are trending down, and Indian officials have complained about costly and malfunctioning equipment.
A hindrance to large-scale American investment in Indian defense manufacturing is the fact that, unlike China, the United States cannot direct private companies to invest. Mr. Modi would have to make India a more attractive investment opportunity for American firms.
India's aging fleet of naval equipment has proved dangerous: A 16-year-old Russian submarine exploded off the coast of Mumbai in 2013, killing 18 crew members. The next year, the Indian naval chief resigned after a series of accidents involving Indian warships. Corruption scandals involving foreign acquisitions of equipment have contributed to a decline in imports, and India is scrambling to build a private indigenous industry.
Manufacturing and Investment
Mr. Modi entered his meeting with business leaders in the United States in September on a wave of optimism created by his commanding electoral victory last May on a development agenda.
He has put in place some domestic policies that favor foreign businesses, though widespread economic overhauls have yet to materialize. Last fall, he announced his ''Make in India'' campaign, which is intended to attract global businesses to India.
And he introduced labor overhauls to bolster manufacturing and create jobs. After Mr. Modi took office, he eased environmental regulations, an attempt to bypass part of India's serpentine bureaucracy. But caps on foreign investment and forbidding tax laws still hinder growth, and they are politically difficult to change in India.
Some observers in the United States responded with cautious hope that India could become an attractive investment opportunity. And during a visit to India last year, Secretary of State John Kerry expressed interest in private investment in high-end manufacturing, infrastructure, health care and information technology.
In Mr. Kerry's visit to India earlier this month, he attended a summit meeting in Gujarat, where Mr. Modi was the chief minister, and pronounced a desire to set ''tangible'' gains ahead of Mr. Obama's visit.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/24/world/asia/narendra-modi-and-president-obama-to-meet-in-new-delhi.html
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The Guardian
January 23, 2015 Friday 4:47 PM GMT
block-time published-time 4.47pm GMT John;
French president says business must help fight extremists, and backs Europe's new quantitative easing package. John Kerry speaking nowHollande asks financial world to help terrorism fightOsborne: Euro reform laggards are being punishedLagarde: Inequality bad for growth and womenEmma Watson launches new equality pushEuro falls below 75p for first time in seven years
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block-time published-time 4.47pm GMT
John Kerry: It's our turn to uphold values of freedom
Rounding up, secretary of state Kerry returns to the Nigerian girl and Syrian boy who chose live over death when choosing not to blow themselves and others up.
We must follow their example, he says, and take the steps he's outlined in this speech.
And he reiterates that he remains optimistic. Some people say the entire system is unravelling. I see just the opposite - countries are negotiating trade deals, fighting ebola, helping Ukraine, moving towards a climate change deal.
We have fought harder fights before, and won, Kerry declares.
We are the descendants of those who survives plague, tyranny, the Holocaust. Now it's our turn to stand up for our values and the rule of law, and take the images of Paris and Peshawar in our hearts.
And with that, Kerry gets a somewhat louder and longer round of applause than the other speakers I've caught this week.
John #Kerry in #Davos : ungoverned spaces are open doors to chaos. Good governance is a lasting response to terrorism. pic.twitter.com/awbaU1dvIN
- Espen Barth Eide (@EspenBarthEide) January 23, 2015
block-time published-time 4.34pm GMT
Fighting inequality is another crucial step, says Kerry. Vital to increase education opportunities for girls around the world, and to address youth unemployment.
block-time published-time 4.33pm GMT
We can move from talk to action at the White House summit in February, says Kerry.
And it will be expensive. Just like the Second World War was.
We have spent trillions in Iraq in the decade since we went to war there, Kerry says. And he adds:
Just imagine if we'd saved trillions in a battle we didn't have to fight for one we have to fight.
block-time published-time 4.28pm GMT
Speaking at the @wef in Davos today, US Secretary of State John Kerry said he plans to travel to #Nigeria in a few days.
- Vladimir Duthiers (@vladduthiersCBS) January 23, 2015
Kerry has, appropriately, mentioned Nigeria twice in first 5min of his #Davos address. Stark contrast to Obama's #SOTU, with 0 mentions.
- ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) January 23, 2015
block-time published-time 4.26pm GMT
Hard truth is that too many people in too many places feel trapped, says John Kerry.
And he sums up how this can lead them to extremism. As one person put it to Kerry's State Department:
The terrorists oppress us, the police rob us, the government ignores us and the west doesn't acknowledge us or wants to kill us
block-time published-time 4.24pm GMT
Only a long-term, comprehensive approach can stop these extremist groups growing. Military action is only part of the solution.
Kerry explains how groups start by paying young people a little to join them, then brainwash them, then send them our to recruit others.
This fight will not be decided on the battlefield, but in the classrooms, workplaces, places of worship of the world.
Kerry concedes that it is hard to make thrilling films about the merits of parliamentary democracy or effective public services.
But, exciting or not, uncoverned or undergoverned places become a breeding ground for terrorism.
And weak governments, who cannot rule effectively or who are so corrupt that they attract fighters determined to eject them, are another part of the problem.
block-time published-time 4.19pm GMT
But it's about more than the Middle East, Kerry says, citing Yemen and Nigeria as other countries suffering from extremism,
There is nowhere you can leave as an ungoverned state. And there is no place for negotiation.
Eliminating the terrorists who confront us today is only part of the solution to stopping the endless cycle.
block-time published-time 4.16pm GMT
Freeing Iraq from its occupiers are the crucial first step in winning the war against extremism, Kerry says.
He's running through recent successes - military attacks and clampdown on their finances.
After years of delay, Baghdad recently agreed oil supply deals, and its army is strengthening.
But this success is not irreversible. The momentum has been slowed, but not stopped.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 4.17pm GMT
block-time published-time 4.11pm GMT
The worst thing we could do to address the rise of Islamic extremism would be to blame all Muslims for these crimes, Kerry says.
We are making strides against extremism, Kerry pledges.
Like those who marcher in Paris, we must act as one.
block-time published-time 4.10pm GMT
Kerry tells another awful story, of the Peshawar school massacre where attackers slaughted a class of young children.
In minutes, a scene of peace and education turned into death and destruction, with"small lifeless bodies" littering the ground.
And when their teacher returned, and was challenged by the assassins, she said I am their mother. That was her last words, Kerry says.
There are no rounds of history, religion, politics, economic disadvantage or personal ambition that caa defend the slaughter of children. None.
<Applause from the audience>
block-time published-time 4.05pm GMT
We cannot stop violent extremism without understanding what's driving it, Kerry tells Davos.
We can't change minds without knowing what's in them ,
block-time published-time 4.04pm GMT
Despite the conflict in the world, I remain optimistic, says Kerry. Then he runs through a terrible list of examples of the state of the world today:
He cites a 14 year old Nigerian girl discovered in a crowded marketplace, with explosives strapped to body - but she refused to pull the tab, saving her life and others.
Another potential suicide bomber, a Syrian boy, showed security guards he had a bomb tied to him but he didn't want to die. A third escaped from religious extremists, after finding the promises made to him were false.
Those three examples represent the most basic choice - between death and life, between destroying and building.
Kerry also cites Boko Haran videos have shown fighters saying shootings and violence will be their religion.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 4.35pm GMT
block-time published-time 4.00pm GMT
John Kerry begin by saying he was saddened to hear of the death of Saudi King Abdullah, who died overnight.
He played an important role in the fight against extremism, Kerry says. Will miss his partnership and friendship.
block-time published-time 3.59pm GMT
John Kerry is starting to address Davos. Liveblog http://t.co/kvSvYgqf48pic.twitter.com/dEWGw8Q9dS
- Graeme Wearden (@graemewearden) January 23, 2015
block-time published-time 3.37pm GMT
Coming up... US secretary of state John Kerry is due to give a special address to Davos....
block-time published-time 3.19pm GMT
Back in the financial world, US stock markets have opened lower. No eurozone QE boost across the Atlantic today.
Poor company results appear to be behind the falls. Fast-food chain McDonald's said sales in 2014 dropped by 7% and annual profits plunged by 15%.
Dow Jones: -0.3% at 17,760.52
S&P 500: -0.1% at 2,060.73
block-time published-time 3.08pm GMT
Summary: Hollande calls on business to fight terrorism and climate change French President Francois Hollande. Photograph: JEAN-CHRISTOPHE BOTT/EPA
French president Francois Hollande has called on business leaders attending the World Economic Forum in Davos to help fight terrorism.
Speaking some two weeks after the Paris attacks that gripped the world and mobilised France, Hollande said the financial world could help by choking off the illegal trafficking mechanisms used to fund terror networks
I call on the financial system to ensure that the sources of terrorist funding are dried up. That we fight tax evasion and money-laundering.
Don't leave it too late.
The fight against terrorism must be global, he added, divided between states and companies, especially large ones, who must do what they can, he added.
Hollande calls on financial system to help efforts to cut off terrorists from their money and stop money laundering #wef15#GNatDavos
- Francis Matthew (@FrancisMatthew1) January 23, 2015
In a wide-ranging speech, the French president hailed the support shown by the world since the Charlie Hebdo and grocery store attacks.
France, he said, would be at the forefront of the terrorism fight - reiterating his earlier pledge on this issue. Prosperity and security are interlinked .
Climate change also featured in his speech ; the challenge of the 21st century, as he called it. Hollande tried to bolster support for December's Climate Conference in Paris, warning that businesses must help provide the funding to break the world's dependency on fossil fuels.
We cannot treat the earth as a commodity any more, he argued
On economics, I fear Hollande's speech may not have pleased viewers in Berlin. He welcomed the ECB's new stimulus package, arguing that it gives flexibility for a new approach on growth. Germany's fear that eurozone members will slacken up on economic reforms may have been fanned.....
And curiously, Hollande argued that the $1.1trn QE programme announced yesterday is a sign of ECB success in repressing inflation, rather than a response to the threat of deflation.....
block-time published-time 2.26pm GMT
Frances O'Grady, the TUC's general secretary, is not impressed with George Osborne's earlier performance at Davos, describing the Chancellor as complacent.
George Osborne's complacency in Davos about the state of the British economy may come back to haunt him.
His remarks were notable for what he left out, rather than what he said. He failed to address the plain need for investment to shore up the real economy or to create the skilled, well-paid jobs young people in particular need.
And he did not even mention the need to ensure that the rewards of growth are shared more fairly if Britain's economy is to become sustainable. George Soros may now recognise the need for inclusive growth to tackle inequality. The other George apparently does not.
AM
Front row seat for #Davos "Recharging Europe" session. A little more diversity might help us find the real answers? pic.twitter.com/7hZNUre0z1
- Frances O'Grady (@FrancesOGrady) January 23, 2015
block-time published-time 2.18pm GMT
That was a powerful speech, I enjoyed it, says one delegate as we squeeze our way out of the hall.
block-time published-time 2.15pm GMT
Hollande wraps up by repeating his earlier point that business and politicians must work together to fight climate change. And that's the end. Warm applause, but unfortunately no Q&A session. Summary to follow.
block-time published-time 2.13pm GMT
Hollande: We cannot accept attacks on people for their faiths
The French president returns to the Paris attacks earlier this week.
We cannot accept attacks on Jews because they are Jews, or attacks on Muslims because they are Muslims.
There is no greater pride for the president of the French Republic than to see the world offer its support, he continues. So many world leaders standing with us.
Surely only in France would we se so many people on the streets...four million people...not demonstrating against something but in favour of how France is today.
France must also be a major economic power - no political power without economic power. So the economy must be a major factor in security.
There cannot be prosperity without security. So we have shared interest, and show responsibility.
The economy is not there just to create wealth but to redistribute wealth, he insists. That's rather socialist for Davos....
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 2.14pm GMT
block-time published-time 2.09pm GMT
Hollande backs eurozone QE
President Hollande has welcomed the European Central Bank's new quantitative easing programme, but I'm not sure he's quite grasped why it happened.
The new stimulus programme is a "very important step to inject liquidity into the markets" he says.
And the European Central Bank can do it because it has achieved its objective of limiting inflation.
With inflation close to zero it can make more money available
[Up to a point.... the ECB's target is actually inflation just below 2%, not -0.2%. And it is the threat of deflation that forced the ECB's hand]
Anyway, Hollande's view is that the ECB"s huge money-printing scheme "compels" Europe to be more daring as it reduces the barriers to growth and unemployment.
And he says France will make structural reforms, with more incentive to create competition and labour market reforms.
block-time published-time 2.02pm GMT
Inequality between countries and within countries is the biggest problem facing the global economy today.
We need investment in infrastructure....Europe must not lag behind. He welcomes Jean-Claude Juncker's investment plan.
block-time published-time 2.00pm GMT
Onto economics, and Hollande makes two indisputable points - growth is too low and unemployment is too high ( both particularly in France, of course )
Ukraine, and the Middle East crisis, are weighing on confidence and growth.
block-time published-time 1.57pm GMT
Fighting global warming is going to be expensive, Hollande warns, and businesses will have to share the cost.
We need to find (EURO)90bn for a Green Fund, that will ensure global temperatures only rise by 2 degrees this decade.
And he's now calling for a huge investment in Green technologies to create a Green economy.
Businesses need a predictable carbon price if they are to plan ahead, Hollande points out ( two years ago, Europe's carbon pricing scheme hit serious problems )
block-time published-time 1.50pm GMT
Hollande: Climate change is the challenge of the century
Hollande turns to climate, declaring that "We need to fight global warning. "
It is vital that December's Climate conference in Paris delivers an agreement to fight climate change.
This is the major challenge of the 21st century. The time is past when human kind thought it could draw on unlimited resources.
The Earth is not a commodity, a source of revenue. It is a shared asset we must protect and care for.
We're heading into a post-carbon world where we cannot keep relying on fossil fuels....
block-time published-time 1.46pm GMT
Speaking directly to the delegates at Davos, Hollande urges these business leaders to help.
I call on the financial system to ensure that the sources of terrorist funding are dried up. That we fight tax evasions and money-laundering. Don't leave it too late.
And I call on all business to help the most fragile states, in a spirit of solidarity.
block-time published-time 1.45pm GMT
Terrorism is global and can affect any country, they are using the Internet as a weapon. President Hollande @Davospic.twitter.com/a2ajMFAUrj
- Carlos Creus Moreira (@carloscmoreira) January 23, 2015
block-time published-time 1.42pm GMT
France has values that we want to share with the whole world, Hollande says.
To do that, we must fight the illicit flows which are funding terrorism.
Europe must strengthen border controls, to identify terrorists. We need a passenger identity register to protect our future.
Must make sure Internet is not used for hatred and violence, Must invest in cyber defence.
block-time published-time 1.40pm GMT
Hollande: France will lead fight against terrorism
Businesses, including the largest corporations, also have a responsibility to act to fight terrorism, he explains.
France has waited too long to address the causes of terrorism, he says.
France is in a broad coalition to support those in Iraq who are in the front line against ISIS.
We will on the ground more than ever in Africa to help...France cannot do everything, France cannot act alone.
Wherever it can do, it will. But we need international co-operations.
block-time published-time 1.38pm GMT
Hollande cites militant Islam, Al-Queda, Boko Haram, as terrorist threats.
Terrorism fuels itself through all kinds of illicit trafficking - drugs, weapons, human beings.
The internet is being used as a weapon by terrorists, he says.
Hollande: terrorism uses all the technologies available to it, even those which can be used for prosperity - ie the internet
- Tony Connelly (@tconnellyRTE) January 23, 2015
block-time published-time 1.36pm GMT
Hollande begins by passing on his own condolences to the Saudi Royal Family.
And then he moves onto the Paris terrorist attacks.
For three days, we faced with dignity a huge challenge. The rest of Europe fully understood what was at stake.
Freedom, liberty, the very foundations of our society were under attack. All countries in the world are vulnerable to terrorism. We must all prepare, because our main duty is to provide clarity and clear mindedness.
block-time published-time 1.34pm GMT
And we're off. Davos founder Klaus Schwab is introducing president Hollande now.
I was incredibly impressed by the exemplary response and solidarity of the French people to the Paris terrorist attacks, Schwab says.
Europe needs a strong and confident France as it looks for a path to growth, and offers opportunities to all. One lesson of Paris attacks is that we must support the weakest and youngest who can otherwise fall into the hands of those who want to cause chaos and harm.
Finally, Schwab reminds us that there is a crucial Climate Change conference in Paris in December.
block-time published-time 1.26pm GMT
Coming next..... Francois Hollande's special address to Davos. The main hall has filled up ready.
It was supposed to start 10 minutes ago, having been rescheduled from this morning after the King of Jordan cancelled his appearance and flew home following the deal of Saudi King Abdullah.
block-time published-time 1.13pm GMT
The video of Emma Watson's appearance at a Davos breakfast event this morning is available.
She was speaking about gender inequality in her capacity as a goodwill ambassador for UN Women. AM
block-time published-time 1.12pm GMT
A piper at Davos Photograph: Guardian
The business blog's very own Graeme Wearden has emerged from the main conference centre in Davos to capture a snap of this piper.
As the Guardian's Jill Treanor reported earlier in our Davos diary:
A light shower of snow is falling on Davos at the start of the third day of the annual World Economic Forum, so spare a thought for the piper outside the "chalet" occupied by Aberdeen Asset Management, just along from the Belvedere. Chilly business.
Read the full diary here.
AM
block-time published-time 1.11pm GMT
QE delivers Greek boost ahead of election
Greek shares are leading European stock markets higher following Thursday's big quantitative easing unveil.
The huge dose of medicine for the eurozone's sickly economy has put European shares on course for their biggest weekly gain in more than three years.
The FTSE 100 is also heading for its biggest weekly rise in more than three years (although it is currently underperforming other indices, up just 0.2% on the day).
The Greek ATG share index is up almost 6%, with shares in Attica Bank, National Bank of Greece, and Piraeus Bank up sharply.
Greece will be eligible for the ECB's bond-buying programme, but subject to stricter conditions because of its EU/IMF bailout arrangements.
Traders appear to be shrugging off the potential impact of a Syriza victory at Sunday's Greek election. It seems they are hopeful that the radical left, anti-austerity party would be willing to reach a compromise with the country's lenders if they win, rather than lead Greece out of the euro altogether.
block-time published-time 1.08pm GMT
The panel ends with two points on currencies.
Osborne tries to calm fears that UK exporters will suffer from the weaker euro:
It is in the UK's interests that our friends on the continent do well, says @George_Osborne, when asked about weaker (EURO) vs £
- Graeme Wearden (@graemewearden) January 23, 2015
While George Soros, the billionaire who knows the currency markets like the back of his limo, says the breaking of the Swiss franc peg against the euro was inevitable.
Indeed, he'd have predicted it if he was still in the money-making game.
Switzerland now faces an uncompetitive currency and a slowing economy.
And that's the end of the session on Europe's future ( highlights start here )
block-time published-time 1.01pm GMT
George Osborne rarely lets a chance for political point-scoring go past.
Asked about the rise of non-mainstream political parties, Osborne says it's Labour's fault.
A political system is a reflection of hopes and fears of the people in the country, Labour has not provided an answer to the tough decisions we've taken, so people who are unhappy are looking to other parties.
But when it comes to a general election, people move back to mainstream parties who they trust, he added.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 1.09pm GMT
block-time published-time 12.53pm GMT
Back to George Soros, who urges Europe to give Ukraine more financial support to cope with the violence in its eastern regions.
Europe is not sufficiently aware of the danger posed by a resurgent Russia, he says..... there is an assault on the very foundations of the values that Europe is based on.
block-time published-time 12.50pm GMT
Schauble: No QE help for Greece without reform programme
Greece cannot get help from Europe's new QE scheme unless it is in a reform programme, German finance minister Wolfgang Schauble declares.
Asked about Sunday's general election, he says he will wait for the Greek people to decide who should govern them. But I've seen two Greek elections (in 2012) where the people decided to stick with what has to be done, he says.
Unlike many economists, Schauble is not recognising that Greece's debts may be so high that a restructuring is inevitable.
Schauble also denies that Greece's current plight is the fault of Europe, or Brussels, or Berlin.
The reason for the problems of the Greek people are the mistake in the past.
But what about the claim by opposition leader Alexis Tsipras that Greece is being subjected to "fiscal waterboarding"?
That is political campaigning, Schauble replies. You can like it or not like it. I don't like it.
@TradeDesk_Steve I think the people of Greece are going to tell Herr Schauble exactly where he can stick his programs.
- Paul Kingsley (@PaulKingsley16) January 23, 2015
block-time published-time 12.41pm GMT
Wolfgang Schauble is challenged about a report in the Der Spiegel newspaper that Angela Merkel has looked at a plan for Greece to leave the eurozone.
Schauble tried to sweep it aside:
If I cared about what was in the media I would never get by job done in 48 hours a day.
Pressed on this, he replies: We don't model any exit.
block-time published-time 12.40pm GMT
Have struggling Eurozone countries done enough to persuade German taxpayers to show solidarity?
Spanish finance minister Luis de Guindos says that Europe has loaned (EURO)210bn to Greece, including (EURO)26bn from Spain.
Our exposure to Greece is (EURO)26bn. As much as our bill on unemployment benefits.
Solidarity between European countries is there.
block-time published-time 12.31pm GMT
In good times you should run budget surpluses to bring your #debt down - @George_Osborne#globaltrade#wef15http://t.co/Np1i6UTn6K
- World Economic Forum (@Davos) January 23, 2015
block-time published-time 12.30pm GMT
Osborne: UK deficit is still too high
"I agree with Wolfgang", says George Osborne. Credibility in the markets comes from fiscal responsibility.
The finances of several European countries are not on a strong enough footing, Osborne says.
Britain's deficit has now been halved to 5% of GDP on his watch, but it's still too high. So it would be a mistake to risk financial credibility by raising spending, he argues.
(Fact Check: in cash terms, Britain's deficit has only been cut by around a third, from £150bn to £90bn)
block-time published-time 12.27pm GMT
Schauble hits back at George Soros, saying that HE knows more about the German budgets than the billionaire philanthropist.
Germany is committed to meeting European rules on budgets, he says, so it is running a budget surplus. Other countries aren't taking these rules seriously.
Ouch! I don't know if George Soros is the best authority on German policy... says Finance Minister Schauble #wef15pic.twitter.com/DA4gOoTaAf
- Katy Barnato (@KatyBarnato) January 23, 2015
block-time published-time 12.23pm GMT
Back to George Soros, who makes a plea to Europe to use its credit in the markets to fund a large infrastructure project.
At current low borrowing costs, you could create employment, grow economies, and the value of the euro would appreciate.
Germany would benefit too, he says, citing a new port which has potholes in the road leading up to it.
block-time published-time 12.21pm GMT
Nice quote from Spanish finance minister, Luis de Guindos.
Deflation is like cholesterol, he tells Davos. There's a good type and a bad type. We currently have the good sort in Spain, as falling prices are giving households more spending power.
block-time published-time 12.18pm GMT
A quick show of hands shows a massive majority for Britain staying in the EU rather than leaving.
George Osborne appeared to abstain, though -- repeating that he wants the UK to stay in Europe once its relationship with the EU is reformed.
block-time published-time 12.18pm GMT
UK's Osborne: We want to be in a reformed EU. 1) Europe needs eco reform 2) UK 2nd lrgst Europe econ. Not joining (EURO). But must be respected
- Louisa Bojesen (@louisabojesen) January 23, 2015
block-time published-time 12.16pm GMT
Osborne also welcomes the new eurozone quantitative easing programme, but adds that it's not enough - need structural reforms are needed too.
block-time published-time 12.14pm GMT
Osborne: Euro countries who haven't reformed are being punished
Now George Osborne is speaking. He starts by joking that fellow panelist George Soros taught Britain at if you peg your currency against others then "you open up a heap of trouble."
Europe must create jobs, and reform, the UK chancellor says. He pays credit to Spain.
There are example of countries who have taken reforms and benefitted, and some who have not taken action and are being punished.
So are you for being in Europe, or Out, Mr Osborne?
The chancellor replies that he wants to be in a reformed Europe.
block-time published-time 12.09pm GMT
Was it more important to preserve ECB independence than to listen to German concerns over QE?
Wolfgang Schauble says he never comments on ECB policy.... but the German finance minister does flag up that there is a risk of moral hazard.
He ducks a question on whether Germany will be covering the debts of other nations now.
What about the negative reaction in the German papers?
I have read it, yes, Schauble replies. But I will not play your game (by commenting on it).
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 12.22pm GMT
block-time published-time 12.05pm GMT
Soros: ECB QE will widen gap between rich and poor
George Soros says his main concern is that the ECB's new quantitative easing programme will actually widen the divergence between rich and poor.
He tells the panel on Europe's future that:
It will benefit the owners of assets. Wages will remain under pressure, through competition and unemployment.
This will reinforce a major concern between rich and poor. It will have political consequences.
Soros predicts some "fairly substantial moves coming" in the market -- he won't be taking advantage though; the man who beat the Bank of England has retired from money making:
We need a better balance between fiscal and monetary policy.
block-time published-time 12.01pm GMT
Governor Visco is discussing the ECB's new QE programme. He says it was important to have a consensus decision.
The size, composition, and timing are all crucial for QE.
He also says he's confortable that 80% of the burden will fall on national central banks
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 12.02pm GMT
block-time published-time 11.59am GMT
Heads-up: the Davos debate on Recharging Europe, including George Osborne, Wolfgang Schauble, Luis de Guindos -- three of Europe's most powerful finance ministers - is starting now.
George Soros is also on the panel, along with Italian central bank governor Ignazio Visco.
Live feed here:
block-time published-time 11.49am GMT
Bank of Italy Governor Ignazio Visco Photograph: Bloomberg Television
Ignazio Visco, the governor of Italy's central bank, has been discussing the European Central Bank's (EURO)1.1tn QE injection into the eurozone economy.
Speaking in Davos, he suggested the (EURO)60bn a month bond-buying programme might continue beyond the provisional end date of the end of September 2016, should inflation fail to pick-up sufficiently.
The eurozone slipped into deflation in December, when prices fell by 0.2%. The ECB's official target is for an inflation rate that is close to, but below, 2%.
Speaking to Bloomberg Television earlier, Visco said:
We are open-ended. That is, if we see that there are difficulties in achieving this target that we have, we have to continue.
He added that the element of risk-sharing involved in the programme was something eurozone members could build on.
We are a union, we have to trust each other and we have to build trust. But we are not a fiscal union. We have to build on this, it is a good starting point.
AM
block-time published-time 11.06am GMT
The Bank of Japan governor, Haruhiko Kuroda, is not worried that diverging paths taken by central banks in the US and Europe will hamper his efforts to fight deflation at home.
In an interview with Bloomberg TV at Davos, Kuroda welcomed the ECB's decision on Thursday to launch a (EURO)1.1trn bond-buying programme.
I don't think it makes our job more difficult.
He said the euro had not fallen very much against the yen in the wake of the ECB move, and noted that the euro had already weakened previously.
The US Federal Reserve is expected to lift interest rates this year after ending quantitative easing last October. Kuroda said this expected "normalisation" of policy reflects strong US growth, which is good for the world economy.
block-time published-time 11.05am GMT
Back in Davos, economist Nouriel Roubini has been warning developing countries to press on with economic reforms before financial turbulence increases:
When times were good many emerging markets moved away from structural reform: @Nouriel#wef15#globaltradehttp://t.co/L6c7gkfJbl
- World Economic Forum (@Davos) January 23, 2015
This is a time for doing these structural reforms: @Nouriel#wef15#globaltradehttp://t.co/3VyHFVqAN9
- World Economic Forum (@Davos) January 23, 2015
Yesterday, Christine Lagarde predicted volatility and spillover effects once the US starts to raise interest rates. That would probably pull some money out of the emerging markets.
block-time published-time 10.25am GMT
Euro falls below 75p for first time in 7 years
On financial markets, the euro has fallen below 75p for the first time in seven years. It hit a low of 74.93p. The pound was boosted by the surprise rise in UK retail sales. The euro started sliding on Thursday after the ECB's decision to unleash quantitative easing.
Shares are continuing their rally, after the ECB set out its bigger-than-expected bond buying programme. Germany's Dax is more than 150 points ahead, a 1.45% gain, while France's CAC is 75 points higher, or 1.65%.
The FTSEurofirst 300 index of top European shares has hit a seven-year peak, trading 1.7% higher at 1478.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 10.32am GMT
block-time published-time 10.17am GMT
In the UK, retail sales volumes grew by 0.4% last month from November, official figures showed. It was the weakest December performance for two years, but confounded fears of a 0.6% fall, with the Black Friday shopping bonanza bringing forward many pre-Christmas purchases into November.
The data was skewed by the fact that the US-inspired discount day was included in November's figures for 2014, but within December's data the year before.
Sales in the three months to December jumped 5% on a year earlier, the best performance in a decade. December was fuelled by supermarket sales and motorists taking advantage of cheaper petrol to fill up their tanks.
block-time published-time 10.09am GMT
The European Union will discuss increasing emergency funding for Ukraine next week according to Reuters.
Aid could be increased to as much as (EURO)2.5bn, more than the (EURO)1.8bn already proposed by the European Commission, unnamed diplomats told Reuters.
EU finance ministers will consider proposals at their meeting in Brussels on Tuesday. The loans would be for this year and next, in three or more tranches.
block-time published-time 9.39am GMT
Euro falls below $1.13 for first time since 2003
The fall-out from the ECB's decision to launch quantitative easing in a bid to inject some life into the eurozone's ailing economy continues.
The euro has been sliding since the announcement came on Thursday afternoon from the ECB's President Mario Draghi, and is now $1.263. It is the first time below $1.13 since September 2003.
The single currency also fell to a 14-month low of 133.58 yen. AM
#Euro drops like a stone after #ECB 's historic QE decision. Below $1.13 for 1st Time since Sep2003. pic.twitter.com/6GYSN4C5pU
- Holger Zschaepitz (@Schuldensuehner) January 23, 2015
block-time published-time 9.33am GMT
The King of Jordan has cancelled his appearance at Davos today, following the death of Saudi King Abdullah.
Other Arab delegates also left Davos prematurely, ahead of the funeral of the Saudi king.
This means French president Francois Hollande will now speak at 2.15pm CET, not 11.30am as earlier planned.
block-time published-time 9.16am GMT
Oil prices rise following Saudi King's death Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah has died, aged 90 Photograph: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images
Oil prices have risen this morning following the news that Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah has died, aged 90.
Saudi Arabia is the world's biggest exporter of oil.
Brent crude jumped $1.18 to $49.70 a barrel, a 2.4% gain, after the royal court announced the death. The US benchmark for March delivery rose $1.02, or 2.2%, to $47.33 a barrel.
My colleague, Julia Kollewe, reports that the uncertainty over what his death means for Saudi's oil policy, is driving prices higher.
The 90-year-old monarch, who was admitted to hospital in December with pneumonia, has been succeeded by his half-brother, Crown Prince Salman. He vowed to maintain the same approach as his predecessors in a speech on Friday.
The key question is whether Salman, 79, keeps Ali al-Naimi as the country's oil minister, a position he has held since 1995. Many analysts do not expect Saudi oil policy to change.
Oil prices have more than halved since the summer, when crude was more than $100 a barrel, amid an oil glut and weak global demand. A shale boom in the US has turned the US from the world's biggest oil importer into a major producer, pumping over 9m barrels a day.
Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter, led a decision by the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries in November to keep the cartel's production unchanged at 30m barrels a day.
Daniel Ang, an investment analyst at Phillip Futures in Singapore, said: "As we are uncertain of how the new king would react to the current supply glut, we believe that the market is pricing in this uncertainty causing prices to spike. However, this premium would likely only persist temporarily. This premium should wear off once the market is clear of the new king's view on the oil situation."
AM
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 9.17am GMT
block-time published-time 9.04am GMT
Mark Carney challenges tech firms over tax
Technology firms are paying a very small rate of tax, Mark Carney has declared, at the end of the inequality debate.
The governor explained:
Some of the firms that take advantage of international tax system are tech firms.... a sense of responsibility is needed.
The amount of tax paid by technology companies is actually very small: Mark J. Carney #wef15#equalgrowthhttp://t.co/q8GVuUrO0v
- World Economic Forum (@Davos) January 23, 2015
"The amt. of tax actually paid by technology companies is very small compared to the returns" -- #BankofEngand 's Mark Carney at Davos.
- Eric Reguly (@ereguly) January 23, 2015
block-time published-time 8.54am GMT
Markets rise sharply after Draghi pushes QE button
European markets are up sharply this morning.
Investors have a confident spring in their step this morning after Mario Draghi, President of the European Central Bank, announced a (EURO)1.1tn programme of eurozone quantitative easing on Thursday afternoon.
Fears over Sunday's Greek election - and the uncertainty the outcome will bring - have been shrugged off.
FTSE 100: +0.5 % at 6,833.47
France's CAC 40: +1.3% at 4,610.16
Germany's DAX: +1.3% at 10,567.39
Spain's IBEX: +1.3% at 10,645.3
Italy's FTSE MIB: +0.5% at 20,575.2
AM
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 9.06am GMT
block-time published-time 8.51am GMT
US economist Bob Shiller, an expert on inequality, argues that the power of 'civil society' can keep the wealthiest in check, to a degree.
Winnie Byanyima is right about unequal power, he says, but the rich can be shamed out of pursuing it too much.
I think we should be happy that inequality is not worse, but Oxfam is going a good job in focusing attention on this problem.
block-time published-time 8.49am GMT
Davos attendees think they are net contributors.
Evan Davies asks for a quick show of hands from the audience at the Davos debate on this question:
Are the net 0.1% richest people net contributors to the world, the "Steve Jobs" type, or net extractors who create very clever financial products and take out money?
And surprise, surprise.... there's a flurry of hands that the richest are net contributor, by about eight votes to one.
Hardly a representative sample, of course.....
block-time published-time 8.47am GMT
Emma Watson: what are YOU doing to address gender inequality? Emma Watson, speaking at Davos Photograph: UN
Emma Watson, actress and campaigner for gender equality, has been speaking at a breakfast event in Davos.
Appearing in her capacity as a goodwill ambassador for UN Women (a United Nations organisation), Watson joined an illustrious panel, including UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon.
The purpose of Watson's Davos trip was to launch a new one year pilot scheme - IMPACT 10X10X10 - as part of the UN's HeForShe campaign. The aim is to engage governments, companies, and universities to be "instruments of change".
Watson said she has been overwhelmed by the messages of support she has received since speaking at the launch of HeForShe in New York last September.
She says the campaign is about asking each and every person, what are you doing to reduce gender equality. HeForShe wants to hear about people's experiences:
Girls - who have been your mentors?
Parents - did you make sure you treated your children equally?
Husbands - have you supported your wives' aspirations?
Young men - have you spoken up for women casually taunted?
Media - have you thought about how women are portrayed publicly?
Chief executives - what are you doing in your organisations?
The "what now" is down to you. Decide your commitment, make it public, and please report back to us so we can support your story.
Watson says she's had her "breath taken away" since her speech last September. One girl told her that it enable to escape the cycle of her father's violence. The actress describes the drive for gender equality as "fertile ground".
Women share this planet 50/50 and they are under represented, they are astonishingly untapped.
What is the impact you can have? What how when and with whom?
AM
Hello! Here taking questions on #Heforshe and #Impact10x10x10 here in #Davos. Send away! @UN_Women@HeforShe@e_nyamayaro@phumzileunwomen
- Emma Watson (@EmWatson) January 23, 2015
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 8.58am GMT
block-time published-time 8.42am GMT
Lagarde reiterates that excessive inequality is bad for growth, and also points out that the wealthy have benefitted from the rise in asset prices since the financial crisis.
( that's because of the stimulus packages run by central banks since Lehman Brothers )
block-time published-time 8.40am GMT
Mark Carney, Bank of England governor, is making some important points about the causes of inequality.
1) Technological changes are driving down pay in some sectors
2) In a fully interconnected world, someone with very valuable skills can be very well rewarded.
Steve Jobs brilliance is applied globally, not locally.
Carney adds that the key challenge is to give equality of opportunity.
block-time published-time 8.35am GMT
Some instant reaction to this inequality debate:
Debate the numbers all you want. People perceive the world as being unequal. Not solving it will spark social unrest. #BBCWorldDebate
- Eric Prenen (@eprenen) January 23, 2015
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 9.53am GMT
block-time published-time 8.33am GMT
Sir Martin Sorrell defends wealth creators, such as himself.
He tells Davos that he founded a company with 2 people, and now employs 179,000 people in 111 countries and invests $12bn in human capital each year.
I make no apology for that whatsoever.
Sorrell adds that the improvements in fighting extreme inequality and fatal diseases in recent decades doesn't get enough credit.
And he reminds Lagarde that there isn't proof that equality drives growth.
Byanyima hits back - a year ago, we found that 85 people own as much wealth as the bottom 50%. It's now down to 80 people. The situation is getting worse.
That's not the best way to measure inequality, the BBC's Evan Davies suggests, given just how poor the poorest are.
block-time published-time 8.26am GMT
Oxfam: The 0.1% are shaping the rules of the market
Oxfam International's Winnie Byanyima takes the floor, explaining how extreme wealth is distorting the way the world works.
The financial lobbyists in the US spent $400m in 2013 influencing political debate, and $571m in campaigning contributions.
They also spent $150m in the EU, lobbying governments.
This is about shaping the rules of the market in their favour, Byanyima says:
In an ideal situation we would have all people shaping the way the economy is governed and society is governed.
Extreme wealth results in political capture, and from there on public decision making is conducted in the interest of the wealthy.
block-time published-time 8.19am GMT
The BBC then play two clips of wealthy men defending the rich, including British businessman Luke Johnson - who argues that our economy will suffer if we demonise wealth-creators as fat cats and plutocrats.
block-time published-time 8.16am GMT
Bank of England governor Mark Carney goes next, explaining how financial innovation - some good, some not so good - in the run-up to the crisis has allowed the system to lose its focus on social capital.
He dubs it a "let them eat credit" approach - which allowed consumption to increase even as incomes didn't.
block-time published-time 8.12am GMT
Christine Lagarde at the IMF today Photograph: WEF
block-time published-time 8.12am GMT
Lagarde: Inequality is not good for growth, or for women
The BBC's Evan Davies kicks off the inequality debate by reminding Christine Lagarde that the IMF pulled a screeching u-turn last year when she warned about the dangers of inequality.
Yes, Lagarde replies. When I did that, some IMF economists warned that this wasn't a mainstream view. But now it is mainstream.
She explains:
If you increase the income share of the poorest, you get a multipling effect that you don't get when you increase the income share of the richest.
Excessive inequality is bad for growth. Redistribution policies are not bad for growth, she adds - another thing economists had wrong before.
Inequality is not good for growth. Inequality is not good for women, and that's an issue I'm very concerned about, gender inequality.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 8.40am GMT
block-time published-time 8.05am GMT
If you're on twitter, you can use the hashtag #bbcworlddebate to contribute to this inequality debate.
It's starting now, with video clips of citizens around the world giving their views on inequality, unemployment, and social exclusion.
block-time published-time 8.02am GMT
Watch the inequality debate here
The BBC debate on A Richer World, but for Whom? is starting any moment. Here's a webfeed:
block-time published-time 7.56am GMT
Swiss bus stop #wef15pic.twitter.com/KmNl5qd72l
- Kim Hjelmgaard (@khjelmgaard) January 23, 2015
block-time published-time 7.41am GMT
Irony alert. Some Davos attendees will be listening to the perils of inequality just hours after bobbing along at a terribly exclusive Google party
Pretty good music at the Google party #Davos2015https://t.co/ZInZJTKuat
- Nicholas Carlson (@nichcarlson) January 22, 2015
I need a dollar at Google party in #davos no irony at all https://t.co/BkpDD7bdbp
- emily bell (@emilybell) January 22, 2015
(for the record, Team Guardian spent last diligently filing copy, tracking Prince Andrew's Davos reception, before discussing economic issues over a late supper #hardcore )
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 7.47am GMT
block-time published-time 7.35am GMT
The Agenda: Income inequality, Europe's future....
Hello from Davos, where the third day of the World Economic Forum is beginning.
We'll be hearing a lot about inequality today, from some of the richest and most powerful people on the globe.
The BBC is holding a big debate on this crucial subject, that aims to nail the issue, called " A Richer World, but for Whom? "
On the panel, IMF chief Christine Lagarde, Bank of England governor Mark Carney, US economics professor Robert Shiller, advertising magnate Sir Martin Sorrell and - proving some much needed balance - Oxfam International director Winnie Byanyima.
It's easy to mock the idea of inequality being discussed in this bubble of private jets, limos and huge wealth. So don't let us stop you.
Readers might also note that inequality has been high on Davos's agenda for several years, and it's still a major problem.
But some Davos attendees are genuinely determined to help. Take Bill and Melinda Gates, for example - they'll be talking about their vision for Sustainable Development this evening.
The weak European economy is another issue in focus, a day after Mario Draghi ( much missed at Davos ) launched a long-awaited QE programme.
French president Francois Hollande is taking the stage later this morning.
UK chancellor George Osborne and Germany's finance chief Wolfgang Schauble will be debating Europe's future at lunchtime; clashing with the CBI's annual lunch for British business.
We'll also be tracking Middle Eastern issues, as Davos delegates digest the news that the Saudi King Abdullah has died.
Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah dies at 90
US secretary of state John Kerry is giving this afternoon's keynote speech.
And the day will round off with singer/producer/activist/reality TV judge Will.i.am; he'll be talking about his "I Am Angel" - Foundation.
The agenda
9am CET / 8am GMT: BBC debate on income inequality
10.30am CET: Climate change debate; Lagarde, Jim Kim
11.30am: Francois Hollande special address
1pm: CBI lunch, with guest speaker IMF's Zhi Min
1pm: Recharging Europe, with Schauble and Osborne
2.15pm: Francois Hollande special address (moved)
4.40pm: John Kerry's special address
5.45pm: Will.i.am interview on youth entrepreneurship and his foundation
6.15pm: Bill and Melinda Gates on sustainable development
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 9.35am GMT
Francois Hollande and John Kerry address Davos 2015 - live French president says business must help fight extremists, and backs Europe's new quantitative easing package. false theguardian.com true http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2015/1/23/1422020103629/8b3fcc69-0193-4d11-8b34-a4dc267396a0-140x84.jpeg 7403 true 454986877 false 54c1ec61e4b0445ea569c66d false Graeme Wearden in Davos, and Angela Monaghan in London false 2228524 UK true 2015-01-26T07:30:00+00:00
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January 23, 2015 Friday 3:36 PM GMT
Obama's India visit: Hopes for clean energy and climate deals;
US president and Indian prime minister Narendra Modi expected to roll out a raft of clean energy initiatives for India's polluted cities, with a post-2020 climate deal also high on Obama's agenda
BYLINE: Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 891 words
Barack Obama was advised, only half-jokingly, to wear a gas mask when he appears as guest of honour at India's Republic Day parade on Monday. The air pollution in Delhi and other Indian cities has become that bad.
Related: Obama jets off to Delhi as US and India enter new era of goodwill
Providing a fix for that very unhealthy air - 13 of the world's most polluted cites are in India - is a growing priority for the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, and could take key position in a suite of clean energy initiatives the two leaders are expected to roll out on Monday.
"The co-operation on clean energy and climate change is critically important," Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser, told a conference call with reporters.
America is hoping to persuade India, one of the world's biggest emitters, to commit to an ambitious post-2020 plan for reining in its greenhouse gas emissions ahead of the international climate change meeting in Paris this December.
Related: Can Narendra Modi bring the solar power revolution to India?
The first priority - ahead of climate change, US officials admit - is expanding India's access to clean energy.
US and Indian officials have repeatedly doused speculation of a repeat of the US-China agreement to cut emissions that came out of Obama's visit to Beijing last November.
But billions in US investment to help India move ahead on ambitious targets for expanding its use of wind and solar power, as well as initiatives to clean up the dangerous levels of soot and smog, are very much on the cards.
India is expected to outpace China in growth by the end of the decade. Modi late last year doubled India's wind power targets and increased the solar power target by a factor of five to 100GW by 2022.
Researchers have calculated wind and solar could generate 28% of India's electricity by 2030 - a bigger share than China, according to Navroz Dubash, a fellow at the Centre for Policy Research.
The Indian government estimates that it could take about $100bn (£67bn) in investment - potentially a big opening for US firms, said Raymond Vickery, a senior commerce official during the Clinton administration.
"There has to be $100 billion in financing that has to be mobilised in this period between now and 2022, and that is not going to come from government alone," he told a conference call hosted by the World Resources Institute, an environmental think tank. US-based SunEdison and India's Adani Enterprises said earlier this month they would invest $4bn in an Indian solar power factory.
Vickery said he also expected announcements on Monday regarding India's civil nuclear programme.
On air pollution, Obama and Modi are expected to unveil a new effort to clean up the diesel truck engines that are fouling the air of India's cities. The World Health Organisation considers the tiny particles, known as PM2.5, a carcinogen. The World Bank estimates outdoor air pollution in India causes 620,000 premature deaths a year.
Researchers from the University of California at San Diego will visit Bangalore and Chennai in early February to work on plans for cleaning up the air in those cities. The first step is moving towards low sulphur fuels, said Veerabhadran Ramanathan, director of the university's Center for Atmospheric Sciences.
Almost half of the particulate pollution, or soot, in India's cities is produced by vehicles, with millions more cars on the roads each year. The rest is caused by coal burning, the burning of firewood and cow dung cakes for fuel and cooking, and crop fields after harvest.
Delhi has the additional misfortune of meteorological inversion, which traps smog and soot over the city in the winter months, worsening air pollution two or three times.
Obama will also be trying to persuade Modi to do more to fight climate change.
"It's no secret that the administration is looking to press the climate agenda. They would welcome whatever degree of commitment that India wants to make," said Pete Ogden, a former White House director for climate change in the Obama administration.
Getting India to commit to curbing its greenhouse gas emissions is critical to reaching a meaningful climate agreement in Paris. India is the third biggest carbon polluter behind China and the US - although it remains a very distant third.
During Obama's visit to Beijing last year, the US said it would cut emissions 28% on 2005 levels by 2025. China said it would cap emissions and get 20% of its electricity from renewables by 2030.
India is expected to come forward with its own climate action targets by the middle of the year, though they are unlikely to resemble China's.
Modi has pushed back against pressure to put an absolute cap on emissions, arguing that India still faces widespread poverty. Despite the much-touted solar expansion, India is also planning to double domestic coal production to one billion tonnes, and it has been putting pressure on environmental groups trying to keep mining in check.
"We are seeing that Modi is not as progressive as some of the other rhetoric would lead us to believe," said Rebecca Lefton, director of policy research at Climate Advisers. "While he is making fantastic promises on clean energy, at the same time he is making these other big goals to expand coal production in the country. That really does not jive with their climate goals," she said.
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January 23, 2015 Friday 2:57 PM GMT
Green news roundup: rhino poaching, doomsday clock and fossil fuel 'takeover';
The week's top environment news stories and green events · Sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox
BYLINE: Environment editor
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 262 words
Environment news
· Climate change inaction pushes 'doomsday clock' closest to midnight since 1984· Ban fracking, says former Tory environment secretary Caroline Spelman· US Senate refuses to accept humanity's role in global climate change, again· Austria to launch lawsuit over Hinkley Point C nuclear subsidies· Fossil fuel firms accused of renewable lobby takeover to push gas· Record number of rhinos killed by poachers in South Africa in 2014· Antarctic toothfish poaching ships shrug off New Zealand navy· Shareholders challenge BP to confront climate change risk· Fine supermarkets if they have unfairly squeezed milk suppliers, say MPs· UK's shale gas revolution falls flat with just 11 new wells planned for 2015
On the blogs
· George Monbiot: With this attack on community energy the big six win out over 'big society'· 10 signs the stars are aligning for a climate deal in Paris· Should tackling climate change trump protecting nature?
Multimedia
· Snapshots from Tanzania's wildlife reserves - in pictures· Tiger census shows India's population has increased by 30% - video report· Everyday climate change - in pictures· The week in wildlife - in pictures
Features and comment
· How to make the most of the Big Garden Birdwatch· Can anything stop the rhino poaching crisis?· GM crop vote was just the beginning of Europe's biotech battle· Why can't I buy more palm oil-free products from mainstream shops?
...And finally
· Why it's good to laugh at climate changeDid you hear the one about the climate policy analyst? Or the polar bear who walked into a bar?
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The Guardian
January 23, 2015 Friday 10:33 AM GMT
Ban fracking, says former Tory environment secretary Caroline Spelman;
Conservative MP calls for fracking moratorium as Labour says fracking should not be allowed unless regulatory loopholes are closed
BYLINE: Damian Carrington
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 898 words
The former Tory environment secretary, Caroline Spelman, has called for a ban on fracking in the UK ahead of a report by an influential committee of MPs that is expected to conclude fracking could derail efforts to tackle climate change.
The intervention by Spelman, a member of the Environmental Audit Committee, comes as the government's drive for fracking came under heavy political attack on Thursday.
Anne McIntosh, Tory chair of the separate environment select committee of MPs, also mounted an assault against shale gas exploration while Labour's shadow ministers said that fracking should not allowed until 13 regulatory "loopholes" are closed.
David Cameron has said the government is " going all out " for shale gas in the UK, claiming it would create jobs and cut the country's reliance on imports. But opponents argue the high pressure fracturing of rocks to release gas risks health and environmental impacts and drives climate change.
Spelman's demand for a halt to fracking was made in an amendment to a controversial government bill on which MPs will vote on Monday.
The amendment, which has the backing of half the MPs on the EAC, calls for a "moratorium on the hydraulic fracturing of shale gas deposits in order to reduce the risk of carbon budgets being breached." This "reflects the conclusions" of an EAC inquiry which will be published on Monday and is expected to conclude that the push for fracking could derail efforts to tackle global warming.
McIntosh, who chairs a committee of MPs on environment, food and rural affairs, also opposes shale gas exploration and put forward amendments, including one to retain the right of people to block fracking under their homes.
"I don't think fracking is appropriate," she told the Guardian. "The carbon emissions from fossil fuels cannot be a good thing." McIntosh, whose constituency contains a proposed fracking site, says shale gas exploration contradicts the Conservative Party's acknowledgment of climate change and she is also concerned about possible contamination of groundwater by leaked fracking fluid and earthquakes.
Labour has already attempted to amend the infrastructure bill to strengthen environmental protections, including banning fracking in areas that provide drinking water and in national parks. But for the first time on Thursday Labour said fracking should be banned until "loopholes", such as the proposal to allow "any substance" to be injected into wells, were closed.
Caroline Flint, Labour's shadow secretary of state for energy and climate change, said: "David Cameron has repeatedly ignored people's genuine and legitimate environmental concerns over shale gas. Despite clear evidence that existing regulations for shale gas are not fit for purpose, the government seems prepared to push ahead with fracking at any cost." She said shale gas might have a role in displacing some imported gas but not at the expense of the environment or climate change.
Matt Hancock, business and energy minister said: "We have one of the most robust regulatory systems in the world for shale gas. It's baffling that the Greens want us to miss out on one of the greatest economic opportunities in a generation."
A spokesman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) said: "We are confident that our existing robust regulation will protect residents, the environment and the landscape for exploration."
Related: A county divided: is Lancashire ready for its fracking revolution?
On 14 January, ministers accepted two Labour amendments which mean fracking companies will be legally bound to reveal the chemicals they use and to better monitor for groundwater pollution. "We recognise the importance of ensuring the shale industry is completely transparent and accountable," the Decc spokesman said.
"The call for a UK moratorium by senior cross party MPs is a further blow to an industry still reeling from the ban on fracking in New York State in December due to health risks," said Friends of the Earth climate campaigner Donna Hume. "From Lancashire to Balcombe, communities are rejecting the fracking industry's spin and this move shows MPs aren't swallowing it either. The truth is people do not want a high-impact fossil fuel industry that would leave a legacy of pollution and disruption and would lock the world into further climate change."
On Wednesday, planning officers at Lancashire County Council (LCC) said plans by fracking company Cuadrilla should be rejected due to "unacceptable" increases in noise and heavy traffic. But the officials judged the risks to public health, air and water pollution, subsidence and earthquakes were low and acceptable.
Ken Cronin, chief executive of industry body UK Onshore Oil and Gas, said: "As the recommendation from LCC officials shows, there are no geological, environmental or public health reasons not to proceed with hydraulic fracturing in the UK. All a moratorium would do would be to put back development of natural gas from shale in the UK, with a resulting negative effect on the UK's energy security and plans to phase out coal and reduce harmful emissions."
The MPs on the EAC committee declined to comment ahead of the publication of their report on Monday. Those backing the moratorium are Spelman, Matthew Offord, Zac Goldsmith (all Conservative), Caroline Lucas (Green), Joan Walley, Mark Lazarowicz, Alan Whitehead and Katy Clark (all Labour).
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The New York Times
January 23, 2015 Friday
Late Edition - Final
Senate Rejects Human Role in Climate
BYLINE: By CORAL DAVENPORT
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 15
LENGTH: 295 words
The Senate on Thursday again voted to reject two measures related to the Keystone XL pipeline that declared that humans are a cause of climate change -- the second set of votes on the issue in two days.
Senators are using the Keystone debate to argue over climate issues. The Democrats want to force their Republican colleagues to come out one way or another on whether they believe humans have a role in changes to the climate and the rise of global temperatures. Republicans telegraphed their intent to attack President Obama's climate policy agenda.
Mr. Obama is expected to veto the underlying bill that would force federal approval of the Keystone pipeline and allow construction to begin. Still, the debate has led to the first Senate floor votes in eight years on climate change measures.
On Thursday, the Senate voted 56 to 42 not to take up an amendment offered by Senator Bernard Sanders, independent of Vermont, that declared that climate change is real, is caused by humans and wreaks devastation. The amendment also called on the federal government to lead the way in the national transition away from dependence on fossil fuels.
Senators voted 54 to 46 not to take up an amendment offered by Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, that also declared human-caused climate change to be real and devastating, and urged the government to support research on technologies that would capture carbon emissions from fossil fuels.
A third, Republican-sponsored amendment, which was rejected 51 to 46, was more political in nature. Offered by Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, it called on the Senate to nullify a climate change agreement in November between the United States and China in which both nations pledged to reduce their carbon emissions.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/23/us/politics/senate-rejects-human-role-in-climate-change.html
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The New York Times
January 23, 2015 Friday
Late Edition - Final
Race for Boxer's Senate Seat Loses a High-Profile Hopeful
BYLINE: By ADAM NAGOURNEY
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 18
LENGTH: 305 words
LOS ANGELES -- The supposedly crowded race to succeed Senator Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat who is not seeking re-election in 2016, just became less crowded.
Tom Steyer, a billionaire environmentalist, announced Thursday that he had decided not to enter the race. ''My decision about whether to engage from the outside or seek elected office came down to a single question: How best can I fight for a level playing field at this point?'' Mr. Steyer, a Democrat, said in a statement on his page on The Huffington Post.
Mr. Steyer's decision left Kamala D. Harris, the state attorney general, as the dominant figure in the contest, at least for now. Ms. Harris, 50, had announced that she would run for the office almost immediately after Ms. Boxer said she was stepping down.
The other major potential candidate is Antonio R. Villaraigosa, a former mayor of Los Angeles, who has said he is considering a run. Mr. Villaraigosa is from Southern California, which has historically been a disadvantage for candidates in statewide races; voter turnout tends to be lower here.
But in this case, Mr. Villaraigosa, 61, as a high-profile Latino candidate, would be in a position to tap into a considerable base here, and in the process set up a potentially fascinating ethnic contest in one of the most diverse states in the nation. Ms. Harris's mother is Indian, and her father is Jamaican-American.
Representative Adam Schiff, a 54-year-old Los Angeles Democrat, also announced Thursday that he was giving serious consideration to running.
Associates of Mr. Steyer, 57, who is a founder of Next Generation, an environmental group that has invested heavily in candidates based on climate change issues, said he was still interested in public office and might run for governor in 2018, when Jerry Brown, a Democrat, steps down.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/23/us/tom-steyer-says-he-wont-try-to-succeed-barbara-boxer-in-senate.html
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GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Tom Steyer, who finances candidates based on climate change views, indicated his goals would be best achieved out of office. (PHOTOGRAPH BY JASON HENRY FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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(DealBook)
January 23, 2015 Friday
Leaders in Davos Urge Quick Action to Alter the Effects of Climate Change
BYLINE: DAVID GELLES
SECTION: BUSINESS
LENGTH: 1025 words
HIGHLIGHT: Business and political leaders called on governments to set clear goals so companies are prompted to act before the problems of climate change become irreversible.
DAVOS, Switzerland - On the heels of data showing that last year was the hottest on earth since record keeping began, business leaders, politicians and scientists at the World Economic Forum redoubled their calls to combat climate change.
In panels and private discussions, executives and legislators were comparing notes on the growing economic cost of changing weather patterns, and debating what practical steps could be taken in the near term.
At the same time, corporate leaders implored governments to come to a broad agreement at the United Nations Climate Change Conference, which will take place in Paris at the end of the year.
"This is the year to make a big climate deal in Paris," Feike Sijbesma, chief executive of DSM, the big Dutch nutrition and materials company, said in an interview. "We need to push further awareness, we need to put a price on carbon."
At a panel discussion on Friday, world leaders including Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, and Ban Ki-moon, secretary general of the United Nations, held a public discussion titled "Tackling Climate, Development and Growth."
Ms. Lagarde sounded the alarm about rising global temperatures. "We are at risk of being grilled, fried and toasted," she said.
Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank, was also on the panel and said that between the more visible effects of climate change and the Paris summit, the time was ripe for a new global accord. "This is a really important year," he said.
Paul Kagame, the president of Rwanda, said that the increased dialogue about climate change was a victory in itself.
"Everyone is talking about the urgency, the risk," he said. "This a big step in itself. The next big step is you need to do it."
But time is running out before the effects of climate change become irreversible, the panelists said.
"We have to go very quickly," said Michael Spence, professor of economics at the New York University Stern School of Business. "We have a window of a very small number of years after which we cannot win the battle to mitigate fast enough to meet the safety goals."
Business leaders called on governments to set clear goals so companies are prompted to act.
"We do need a price for carbon," said Paul Polman, chief executive of Unilever, who was also on the panel. "If you don't price what you value, you don't get people to react. That's unfortunately our financial system."
Some of the big companies at the event are already acting independently to minimize their impact on the planet.
DSM, for example, is reducing its greenhouse gas emissions, improving efficiency in its factories, and creating products that use less water.
"The next generation will look to us and ask if we did all we could?" said Mr. Sijbesma, the DSM chief executive. "And if not, why didn't we do anything about it."
And Unilever has been a leader in the field, with factories that use 30 percent renewable energy and send no waste to landfills. Unilever has also pushed its suppliers in the developing world to curtail deforestation, which accounts for 15 percent of global emissions each year.
Unilever has also stated its ambition to double the size of its business and reduce its carbon footprint at the same time.
"We want to grow the business without depleting the resources of the planet," said Pier Luigi Sigismondi, chief supply chain officer of Unilever.
"My concern is we are running out of time," said Mr. Sigismondi. "The acceleration that I see happening in global warming trends is so fast and so vast. Two or three degrees increase will have devastating effects on humanity, on par with World War II, if not higher."
But Mr. Sigismondi said that even the company's best efforts would make only a minimal impact unless whole industries and countries made similar changes.
"Although we believe it's a lot, it's not enough, despite the size of Unilever," he said. "It's still a drop on the ocean."
Echoing concerns expressed on the panel, Mr. Sigismondi said that the impact of changing weather patterns was most felt in the developing world. "Climate change is about climate justice as well," he said. "These changes are impacting the poorest countries in the world disproportionately."
Nicolas Moreau, chief executive of Axa, the French financial group, said the frequency of flash floods and other violent weather was causing his company to pay out more insurance claims. Amid a series of storms in September, Axa was paying out $20 million in claims each weekend.
"We are observing an acceleration of these events," Mr. Moreau said.
And though the damage is increasing, it seems to be getting the attention of previously skeptical executives and officials.
"Five years ago people ware still on the fence about whether this was a real risk," Mr. Moreau said. "Now people are taking it more seriously, and accepting that this is a risk they have to confront."
Yet despite the increase discussion about climate change here, the most concrete action to tackle the problem to come out of the World Economic Forum is a pop concert.
Al Gore, the former vice president of the United States, and the singer Pharrell Williams announced a Live Earth concert aimed to galvanize calls for action on climate change. Over a 24-hour period in June, concerts will take place in six cities on different continents, and at a science station in Antarctica.
The purpose of the event will be to galvanize public support for a broad climate deal in Paris.
"It is absolutely crucial that we build public will for an agreement," Mr. Gore said. "The purpose is to have a billion voices with one message, to demand climate action now."
But despite the excitement surrounding the concert and the best efforts of business leaders, scientists remain pessimistic.
At a sparsely attended news conference in the basement of the Congress Center, where the World Economic Forum is held, new data was presented that once again painted a dire picture of the effects of climate change.
"This is a decisive year for humanity," said Johan Rockström, executive director of the Stockholm Resilience Center. "The global economy itself is disrupting the planetary ecological system."
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The Guardian
January 22, 2015 Thursday 7:26 PM GMT
Climate change inaction pushes 'doomsday clock' closest to midnight since 1984;
Symbolic clock is now at three minutes to apocalypse, the darkest hour for humanity since the cold war
BYLINE: Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 402 words
The symbolic doomsday clock moved to three minutes before midnight on Thursday because of the gathering dangers of climate change and nuclear proliferation, signalling the gravest threat to humanity since the throes of the cold war.
It was the closest the clock has come to midnight since 1984, when arms-control negotiations stalled and virtually all channels of communication between the US and the former Soviet Union closed down.
Related: 2014 officially the hottest year on record, US government scientists say
"It is now three minutes to midnight," said Kennette Bennedict, the executive director of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, announcing the two-minute shift toward the midnight hour.
The move came as scientists sounded a warning about climate change for the second time in three years. The last move of the clock hands, from six minutes to five minutes to midnight, in 2012, was also because of climate change.
As the scientists noted last Thursday, 2014 was the hottest year in 130 years of systematic record keeping. Nine of the 10 hottest years on record have occurred since 2000.
But the scientists suggested that the greater danger lay in the failure of leaders to recognise and act on climate change.
"Stunning government failures have imperiled civilisations on a global scale," Benedict said. "World leaders have failed to act on a scale or at a speed to protect humanity from catastrophe."
The greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change have risen more since 2000 than in the three previous decades combined, Richard Somerville, a research professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, said. Even so, he observed, negotiators had steadily lowered their ambitions for a global climate deal.
Meanwhile, the scientists said, global efforts to reduce nuclear arsenals have slowed since 2009, and all of the nuclear powers were expanding reactors and weapons programmes.
Related: US Senate refuses to accept humanity's role in global climate change, again
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists created the symbolic clock in 1947 to indicate the cold war threat. In 1991, when the threat of nuclear annihilation receded with the end of the cold war, the clock stood at 17 minutes to midnight.
But it was now moving closer to the apocalypse because of climate change. "We are not saying it is too late to take action, but the window to take action is closing rapidly," Benedict said.
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The Guardian
January 22, 2015 Thursday 5:17 PM GMT
Ban fracking, says former Tory environment secretary Caroline Spelman;
Conservative MP calls for fracking moratorium as Labour says fracking should not be allowed unless regulatory loopholes are closed
BYLINE: Damian Carrington
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 873 words
The former Tory environment secretary, Caroline Spelman, has called for a ban on fracking in the UK ahead of a report by an influential committee of MPs that is expected to conclude fracking could derail efforts to tackle climate change.
The intervention by Spelman, a member of the Environmental Audit Committee, comes as the government's drive for fracking came under heavy political attack on Thursday.
Anne McIntosh, Tory chair of the separate environment select committee of MPs, also mounted an assault against shale gas exploration while Labour's shadow ministers said that fracking should not allowed until 13 regulatory "loopholes" are closed.
David Cameron has said the government is " going all out " for shale gas in the UK, claiming it would create jobs and cut the country's reliance on imports. But opponents argue the high pressure fracturing of rocks to release gas risks health and environmental impacts and drives climate change.
Spelman's demand for a halt to fracking was made in an amendment to a controversial government bill on which MPs will vote on Monday.
The amendment, which has the backing of half the MPs on the EAC, calls for a "moratorium on the hydraulic fracturing of shale gas deposits in order to reduce the risk of carbon budgets being breached." This "reflects the conclusions" of an EAC inquiry which will be published on Monday and is expected to conclude that the push for fracking could derail efforts to tackle global warming.
McIntosh, who chairs a committee of MPs on environment, food and rural affairs, also opposes shale gas exploration and put forward amendments, including one to retain the right of people to block fracking under their homes.
"I don't think fracking is appropriate," she told the Guardian. "The carbon emissions from fossil fuels cannot be a good thing." McIntosh, whose constituency contains a proposed fracking site, says shale gas exploration contradicts the Conservative Party's acknowledgment of climate change and she is also concerned about possible contamination of groundwater by leaked fracking fluid and earthquakes.
Labour has already attempted to amend the infrastructure bill to strengthen environmental protections, including banning fracking in areas that provide drinking water and in national parks. But for the first time on Thursday Labour said fracking should be banned until "loopholes", such as the proposal to allow "any substance" to be injected into wells, were closed.
Caroline Flint, Labour's shadow secretary of state for energy and climate change, said: "David Cameron has repeatedly ignored people's genuine and legitimate environmental concerns over shale gas. Despite clear evidence that existing regulations for shale gas are not fit for purpose, the government seems prepared to push ahead with fracking at any cost." She said shale gas might have a role in displacing some imported gas but not at the expense of the environment or climate change.
A spokesman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) said: "We've been consistent that shale gas must be explored safely and environmentally soundly. We are confident that our existing robust regulation will protect residents, the environment and the landscape for exploration."
Related: A county divided: is Lancashire ready for its fracking revolution?
On 14 January, ministers accepted two Labour amendments which mean fracking companies will be legally bound to reveal the chemicals they use and to better monitor for groundwater pollution. "We recognise the importance of ensuring the shale industry is completely transparent and accountable," the Decc spokesman said.
"The call for a UK moratorium by senior cross party MPs is a further blow to an industry still reeling from the ban on fracking in New York State in December due to health risks," said Friends of the Earth climate campaigner Donna Hume. "From Lancashire to Balcombe, communities are rejecting the fracking industry's spin and this move shows MPs aren't swallowing it either. The truth is people do not want a high-impact fossil fuel industry that would leave a legacy of pollution and disruption and would lock the world into further climate change."
On Wednesday, planning officers at Lancashire County Council (LCC) said plans by fracking company Cuadrilla should be rejected due to "unacceptable" increases in noise and heavy traffic. But the officials judged the risks to public health, air and water pollution, subsidence and earthquakes were low and acceptable.
Ken Cronin, chief executive of industry body UK Onshore Oil and Gas, said: "As the recommendation from LCC officials shows, there are no geological, environmental or public health reasons not to proceed with hydraulic fracturing in the UK. All a moratorium would do would be to put back development of natural gas from shale in the UK, with a resulting negative effect on the UK's energy security and plans to phase out coal and reduce harmful emissions."
The MPs on the EAC committee declined to comment ahead of the publication of their report on Monday. Those backing the moratorium are Spelman, Matthew Offord, Zac Goldsmith (all Conservative), Caroline Lucas (Green), Joan Walley, Mark Lazarowicz, Alan Whitehead and Katy Clark (all Labour).
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The Guardian
January 22, 2015 Thursday 3:45 PM GMT
The oceans are warming so fast, they keep breaking scientists' charts;
NOAA once again has to rescale its ocean heat chart to capture 2014 ocean warming
BYLINE: John Abraham
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 502 words
Wow, was this a bad year for those who deny the reality and the significance of human-induced climate change. Of course, there were the recent flurry of reports that 2014 surface temperatures had hit their hottest values ever recorded. The 2014 record was first called on this blog in December and the final results were reported as well, here. All of this happened in a year that the denialists told us would not be very hot.
But those denialists are having a tough time now as they look around the planet for ANY evidence that climate change is not happening. The problem is, they've been striking out.
And just recently, perhaps the most important bit of information came out about 2014 - how much the Earth actually warmed. What we find is that the warming is so great, NOAA literally has to remake its graphs. Let me explain this a bit.
We tend to focus on the global temperature average which is the average of air temperatures near the ground (or at the sea surface). This past year, global air temperatures were record-breaking. But that isn't the same as global warming. Global warming is properly viewed as the amount of heat contained within the Earth's energy system. So, air temperatures may go up and down on any given year as energy moves to or from the air (primarily from the ocean). What we really want to know is, did the Earth's energy go up or down?
The trick to answering this question is to measure the change in energy of the oceans. A thorough review of ocean heat measurement methods is found here ; we paid the requisite fee to make the paper open access. Anyone can download and read it.
So what do the new data show? Well, it turns out that the energy stored within the ocean (which is 90% or more of the total "global warming" heat), increased significantly. A plot from NOAA is shown above. You can see that the last data point (the red curve), is, literally off the chart.
The folks at NOAA do a great job updating this graph every three months or so. We can now say that the 2014 Earth had more heat (thermal energy) than any year ever recorded by humans. We can also say that the folks at NOAA will likely have to rescale their graph to capture the new numbers. The NOAA site is updated by Dr. Tim Boyer and can be found here. Click on slide 2 to view the relevant image.
If people want to read a review of ocean heating that is written for a general audience, I suggest our recent peer-reviewed paper which can be found here.
So when we look back on 2014 and the records that fell, it gives us some pause about the so-called pause (hat-tip to Dr. Greg Laden for that phrase). Some people tried to tell us global warming had "paused", that it ended in 1998, or that the past 15 years or so had not seen a change in the energy of the Earth. This ocean warming data is the clearest nail in that coffin. There never was a pause to global warming, there never was a halt, and the folks that tried to tell you there was were, well, I'll let you decide. For me, the facts speak for themselves.
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The Guardian
January 22, 2015 Thursday 12:00 PM GMT
Helen Clark: 'Davos must look at how war and climate change affect poverty';
Head of UN Development Programme calls on World Economic Forum to show ambition and determination during 2015, a crucial year for development
BYLINE: Sam Jones
SECTION: GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT
LENGTH: 636 words
The 2,500 business leaders, academics and policymakers meeting at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week need to look beyond current financial concerns and focus on the effects that war and climate change are having on the fight against poverty, the head of the UN Develoment Programme (UNDP) has warned.
Speaking as she prepared to travel to Davos, Helen Clark urged the forum to reflect on the global consequences of climate change, Ebola and the crises in Syria, Iraq, South Sudan and Central African Republic.
"They'll be discussing the new global context of volatility, uncertainty and unpredictability - no doubt with both the Swiss franc issue and the rouble on their minds," she said. "But they need to look at this whole overview of what is happening with war, conflict and climate: globalisation speeds up the impact of any adverse trend anywhere."
The former New Zealand prime minister, who will also be discussing the best ways to help the Ebola-affected west African countries recover from the epidemic, called on those at Davos - and the wider international community - to show ambition and determination during a crucial year for development.
In September, the UN general assembly will meet in New York to adopt the sustainable development goals (SDGs), which will replace the millennium development goals (MDGs). Less than three months later, the UN will hold negotiations in Paris in a bid to reach agreement on cutting carbon emissions.
Clark, who was in London to discuss the SDGs at the Overseas Development Institute, acknowledged the scale of the issues but said she was confident of real progress if everyone played their part.
"It's going to require leadership globally, locally and nationally to really pick up the agenda and run with it," she said. "It's not just something that public finance can do: it needs investment, it needs trade - and it [means] dealing with the corruption that permits the illicit financial flows that are draining developing countries' resources."
Perhaps the biggest difference between the MDGs and their mooted successors, said Clark, was the scale of the ambitions underpinning the latter.
"The MDGs were in many ways about tackling poverty with official development assistance," she said. "The SDGs are about the way we live, behave, invest, do business, produce and consume ... This isn't just going to be ODA, it's going to be growing economies and domestic resource mobilisation and allocation; it's going to be bankability, which means being credit-worthy and attracting investment and facilitating trade. All of this means better governance, better regulation, an enabling environment, and the rule of law."
Vital to the new agenda, she said, was the presence of SDG 16, which calls for the promotion of peaceful and inclusive societies, the provision of access to justice for all, and the building of effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.
"You don't eradicate poverty without a number of other things going on," said Clark.
She also said that although the current shape of the SDGs - 17 goals and 169 targets - was unlikely to change dramatically, the UN was still exploring ways to simplify the agenda around six key themes: people, dignity, prosperity, justice, partnership and planet.
"There's not a great appetite for the member states to open it up again because they feel that a lot of compromise and consensus was built in the open working group," she said.
"The question is whether this idea of having the six organising or clustering principles will get some traction. In terms of framing the agenda, there's something quite catchy about that and we need to catch people's imagination with this because if you just say 'sustainable development', eyes glaze. If you say, '17 goals', it takes a genius to recite the 17."
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The Guardian
January 22, 2015 Thursday 9:30 AM GMT
Live Q&A: How can culture and sport inspire climate action?;
Join us on 22 January, 1-3pm GMT to discuss how sport, film, music, art and fashion can influence climate action in the run-up to Cop 21 in Paris Sponsored by Connect4Climate
BYLINE: Katherine Purvis
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 677 words
In 2015 - the year of the highly anticipated Cop 21 climate talks in Paris - the key will be sustaining the momentum from last year's People's Climate March, and encouraging even more people to participate in climate action. With Ban Ki-Moon stating this week that ours is the last generation to fight climate change, there is surely no better moment to bring in new voices and new stories to inspire climate action.
For years, influential figures in the worlds of sport, film, music, art and fashion have used their status to raise concerns about issues important to them. Perhaps most famously, Bob Geldof rallied fellow musicians for Band Aid and Live Aid to raise funds for famine relief in the 1980s, and for Ebola treatment last year. The annual Comic Relief and bi-annual Sports Relief campaigns in the UK bring together comedians and athletes to help raise money for development projects across the global south.
So how can these diverse sections of society be used to encourage people to take action on climate change? Ice climber Will Gadd is raising awareness of global warming through photographs of the rapidly receding glaciers he has climbed. Sports teams and stadiums around the world are going green. Even children's films are getting in on the act.
But can a photograph, film or song go beyond raising awareness and inspire behaviour change? Do prominent athletes and artists have a duty to lead by example and go green themselves? How can policymakers use climate and sport to promote changes in behaviour, and should these more creative methods feature in Cop 21 discussions?
On Thursday 22 January, 1-3pm GMT, join an expert panel to discuss these questions and more.
The live chat is not video or audio-enabled but will take place in the comments section (below). Get in touch via globaldevpros@theguardian.com or @GuardianGDP on Twitter to recommend someone for our expert panel. Follow the discussion using the hashtag #globaldevlive.
Panel
Leszek Sibilski, consultant, Connect4Climate, Washington DC, USA, @Connect4Climate A former Olympic cyclist, Leszek has a Master's degree in education and sport science, and a PhD in Sociology.
Julie Doyle, reader in media, University of Brighton, Brighton, UK, @JulieDoylej Julie researches the role of media, arts, popular culture, and the visual in climate communication. She is on the board of the International Environmental Communication Association.
Njenga Kahiro, programmes manager, Zeitz Foundation, Nanyuki, Kenya, @njengakahiro, @ZeitzFoundationNjenga has worked on community-based conservation projects in north-central Kenya for 15 years. He manages the Zeitz Foundation's Laikipia Unity programme.
Kathleen Rogers, president, Earth Day Network, Washington DC, USA, @Kathleenedn, @EarthDayNetworkKathleen leads the Earth Day Network, a policy and activist organisation seeking to advance the green economy and integrate civic participation into activities.
Yvonne Senouf, co-founder, Meld, Athens, Greece, @yvonnegabrielle, @meldccYvonne co-founded Meld, an interactive global art platform producing ground-breaking and evocative artwork to cultivate social change.
Kevin Buckland, artivist coordinator, 350.org, Barcelona, Spain, @change_of_art, @350Kevin is an artist and organiser who facilitates artists to take leadership in recreating and re-imagining human society.
Paul Hunt, project officer, sportanddev.org, Biel, Switzerland, @sportanddev Paul works for sportanddev, the sport and development sector's primary online communications platform and networking hub.
Kenny Young, founder and director, Artists Project Earth, Brailes, UK, @kennyyoungape, @artprojectearth A musician and producer, Kenny founded and directs the climate change awareness organisation, mobilising musicians and artists.
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The Guardian
January 22, 2015 Thursday 9:30 AM GMT
10 signs the stars are aligning for a climate deal in Paris;
Following Al Gore and Pharrell Williams' Live Earth 2015 announcement, we round up nine other reasons to feel happy ahead of crunch climate talks in Paris in December
BYLINE: Adam Vaughan
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 888 words
1) Pharrel Williams is going to make the world sing
Banish your memories of the slightly cringy Live Earth concerts held seven years ago at Wembley stadium and around the world. This time, "instead of just having people perform, we literally are going to have humanity harmonise all at once," Williams promised on Wednesday, standing alongside Al Gore. The sequel, intended to galvanise action on climate change, lands on 18 June, with the 100+ acts TBC.
Related: Pharrell Williams and Al Gore announce Live Earth 2015
2) The Pope is fed up with us slapping nature down
Last week, Pope Francis gave his clearest comments yet on why the world's 1.2 billion Catholics should care about climate change. "I don't know if it is all (man's fault) but the majority is, for the most part, it is man who continuously slaps down nature," he said en route to Manila. Prepared remarks on climate planned for the weekend didn't make waves, but there's no doubt his encyclical on the environment - whether or not it explicitly mentions global warming - will do when it lands in June.
3) Barack Obama is flexing his muscles with other countries
"I am determined to make sure American leadership drives international action," the president said on Tuesday in his State of the Union address. He's already done that by signing what many called a 'historic' carbon-cutting deal with China last November. Next on the list is India, and while expectations are much more modest than they were with China, any movement he generates in the world's third biggest carbon emitter will help Paris.
4) The Euro diplomats are coming!
Behind the scenes in the run-up to Paris, 90,000 European diplomats will be lobbying countries around the world to agree an ambitious climate deal. "The EU has enormous soft power and we must use that to push for an ambitious agenda in Paris," says Denmark's foreign minister. The EU was an important broker during the fraught 2011 talks in Durban, South Africa. It could well repeat that role in the run-up to Paris.
5) The people are marching
More than 400,000 people took to the streets of New York last September, according to march organisers, to ask leaders to stop talking and start taking action on climate change. Hundreds of thousands more did the same in cities from London to Melbourne. Further "people pressure" on the streets this year would reinforce the cards of politicians, who have talked before of the need for politicians to be "pushed" if they're going to take bold action at the UN climate negotiations.
6) Solar and wind are flying
It won't directly influence Paris, but a backdrop of surging investment in renewable energy is useful for negotiators and campaigners to be able to point to. Global investment in clean sources of energy jumped 16% in 2014, with solar accounting for over half for the first time. Low oil prices might, of course, paint a rather gloomier short-term picture for renewables in 2014.
7) The DiCaprio effect
Never underestimate the reach of Leo. The Hollywood A-lister generated more column inches than all the world leaders put together at a New York climate summit last year. "As an actor I pretend for a living. I play fictitious characters often solving fictitious problems. I believe humankind has looked at climate change in that same way: as if it were a fiction, happening to someone else's planet, as if pretending that climate change wasn't real would somehow make it go away," he told the UN meeting. As the UN's Messenger of Peace, with a focus on climate change, we can expect to hear much more from him ahead of Paris - and Ben Affleck, Bono, Sting and other celebs.
8) Despite its critics, the UN process did agree a deal in Lima
Although it left a lot of the hard work to be done in Paris and was relatively modest, last year's Lima climate summit did reach a deal. By the end of March, countries will have to show their hands in terms of what greenhouse gas cuts they're planning, even if the Lima text doesn't oblige them to go into details about baseline years and annual targets as some countries had asked for. "It was contentious [the Lima summit] along the way but it fundamentally accomplished what we wanted it to," said the US's lead negotiator - though not everyone would agree with that.
9) It's top of Ban's list
"Ours is the first generation that can end poverty, and the last that can take steps to avoid the worst impacts of climate change," wrote Ban Ki-moon in the Guardian recently. The UN secretary general has made the climate talks one of his top priorities for years - and 2015 will be no exception.
10) France is hosting, not Denmark
France brings far more diplomatic firepower to the talks than Denmark, which took much of the blame for the weak accord agreed at 2009 in Copenhagen. During the Copenhagen summit, the Danish climate and energy minister resigned and was replaced by the Danish premier. French president François Hollande is on the record as saying he wants Paris to achieve "a historic climate agreement", and has tasked his foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, with the presidency of the Paris summit. Along with Germany, France was one of the first countries to commit big cash to a climate fund to help developing countries.
· The Paris climate summit, the 21st Conference of the Parties, will be held from 30 November to 11 December 2015.
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The Guardian
January 22, 2015 Thursday 4:44 AM GMT
Australia a leader on trade but lags on environment in development index;
Commitment to development index places Australia second to last on environmental policy in terms of how it affects poorer countries
BYLINE: Oliver Milman
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 754 words
Australia has come 12th on an index that ranks wealthy nations according to how their policies affect poorer countries, performing strongly on trade but placed second to last on its stance on the environment.
The 2014 commitment to development index, compiled by the US thinktank the Center for Global Development (CGD), found Australia was second only to New Zealand on trade policies due to the low tariffs on imports from developing countries. Australia was also praised for its role in peacekeeping efforts.
However, the report stated: "On the negative side, Australia has the highest greenhouse gas emissions, high fossil fuel production, low gas taxes, and low government spending on research and development, all of which drags down its final score."
Of the 27 wealthy nations analysed - comprising countries in western and southern Europe, north America and Japan and South Korea - only Canada was ranked worse than Australia on the environment.
Australia is mid-table for its foreign aid contribution and foreign investment, with relatively high rankings for security and migration. Australia's ranking for technology investment was in the bottom third.
Overall, Denmark was placed first in the index due to its foreign aid contribution, encouragement of research and development and investment in developing countries. Sweden was second, with Finland rounding off a Scandinavian top three.
Australia, which came 12th last year, was placed ahead of the US, Japan and Germany, but behind the UK, France and New Zealand.
The commitment to development index has been compiled each year since 2003, ranking countries on policies that affect the 5 billion people who live in poorer countries.
Marc Purcell, the executive director of the Australian Council for International Development, the peak body for aid agencies, said Australia's performance on foreign aid was worse than illustrated in the report.
In December, the government decided to cut $3.7bn from the foreign aid budget, on top of the $7.6bn cut, over five years, announced in the budget.
"This report doesn't take into account those massive cuts, so Australia should be lower," Purcell told Guardian Australia. "We are dropping behind other countries on foreign aid and we will be at our lowest ever level in a few years' time. You only have to look at the UK, which has increased its commitment to helping the poorest in the world to see how far backwards Australia is moving.
"Australia's aid program is the major tool for soft diplomacy and actually achieving poverty alleviation. The government has taken a wrecking ball to poverty alleviation efforts over the past year."
Purcell said Australia could improve its ranking by lifting its humanitarian refugee intake to 20,000 people and by developing a market-based system to lower carbon emissions.
"It's widely recognised that Australia doesn't have a credible position on climate change and we will have to lift our game," he said. "Australia has to start rebuilding its aid budget, gain a credible position on climate change and increase its refugee intake. Then you'd see Australia in the top 10."
While Australia has signed free trade deals with China, Japan and South Korea over the past year, Purcell said a global trade agreement was needed to help people in developing countries.
"Wealthy countries have significant barriers when it comes to products of developing countries and a global trade agreement is the only way to see improvements," he said. "Bilateral trade agreements are really peripheral to this."
The Center for Global Development said the world's richest countries could all do more to create more coherent, development-friendly policies.
"We should stop thinking of development policies as sacrifices that rich countries need to make for poor countries", said Owen Barder, the director of CGD's Europe office and author of the index.
"It is in all our interests to collect taxes that are due; generate and spread new ideas and knowledge that enrich all our lives; protect our planet; build institutions that make our world safer and fairer; and from a fair and open trading system. What gets measured gets done - in 2015 the world must agree how to measure progress on these issues."
The CGD identified three major international summits in 2015 that could be used to improve matters - a gathering to discuss the replacement for the expired millennium development goals, a new framework for sustainable development targets and a crunch meeting in Paris to thrash out a deal to tackle climate change.
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The New York Times
January 22, 2015 Thursday
Late Edition - Final
Senate Rejects Climate Measures
BYLINE: By CORAL DAVENPORT
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; NATIONAL BRIEFING | WASHINGTON; Pg. 14
LENGTH: 166 words
The Senate on Wednesday twice rejected measures declaring that humans are causing climate change. But in the course of those votes, 15 Republicans, including Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, voted yes. Mr. Paul, who is considered a likely presidential contender next year, was joined by Senators Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Jeff Flake of Arizona, among others. Two other potential Republican presidential candidates, Senators Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas, voted no. It was the first time in years that senators had voted on a climate change measure, and it came in the course of a debate on a bill forcing approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline. President Obama is expected to veto the bill if it passes, as is likely, but lawmakers are using it to send their own political messages. Democrats had hoped to force Republicans on the record on the issue of climate change by introducing the two amendments.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/22/us/politics/senate-rejects-climate-measures.html
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The New York Times
January 22, 2015 Thursday
Late Edition - Final
Africa's Economy Is Rising, and Focus Turns to Food
BYLINE: By DAVID LEONHARDT
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Foreign Desk; VIEW FROM ABROAD; Pg. 3
LENGTH: 1077 words
For decades, the economies of Africa were the world's economic laggards. They aren't anymore. Over the last decade, Africa's per capita income has grown at a rate nearly identical to that of the rest of the world.
It's reasonable to imagine that the continent is in the early stages of a trajectory that could mimic that of Latin America or, more ambitiously, parts of Asia. With the world experiencing one of the greatest extended reductions in poverty on record, Africa has finally become part of the story. A middle class is beginning to develop in West Africa, from Ghana and Nigeria down to Angola. Some severely poor countries, like Ethiopia and Liberia, are at least making rapid progress.
Along with Africa's economic stirrings come many of the same questions that have confronted the rest of the developing world. And some of the most important revolve around food.
Will the economic growth prove lasting and broad enough to end the continent's tragic famines? Will those Africans who today live almost entirely on starches like cassava be able to switch to a more varied and nutritious diet? How will farmers on the continent likely to suffer some of the worst consequences of climate change cope with it -- and how can Africa's rising food production avoid accelerating that climate change?
One of the biggest players in this area has become the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It is better known for its efforts to reduce disease in Africa, but it has also spent more than $3 billion in grants on African agriculture. On Thursday, Mr. and Ms. Gates will be in Brussels to mark the 15th anniversary of their foundation and to announce their goals for the next 15 years. Among them: financing programs to help Africa feed itself.
Africa's farmers today are vastly less productive than farmers elsewhere -- getting less than one-fifth the yield on corn that American farmers do, for instance. The foundation plans to finance more scientific research, new programs to disseminate that research (especially to female farmers, who particularly struggle), better food storage and more mobile phones, all with the goal of lifting African agriculture. A more efficient agricultural sector, the Gateses write in their annual letter about their work, ''can drive massive poverty reduction and improve life across the continent.''
There is a fascinating tension in this focus on food. Worries about the availability of food stretch back centuries, not just in Africa. The crux of the essay that made Thomas Malthus famous, in 1798, argued that food production grew arithmetically while the population grew geometrically, dooming the human species to a grim future. The best-selling 1968 book, ''The Population Bomb,'' made a modern version of the same case.
The food pessimists, of course, could hardly have been more wrong.
It turns out that the fruits of human ingenuity grow geometrically, too -- more than rapidly enough to keep pace with population growth. The share of income that societies devote to food has fallen sharply even as the world's population has grown to 7.3 billion. As countries have become wealthier, they have rarely had trouble feeding themselves.
And the Gateses are hardly pessimists. ''The lives of people in poor countries will improve faster in the next 15 years than at any other time in history,'' they write.
When I spoke with them recently, I asked why food production needed to be among their big new goals. After all, private market economies have generally managed to deliver enough food, at least to countries on the rise. The same can't be said about medical care or education, two of the foundation's other main areas of emphasis.
Specifically, I mentioned Mr. Ehrlich and his well-known $10,000 bet with the economist Julian Simon in 1980, over the price of a basket of commodities. Mr. Ehrlich thought the prices would rise by 1990, in a sign that the resources could not keep up with population growth. Mr. Simon thought otherwise -- and won handily.
''Even Simon's view was that humans would have to change to innovate,'' Mr. Gates said. Innovation, in other words, is not preordained. Indeed, it's happened much more in some societies than in others. And it has happened, Mr. Gates was arguing, because people and institutions took steps to remove the barriers to progress.
With African agriculture, those barriers include roads that are too narrow to transport grain quickly, lack of knowledge about how crops fare best in some places and a dearth of basic information -- on market prices, for instance -- that hampers farmers. ''They get taken by the middlemen,'' Ms. Gates said. ''If they have a cellphone, they're informed.''
All of those problems are at least partly market failures, and they won't automatically fix themselves. They are the kind of failures that governments or foundations can address.
It's far too early to know to know whether the Gates Foundation's attempts to do so in Africa will work. Some other experts have criticized the foundation, for example, for giving most of its money dedicated to African agriculture to groups outside of Africa -- like European universities, which may not know what the continent really needs. The foundation replies that the bulk of the money is ultimately spent in Africa.
Either way, Africa today offers an argument against fatalism. Many parts of the affluent world --from Japan to the United States to Europe -- may be in a bit of a funk, struggling with slow-growing incomes. And climate change, left unaddressed, presents grave dangers for everyone.
At the same time, much of the world is enjoying one of history's most rapid increases in prosperity. Life expectancy has risen more than six years just since 1990. The world, to quote the title of a book by the economist Charles Kenny, is ''Getting Better.'' As Mr. Gates says: ''The world is actually improving a lot. We're trying to deliver both the good news on the progress and the possibility to do more.''
That possibility undoubtedly exists. But on many issues -- in Africa and in the United States -- doing more and doing better will require doing things differently. Progress isn't inevitable just because it's happened before.
The Upshot provides news, analysis and graphics about politics, policy and everyday life. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Sign up for our weekly newsletter.
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/22/upshot/africas-economy-is-rising-now-what-happens-to-its-food.html
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GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Rice farming in eastern Rwanda last year. Africa's farmers are vastly less productive than those elsewhere, a circumstance that must change for the continent to catch up economically. (PHOTOGRAPH BY BEN CURTIS/ASSOCIATED PRESS)
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The Guardian
January 21, 2015 Wednesday 11:17 PM GMT
Al Gore: oil companies 'use our atmosphere as an open sewer';
We must leave fossil fuels unburned, Gore says, adding the transition to clean energy will be 'unstoppable'· What bold pledges would you like to see from business leaders?· Public trust in business at its lowest since 2008· 'It is profitable to let the world go to hell'
BYLINE: Jo Confino
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 1041 words
It's not possible to listen to petroleum industry executives defending their reckless extraction of oil without feeling that we are living in an age of madness.
In a recent private conversation under the Chatham House rule, one of the world's most senior industry leaders, who is considered to be at the more moderate end of the spectrum, insisted that we are going to burn all the world's hydrocarbons despite the consequences.
His reasoning is that a growing population in the developing world needs energy to raise living standards, that renewables will not become a dominant energy source till the end of the century and that politicians don't have the courage or power to limit production.
He acknowledged that the burning of all reserves would almost certainly lead to temperature rises of up to 4C, but argued the best way forward is to focus on limiting the damage through such technologies as carbon capture and storage.
Related: The legalization of marijuana: a good example of flexible policymaking
He's hardly alone. In a shareholder letter in May, Shell wrote that - with energy demand growing - the world would need oil and gas for many decades to come and it doesn't expect to have any stranded assets, or reserves that can't be tapped. Meanwhile, in a report in March (pdf), ExxonMobil also expressed confidence that none of its hydrocarbon reserves would be stranded: "We believe producing these assets is essential to meeting growing energy demand worldwide."
As the World Economic Forum's annual meeting opens in Davos, Switzerland, I asked the former US vice president Al Gore and climate economist Lord Stern, two of the world's most respected climate activists, to make sense of the arguments of those running the fossil fuel industry.
The simple fact is that their opinions don't make any sense, Gore told Guardian Sustainable Business. He remembers being astonished by the argument of one oil executive at Davos, who asked: "what good is it to save the earth if humanity suffers?"
Gore, who believes 80% of coal and two thirds of oil must be left untouched if we are to remain within a 2C temperature rise, said: "I had to think long and hard to think what that statement meant. It's a non sequitur."
He quoted Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani, a former oil minister in Saudi Arabia, who famously said: "The Stone Age did not end for lack of stone, and the Oil Age will end long before the world runs out of oil."
As we cross the tipping point where distributive energy sources are available at rates below those for carbon based resources, then this transition [away from petroleum] will become unstoppable," Gore said. "This will take place; the only question is how quickly.
Related: Davos 2015: what bold pledges would you like business leaders to make?
It is wishful thinking on the part of the oil company executive you are quoting that it will all be burnt. It cannot all be burnt. Even if there is no government action, the constraints of mother nature will show it is a non-sustainable pathway."
Lord Stern, who wrote the landmark 2006 Stern review of the economics of climate change, says it is no surprise oil executives are seeking to defend their corner, and quotes socialite Mandy Rice-Davies' famous response in court to Lord Astor's denial of any involvement with her: "He would, wouldn't he?"
Like Gore, Stern said basic arithmetic tells us that it is impossible to burn all the world's hydrocarbons without devastating consequences.
The earth has not seen a 3C rise for 3m years, he pointed out, and it has been tens of millions of year since there has been a 4C rise.
The consequences, he argued, would be "huge amounts of the world wracked by constant extreme weather", with some parts of the world turning into desert and others disappearing under water.
There are many people in the hydrocarbon industry, in oil and gas and coal, who would like to believe they will be the driving force in energy for the next century," Stern said. "But what they are proposing would be mad and reckless, so the question will be how fast will the pressures be to do something different.
People are recognizing just how dangerous it is and how fast technologies are changing and what they can do on energy efficiency, on solar and with sustainable cities."
Environmentalist Jonathon Porritt wrote in the Guardian last week that after years of working with oil companies, he is now convinced they will not adapt as a result of being trapped by a short-term mandate that leaves little room for maneuvering, such as shareholder expectations and "the staggering amount of economic value now at risk".
This has been quite a painful journey for me personally," he concluded. "I so badly wanted to believe that the combination of reason, rigorous science and good people would enable elegant transition strategies to emerge in those companies. But we learn as we go. And go those companies surely will, if not in the near future."
When I asked Gore whether there needs to be more pressure on oil companies to change direction, he said the most effective intervention would be to start putting a financial price on carbon and a political price on denial.
Related: How concerned are CEOs about climate change? Not at all
"Companies are insisting on their right to use our atmosphere as an open sewer," he said. "In London a long time ago, a famous doctor connected the dots between sewage and cholera. We are connecting the dots between dirty energy and dirty weather, and in order to drive the kind of constructive change necessary, we need to put a price on carbon."
Gore says public pressure for action is essential, which lies behind his announcement at Davos to launch a second round of Live Earth concerts to promote awareness of climate change.
The concerts, which he hopes will make up the largest global campaign in history, will take place across all seven continents - including Antarctica - on 18 June. Gore hopes to collect a billion voices to say "take action now".
This Davos coverage is funded by The B Team. All content is editorially independent except for those labelled "brought to you by". Find out more here .
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The Guardian
January 21, 2015 Wednesday 8:48 PM GMT
Why Davos must shake off the shackles of wealth and entitlement;
If only more children of the elite would raise climate change and social injustice at the breakfast table
BYLINE: Jo Confino in Davos
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 933 words
In Davos, Switzerland, the elite will not put up with anything other than perfect ski slopes - even if the climate change they are helping to create is stopping nature from doing the task herself.
The World Economic Forum kicks off today surrounded by mountain slopes that owe some of their beautiful whiteness to 380 massive snow canons that have spent months pumping out hundreds of millions of litres of cold water mixed with air. It's a powerful metaphor.
As Florian Grimm, the local head of snow management, told a colleague recently: "Today nobody would accept stones any more, or spots of grass in spring. They just want to have white from the top to the valley, and they know we have a system to do this."
Despite all the talk, the wealthy elite gathered in Davos gain too much status, wealth and power from the maintenance of our destructive economic system to spearhead its transformation.
I was discussing this issue yesterday with Nick Robins, co-director of UNEP's inquiry into a sustainable finance system. He says the snow canons are a perfect analogy for the state of mind of political and business leaders - which is to prop up the existing system for as long as possible. That, of course, cannot succeed because denial hastens the very collapse they seek to avoid. We need a new way of thinking and we need it fast.
Related: 'It is profitable to let the world go to hell'
"Creating man-made snow to keep the ski slopes open is what reactive adaptation looks like in reality," says Robins. "Clearly we are going to need to work much more creatively to respond to the sustainability challenges rushing towards us and get to the root of the problem."
I also spoke to climate expert Jorgen Randers, co-author of the seminal 1972 report Limits to Growth, who worries about the lack of creative thinking at the gathering of powerful global leaders. "I am afraid the results will be limited, because Davos - for ideological reasons - tends to constrain itself to actions that are profitable from a business point of view. What is needed to solve the climate problem is a strong state which can put in place solutions that are not profitable, nor cost effective when using conventional measures."
This is not to decry the successes of the World Economic Forum, which Dominic Waughrey, WEF's head of public-private partnerships, highlighted this week. It also is not to suggest that the business leaders attending Davos are bad people. They are not, and the more progressive leaders deserve respect for their attempts to bring about change.
But most have been seduced by their lofty position in society: their wealth insulates them from the consequences of their actions.
Perhaps we should coin a new phrase, "the prosperity trap", for it is psychologically as debilitating in its own way as the poverty trap (although such a comparison in everyday life would be grotesque). For this reason, Davos, the winter playground of the rich, is perhaps one of the worst places in the world to bring together global leaders - because there is not the merest hint of the poverty suffered by billions of people.
Related: More than talking heads: why Davos matters
Without emotional connections, these leaders - the vast majority of whom are men - will use their intellectual prowess to find solutions with little attention trickling down to the greatest agent of change: our hearts.
Tim Haywood, group finance director of Interserve, a multinational support service and construction company based in the UK, recently described how he woke up to the need to take action on sustainability only after his daughter repeatedly voiced her concerns. If only more children of the elite would shake off the shackles of entitlement and take the battle to limit climate change and social injustice to the breakfast table.
Rather than only looking for solutions, it would also be a good idea for Davos delegates to start asking better questions. At a recent gathering of sustainability experts, someone took the disruptive step during a break of refashioning the scores of sticky notes highlighting upcoming specialist sessions into the words "we don't know".
As Davos convened for 2015, Adriaan Kamp, founder of Energy For One World, said: "We need a revolution. We need to instil a new spirit in our companies, society and economies. Our present constellation of leadership and status quo simply won't do. They have failed. The elite can't change the elite. So the better question to ask ourselves is how we, the professionals in business and society, can organise ourselves differently to clean up this mess? How can we organise for true success and a true new growth?"
Taking time to ponder questions such as these may be the most important activity this week in Davos. The answers that will emerge over time will help determine the world we live in.
Thomas Mann, who visited Davos in the early 20th century, marvelled in his novel The Magic Mountain at "the towering marble statuary of the high Alps in full snow". As the participants in Davos roll up their sleeves up and get to work, let them hold that image in their mind and recognise how important it is that those born in the 22nd century are able to witness such extraordinary majesty and get a taste of heaven on earth.
Related: From water to weather: where to make money sustainably
This year's Davos coverage is funded by The B Team. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled "brought to you by". Find out more here .
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The Guardian
January 21, 2015 Wednesday 8:16 PM GMT
Say what? Republican live stream cuts Obama's remarks on climate denial;
'Enhanced webcast' produced by House speaker John Boehner's staff clumsily deleted president's State of the Union mockery of 'I'm not a scientist' line
BYLINE: Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
SECTION: US NEWS
LENGTH: 330 words
Republicans cut Barack Obama's most forceful comments on climate change - his mockery of climate denial - from the party's official live stream of his State of the Union address.
A purported Republican fact-check of Obama's address, prepared by staffers for the House speaker, John Boehner, clumsily cuts the president off mid-sentence just as he was about to wreck the Republicans' new default line for talking about climate change: "I am not a scientist."
The Republican party leadership has adopted wholesale the "I am not a scientist" line over the last few months - casting doubt about climate change while avoiding outright denial. Boehner resorted to the line as recently as last week when asked directly about his position on climate change.
In the full version of the speech, as seen by millions in America and around the world, Obama said: " I've heard some folks try to dodge the evidence by saying they're not scientists; that we don't have enough information to act. Well, I'm not a scientist, either. But you know what - I know a lot of really good scientists at Nasa, and Noaa, and at our major universities."
Those words however did not make the cut in the official House Republican version, billed as an "enhanced webcast" that would be "holding President Obama accountable in real-time".
The Republican version also avoided the subsequent lines in which Obama said: "The Pentagon says that climate change poses immediate risks to our national security. We should act like it." There is no reference to the Pentagon in the Republican version.
The cut to the "I am not a scientist line" - which abruptly hits Obama off mid-sentence - was first spotted by commenters on Reddit following the speech.
There was no immediate response from Boehner's office. However, the outgoing White House adviser, John Podesta, accused Boehner of trying to re-write the record. "Climate deniers are already on the wrong side of history, are now trying to airbrush it," Podesta tweeted.
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January 21, 2015 Wednesday 8:00 PM GMT
Off-the-cuff and full of swagger: Obama's State of the Union leaves GOP enraged;
President's speech avoided all-out triumphalism - but also an olive branch, as Republicans insisted 'he needs to remember he's lost the election'Obama's defiant State of the Union vows equality over hostilityComplete coverage: State of the Union 2015 updates and analysis
BYLINE: Paul Lewis in Washington
SECTION: US NEWS
LENGTH: 1000 words
When Barack Obama looked out into the audience of his State of the Union speech on Tuesday, he was met with a truly historic sight. No Democratic president in the last century has addressed a Congress dominated by so many Republican lawmakers.
The last time a US president delivered a State of the Union address in front of such a large number of Republicans was 1930. And that was President Herbert Hoover, a fellow Republican.
Yet anyone who expected Obama to begin his second-to-last year in office by courting the very adversaries he will need to pass any significant legislation - from tax reform to investment in infrastructure - left disappointed.
There was no sign of a president humbled by November's electoral defeat. On the contrary, Obama seemed impervious to the new political balance of power in Washington, appearing at times to even goad his political enemies.
There were two especially revealing examples of Obama's defiance, both of them unscripted. The first came after one of his opening lines, when the incoming Republican majority declined to applaud Obama's praise for the economic recovery.
"That's good news, people," he remarked, as Republicans inside the chamber looked on impassively. Reluctantly, one or two from the aisle to the president's left - and ideological stage right - began to stand up or offer a tepid applause, following the lead of the new Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell.
The second off-the-cuff remark arrived toward the end of a nearly hour-long address that, to the dismay of Republicans, did not contain even a single nod to their electoral gains.
"I have no more campaigns to run," Obama said, in what was intended to signal that his remaining focus will be on governing rather than electioneering.
When Republicans mocked the remark with applause, Obama shot back : "I know 'cos I won both of them."
In between those two unscripted remarks was a litany of liberal policy prescriptions - none of them new, and almost all of them opposed by Republicans.
Obama did avoid the kind of triumphalism over his executive order on immigration and climate change that risked enraging Republicans. And in contrast to last year's State of the Union, which was packed with veiled threats about overriding the legislature, Obama steered clear of talk about executive authority.
The fact that the speech, by Obama's own admission, focused on broad principles rather than specific policy ideas also limited the ensuing criticism.
But his promises to veto whole swathes of potential GOP legislation - and the absence of any significant olive branch for Republicans - left some opponents visibly fuming.
That Obama finished his address by extolling the need for Republicans and Democrats to quit "arguing past each other" and "break out of these tired old patterns" led to complaints of presidential chutzpah.
"It was like he had two different speechwriters," Colorado's newly elected Republican senator, Cory Gardner, told the Guardian. "In the first part of his speech, the president put forward policies that he knows we won't support. In the second part of the speech, he talked about the need to work together."
The roughly 300 Republican representatives and senators who funnelled out of the chamber and to nearby Statuary Hall were ready to vent.
Asked by the Guardian what he thought of the president's televised address, McConnell simply raised his eyebrows and shook his head.
One of the first to emerge from the House chamber was the Florida senator and potential Republican presidential contender Marco Rubio, who was visibly incensed at the president's call to lift the Cuban embargo.
"I don't know of a single contemporary tyranny that's become a democracy because of more trade and tourists," he said, chased by reporters into an elevator. "China is now the world's richest tyranny. Vietnam continues to be a communist tyranny."
Cuba was just one of dozens of issues on which Republicans reiterated their disagreements with the president, whom they said appeared unwilling to compromise from behind the podium. Republicans in the so-called "spin room" opposed Obama's approach to nuclear negotiations with Iran, rejected his interpretation of the science of climate change and opposed his redistributive tax policies.
"He wasn't trying to find areas of agreement in genuine fashion," said the Wisconsin senator Ron Johnson. "The speech was partisan in content. The part about working together was hypocritical."
Johnson, though, was one of the a handful of Republicans who saw glimmers of possible compromise - in his case, over cybersecurity and trade negotiations with Asian and European nations.
Obama's call for trade promotion authority, which would empower the executive to expedite free trade agreements, was the single moment in a 6,000-plus-word address that elicited more support from Republicans than Democrats.
"It was wonderful to watch the Republicans up on their feet, hollering and screaming for the president, and all the Democrats sitting there with their arms crossed," said the Oklahoma congressman Tom Cole. "Trade is an area we want to work on with the president. It is an area we worked with Bill Clinton on."
Considered one of the more reasonable voices in the GOP and a close ally of the House speaker, John Boehner, Cole suggested there might also be room for negotiation with the White House on infrastructure projects and fiscal policy. He noted how, unlike last year's address, there were no overt threats from the president to overrule Congress with executive authority - even if he did use the word "veto" three times.
But Cole nonetheless decried the lack of outreach from the White House since the Democratic defeats in the midterm elections, and the string of executive actions - on immigration, Cuba and climate change - that have enraged the GOP ever since.
"Frankly, he needs to remember he's lost the election," Cole added. "He's the one who said his policies were on the ballot. Instead, we've had one provocative move after another."
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January 21, 2015 Wednesday 7:50 PM GMT
State of the Union: Republicans say Obama on false path after election loss - as it happened;
Jeb Bush calls tax reform plan divisive 'America is adrift,' Paul says'A campaign speech,' Christie saysNetanyahu invited to address Congress on Iran Read a summary of this blog
BYLINE: Tom McCarthy in New York
SECTION: US NEWS
LENGTH: 4240 words
block-time published-time 2.21pm ET
Summary
We're going to wrap up our live blog coverage for the day. Here's a summary of where things stand:
Republicans spent the morning after President Barack Obama's sixth State of the Union address criticizing the speech and countering its proposals.
Conservatives said the president had failed to grapple with the reality of the GOP congressional majority and his own lame-duck status.
Potential 2016 presidential candidate Jeb Bush said Obama "wants to use the tax code to divide us." Governor Chris Christie called last night's address "a campaign speech."
Obama traveled to Idaho at the start of a two-day trip to highlight themes from his speech.
It was revealed that a real-time Republican "fact check" of the speech omitted Obama's sharpest criticism of climate change deniers.
House speaker John Boehner announced that he had invited Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu to talk about Iran before a joint session of Congress on 11 February.
"This particular event seems to be a departure from... protocol," the White House said.
Vice president Joe Biden said "there's a chance" he would challenge Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination. Should she indeed decide to run.
block-time published-time 1.53pm ET
Senator Marco Rubio said on Wednesday he was still weighing whether to run for president, Reuters reports:
"I know I need to make a decision in due time if I want to be able to mount a credible campaign," the 43-year-old senator said.
block-time published-time 1.41pm ET
ThinkProgress reports that two GOP congresswomen have withdrawn their support for a proposed 20-week abortion ban that the House was expected to vote on on Thursday, the 42nd anniversary of Roe v Wade:
On Tuesday afternoon, during the House's session, Reps. Renee Ellmers (R-NC) and Jackie Walorski (R-IN) requested to remove their names from HR 36, the " Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act." The exchange was recorded on C-SPAN.
Read the full report here.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 1.42pm ET
block-time published-time 1.35pm ET
Still my favorite gif from #SOTUpic.twitter.com/A8LwPmLJfn
- Madeline Marshall (@Maddie_Marshall) January 21, 2015
block-time published-time 1.21pm ET
The Obama administration has declared today to be Big Block of Cheese Day. The video below starring press secretary Josh Earnest and cast members from The West Wing purports to explain it. You be the judge:
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 1.23pm ET
block-time published-time 1.17pm ET
The Twitter metrics team has pulled out the stops analysing network activity during last night's State of the Union and presenting the data in charts. Click through the link in the tweet to explore the speech and see how realtime reaction played out on Twitter:
#Iwonbothofthem : see what happened on Twitter during the President's #SOTU LINK: http://t.co/URhPC48Umqpic.twitter.com/GBzVzmXPxb
- Twitter Data (@TwitterData) January 21, 2015
block-time published-time 1.11pm ET
"The President wasn't merely upbeat," writes John Cassidy in a review of the State of the Union on the New Yorker web site. " He was self-assured, glib, and, at times, bordering on bumptious" :
"Well, we've been warned," Karl Rove complained on Twitter. "POTUS will spend rest of year campaigning." In the chamber, the Republicans, some of whom had perhaps been expecting a more humble Obama, sat mostly in silence. (As is usual on these occasions, John Boehner, the Speaker of the House, looked like he was suffering from chronic constipation.) At one point, after reciting another encouraging economic development, the President turned to the Republicans and said, "This is good news, people." It wasn't until near the end that he acknowledged the results of the elections-the elections he triumphed in, that is. "I have no more campaigns to run," he said. And then, departing from his prepared remarks in response to some applause from Republicans, he smiled and added: "I know, because I won both of them."
Read the full piece here.
block-time published-time 1.01pm ET
Guardian Washington bureau chief Dan Roberts ( @robertsdan ) has annotated last night's speech. Click here for comprehensive commentary on what the president said, what he meant and what he left out.
A snippet of the 2015 State of the Union address as annotated by Dan Roberts. Photograph: guardian
State of the Union 2015: between the lines of Obama's address http://t.co/y9xCzJDIax
- Dan Roberts (@RobertsDan) January 21, 2015
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 1.08pm ET
block-time published-time 12.53pm ET
Republicans cut Obama remarks on climate
"Republicans cut Barack Obama's most forceful comments on climate change - his mockery of climate denial - from the party's official live stream of his State of the Union address," reports Guardian environment correspondent Suzanne Goldenberg:
A purported Republican fact-check of Obama's address, prepared by staffers for the House speaker, John Boehner, clumsily cuts the president off mid-sentence just as he was about to wreck the Republicans' new default line for talking about climate change: "I am not a scientist." [...]
In the full version of the speech, as seen by millions in America and around the world, Obama said: " I've heard some folks try to dodge the evidence by saying they're not scientists; that we don't have enough information to act. Well, I'm not a scientist, either. But you know what - I know a lot of really good scientists at Nasa, and Noaa, and at our major universities."
Those words however did not make the cut in the official House Republican version, billed as an "enhanced webcast" that would be "holding President Obama accountable in real-time".
Read the full piece here.
block-time published-time 12.42pm ET
"In America, economic recovery is inevitable," writes Guardian US finance and economics editor Heidi Moore ( @moorehn ). "Political redemption is not":
And it's redemption that President Obama is looking for after six years of stumbling growth. His State of the Union speech reflected his financial priorities - "middle-class economics", he called it - yet the most important line in his speech was not about tariffs or taxes.
It was this: "I have no more campaigns to run."
That line was a declaration of independence on policy, indicating he would put wishes above political feasibility and look towards his legacy.
Read the full piece here.
block-time published-time 12.27pm ET
Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, who got in a spat with the president last week over legislation he is sponsoring to levy new sanctions on Iran, said at a hearing Wednesday morning that the president's recent calls to allow nuclear negotiations to run their course "sounds like talking points that come straight out of Tehran ":
(h/t: Daily Caller )
block-time published-time 12.23pm ET
Christie: 'a campaign speech'
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie - a prospective 2016 presidential candidate - has dismissed last night's State of the Union as a "campaign speech," CNN reports :
"I thought the most ironic part of what the President said last night was when he said he ran his last campaign," the New Jersey Republican told reporters in Washington on Wednesday morning. "It sounded to me like a campaign speech last night, like the '04 speech, like the '08 speech."
block-time published-time 12.19pm ET
President Obama called once again last night for the closure of the US prison at Guantánamo Bay:
As Americans, we have a profound commitment to justice. So it makes no sense to spend $3 million per prisoner to keep open a prison that the world condemns and terrorists use to recruit. (Applause.) Since I've been President, we've worked responsibly to cut the population of Gitmo in half. Now it is time to finish the job. And I will not relent in my determination to shut it down. It is not who we are. It's time to close Gitmo. (Applause.)
Shade. RT @AP_Planner : Tomorrow: 6th anniversary of President Obama vowing to shut Guantanamo
- southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) January 21, 2015
block-time published-time 12.15pm ET
"There's a chance"
Six seconds of @GStephanopoulos asking @VP abt challenging @HillaryClinton from @JordynPhelps : https://t.co/jSGte4HKFC@ABCPolitics
- Shushannah Walshe (@shushwalshe) January 21, 2015
block-time published-time 12.07pm ET
White House 'reserves judgment' on Netanyahu visit
The White House said on Tuesday that it has not yet spoken with Israeli government officials about the plans of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday to address a joint meeting of Congress on 11 February and reserves judgment on the visit, Reuters reports:
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said U.S. officials will reserve judgment on the visit until they hear from counterparts about Netanyahu's plans.
"The protocol would suggest that the leader of one country would contact the leader of another country when he's traveling there," Earnest told reporters traveling with Obama aboard Air Force One.
"This particular event seems to be a departure from that protocol," Earnest said.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 12.07pm ET
block-time published-time 11.49am ET
On foreign policy and national security, Obama cannot be blamed for wanting to "turn the page," writes Guardian US national security editor Spencer Ackerman ( @attackerman ). "Beyond Cuba, setbacks are accumulating for what Obama on Tuesday called his 'smarter kind of American leadership'":
Several aspects of Obama's speech did not correspond to the realities his administration confronts. While Obama claimed the US-led coalition is "stopping [the Islamic State's] advance" in Iraq and Syria, Pentagon officials have conceded that Isis is gaining territory in Syria, while it consolidates its currently uncontested control of major Iraqi cities like Mosul and Fallujah.
It remains too soon to tell if, as Obama said, the US is not "getting dragged into another ground war in the Middle East". Obama has authorized some 3,000 US troops to return to Iraq, though official "combat" roles are reserved for the daily US air strikes in Iraq and Syria. Sunni Iraqi politicians grouse that they cannot see a much-promised political reconciliation from the newest US-backed Iraqi prime minister, but they can see " widespread ethnic cleansing " on the outskirts of Baghdad.
Read the full piece here.
block-time published-time 11.42am ET
The transportation secretary wasn't there - but he was watching.
Did you hear #SOTU last nite? I know I did (from an unnamed location). Now, who's ready for http://t.co/ftF2VRrN6I ? I know I am! #AskTheWH
- Anthony Foxx (@SecretaryFoxx) January 21, 2015
(h/t: @holpuch )
block-time published-time 11.40am ET
"Perhaps more than any other, the internet was the backdrop for much of President Obama's State of the Union on Tuesday night - from healthcare to hackers, and from infrastructure to education," writes Trevor Timm in Comment is Free.
But, Trevor goes on to warn, don't let the clichés fool you:
By and large, however, Obama stuck to empty platitudes that no one could disagree with ("we need to... protect our children's information" and "I intend to protect a free and open internet") rather than offering concrete new proposals.
But don't let the president's standard State of the Union clichés fool you: in 2015, the Obama administration will almost certainly re-shape the law around net neutrality, cybersecurity and the NSA. In doing so, the president will carve out the rules of the internet for the coming decade, and his choices over the next few months will significantly affect hundreds of millions of Internet users, along with his lasting legacy.
Read the full piece here.
block-time published-time 11.37am ET
NBC's Chuck Todd reports "genuine anger developing " between the White House and Congress over Boehner's timely Netanyahu invite.
Genuine anger developing between Congress and WH over Iran. Boehner invite to Netanyahu to address congress caught WH off guard.
- Chuck Todd (@chucktodd) January 21, 2015
block-time published-time 11.34am ET
Rand Paul: 'America is adrift'
"America is adrift," Senator Rand Paul, the prospective 2016 presidential candidate, said in his reply to the State of the Union. "What America desperately needs is new leadership... The best thing that could happen is for us to once and for all, limit the terms of all politicians":
These come from the Daily Signal web site. Here's Texas Representative Louie Gohmert, who takes a stab at sarcasm. "I'm just deeply encouraged that there's no more big problems," he says. "It's just wonderful to hear that."
block-time published-time 11.24am ET
Washington appears to have something of a hangover on the morning after the big speech:
(h/t: @daveweigel )
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 11.27am ET
block-time published-time 11.22am ET
Barack Obama insisted forcefully before his newly empowered opposition on Tuesday that he would hold the line against attacks on his domestic and international climate agenda, writes Guardian environment correspondent Suzanne Goldenberg:
But even though he called out climate deniers once again, the president offered no concrete sign of new initiatives on the horizon in his remaining two years in power.
After repeatedly using his executive authority to advance climate measures, Obama pivoted in his State of the Union address to making sure that Republicans did not undo what he has sought to accomplish on climate change.
That crucially applies to the international arena, where Obama recommitted America to help lead efforts in forging an international climate deal.
Read the full piece here.
block-time published-time 11.15am ET
U.S. President Barack Obama boards Air Force One as he departs Joint Base Andrews in Washington January 21, 2015. Photograph: KEVIN LAMARQUE/REUTERS FILE - In this May 24, 2011 file photo, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu walks with House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio to make a statement on Capitol Hill in Washington. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP
block-time published-time 11.00am ET
Boehner: 'I did not consult the White House'
GOP leaders have emerged from their morning conference to speak to the press. House speaker John Boehner is asked whether he consulted the president about extending an invitation to the Israeli prime minister to address a joint session of Congress, the Guardian's Amanda Holpuch ( @holpuch ) reports from Washington:
"I did not consult the White House," Boehner said. "Congress can make this decision on its own. I don't believe we're poking anyone's eye."
Before concluding his remarks, Boehner mentioned his tie had a mint julep print.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 11.16am ET
block-time published-time 10.55am ET
Russia has hit back at Barack Obama's State of the Union speech, saying that it showed the US believes it is "number one" and seeks world domination, Reuters reports:
"The Americans have taken the course of confrontation and do not assess their own steps critically at all," the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, told a news conference on Wednesday.
"Yesterday's speech by President Obama shows that at the centre of the [US's] philosophy is only one thing: 'We are number one and everyone else has to recognise that' ... It shows that the United States wants all the same to dominate the world and not merely be first among equals."
In the speech Obama said the United States was upholding "the principle that bigger nations can't bully the small" by opposing what he called Russian aggression and supporting democracy in Ukraine.
block-time published-time 10.50am ET
Obama embarks on post-speech trip
The president's usual travels after the State of the Union address will take him this year to Idaho and Kansas.
In Boise, Idaho, Obama will tour the new product development lab at Boise State University and give a speech. Then he will fly south to spend the night in Lawrence, Kansas.
Marine One, the presidential helicopter, has just left forarrived at Andrews air base, according to a pool report.
President Obama boards Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base for a trip to Boise State University. pic.twitter.com/wp1As5T7CP
- Doug Mills (@dougmillsnyt) January 21, 2015
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 10.52am ET
block-time published-time 10.38am ET
The Washington Examiner's Byron York points out that Obama did not congratulate Republicans on their midterms victory, after the manner of George W Bush in 2007:
Obama's silence on that political reality stood in stark contrast to George W. Bush's 2007 State of the Union address, in which he graciously and at some length acknowledged the Democrats' victory in the 2006 midterms. Bush said it was an honor to address Nancy Pelosi as "Madame Speaker." He spoke of the pride Pelosi's late father would have felt to see his daughter lead the House. "I congratulate the new Democrat majority," Bush said. "Congress has changed, but not our responsibilities.
If one cannot imagine Barack Obama saying such a thing - well, he didn't.
Read the full piece here.
block-time published-time 10.35am ET
Paul Ryan approves of Obama speech
Representative Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Ways and Means committee and former Republican vice-presidential nominee, on Wednesday had a few nice words to say about the president's speech last night.
surprise of the day - Paul Ryan like #SOTU. "he dialed it down a bit..." http://t.co/OlUuwsOMOB
- Rick Klein (@rickklein) January 21, 2015
"I agree with every word in his speech in respect to trade and Asia and getting in there and helping write the rules instead of China writing the rules," Ryan said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," according to a report by The Hill :
I'm glad that he sort of held back on the partisanship and the demagoguery," Ryan said. "I guess I'd say in his speech, he dialed it down a bit. We're used to seeing more divisive speeches from the president, he didn't do that as much. I think that's a good thing."
block-time published-time 10.26am ET
Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor and possible future presidential candidate, said in a reply to the State of the Union address that the president "wants to use the tax code to divide us":
It's unfortunate President Obama wants to use the tax code to divide us - instead of proposing reforms to create economic opportunity for every American. We can do better.
Bush has made plans for no fewer than 60 fundraisers in the coming weeks as he considers a presidential run, the Washington Examiner reports.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 10.29am ET
block-time published-time 10.18am ET
There was some e xcitement outside the Capitol last night: a suspected armed robber was apprehended by Capitol police after a car chase.
There was a car chase near the U.S. Capitol during the #SOTU : http://t.co/R3DVcFJ74D (Photo: TJ Kirkpatrick, Getty) pic.twitter.com/3Oi2BxiDAv
- USA TODAY (@USATODAY) January 21, 2015
block-time published-time 10.16am ET
Senator Marco Rubio has consistently displayed a sense of humor about Watergate 2013:
Marco Rubio was asked at a breakfast with reporters: Did Joni Ernst do better with her GOP response than you? "Yes, absolutely," he laughed.
- Rebecca Berg (@rebeccagberg) January 21, 2015
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 10.17am ET
block-time published-time 10.10am ET
Bringing Netanyahu in to talk about Iran at a time when there's a public fight playing out between the president and Congress over whether to enact additional sanctions on Iran before nuclear negotiations are through is a cheeky move.
Netanyahu often describes Iran as an existential threat to Israel and he has warned that the American-led effort to end the Islamic Republic's nuclear program through diplomacy is misguided.
Here's Obama last night renewing his promise to veto any new sanctions on Iran:
But new sanctions passed by this Congress, at this moment in time, will all but guarantee that diplomacy fails -- alienating America from its allies; making it harder to maintain sanctions; and ensuring that Iran starts up its nuclear program again. It doesn't make sense. And that's why I will veto any new sanctions bill that threatens to undo this progress. (Applause.) The American people expect us only to go to war as a last resort, and I intend to stay true to that wisdom.
Update: a photo posted Monday:
I met today in Jerusalem with a delegation of US Senators, Welcome to Israel! pic.twitter.com/p51BiambFY
- ?????? ?????? (@netanyahu) January 19, 2015
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 10.42am ET
block-time published-time 10.06am ET
Netanyahu to address Congress - reports
Netanyahu has accepted House Speaker John Boehner's invitation to address a joint session of Congress next month, according to Reuters citing an unnamed Israeli official and to CNN.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 10.28am ET
block-time published-time 10.03am ET
Boehner: 'Netanyahu is a great friend'
Here's more on the Netanyahu invite, via Boehner's office:
NEWS: Asked @Netanyahu to address Congress on grave threats radical Islam & #Iran pose to our security & way of life. http://t.co/YPMdNB0EXS
- Speaker John Boehner (@SpeakerBoehner) January 21, 2015
"Prime Minister Netanyahu is a great friend of our country, and this invitation carries with it our unwavering commitment to the security and well-being of his people," Boehner said in a statement. "In this time of challenge, I am asking the Prime Minister to address Congress on the grave threats radical Islam and Iran pose to our security and way of life. Americans and Israelis have always stood together in shared cause and common ideals, and now we must rise to the moment again."
block-time published-time 10.00am ET
House Speaker John Boehner has invited the Israeli prime minister to address a joint session of Congress next month, AP reports:
BREAKING: House Speaker Boehner invites Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to address Congress about Iran.
- The Associated Press (@AP) January 21, 2015
block-time published-time 9.55am ET
Last night after the speech Senator Marco Rubio was asked, " who are you wearing"? He laughed off the question, saying he doesn't buy his own suits. The question was indeed unusual. But in fact it's equivalent to the main - and for some people only - question that is asked about the first lady at the State of the Union every year.
No belt and no slit on point @tomandlorenzo : Michelle Obama wearing @MichaelKors tonight. #SOTUpic.twitter.com/HUuD3O2UIO
- AP Fashion (@AP_Fashion) January 21, 2015
block-time published-time 9.13am ET
Last night's presidential address avoided all-out triumphalism, but Obama's promises to veto whole swathes of potential GOP legislation - and the absence of any significant olive branch for Republicans - left some opponents visibly fuming, writes Paul Lewis:
The roughly 300 Republican representatives and senators who funnelled out of the chamber and to nearby Statuary Hall were ready to vent.
Asked by the Guardian what he thought of the president's televised address, McConnell simply raised his eyebrows and shook his head.
One of the first to emerge from the House chamber was Florida senator and potential Republican presidential contender Marco Rubio, who was visibly incensed at the president's call to lift the Cuban embargo.
"I don't know of a single contemporary tyranny that's become a democracy because of more trade and tourists," he said, chased by reporters into an elevator. "China is now the world's richest tyranny. Vietnam continues to be a Communist tyranny.
Read Paul's full analysis here.
block-time published-time 8.44am ET
Vice-president Joe Biden tells ABC News "there's a chance" he will challenge Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Vice President Joe Biden. Photograph: Winslow Townson/AP
block-time published-time 8.44am ET
Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of a new day in American politics, following a State of the Union address that is being praised for its unchecked ambition and panned for its unrealistic ambition.
President Barack Obama made a rousing call for national inclusion on Tuesday night, saying the economy has come back strong but failed to bring many households along with it. He said "I still believe that we are one people" and called for a redoubled commitment to what he called "middle-class economics".
Republicans agreed, in their replies, about the problem of a struggling middle class - but they dismissed the tax reform proposals Obama offered as a solution, and accused him of gliding by the fact that they, the GOP, are now the ones in charge.
This morning, we'll wade into the debate. But first, here are a few unscripted moments from last night you might have missed:
The GOP finally found a way to speak to Latino voters : tell them what they want to hear in Spanish - and just leave that part out when you're talking American!
This. Is. So. Cynicial. http://t.co/ogAgTZq1oS
- Ron Fournier (@ron_fournier) January 21, 2015
President Obama replied to Republican applause for his line, "I have no more campaigns to run ..." with the taunt, "I know - 'cause I won both of them."
Senator Ted Cruz had a false start in his on-the-spot, extemporaneous reply to the speech. In a video that was uploaded to YouTube and then deleted, Cruz, who must've been unable to book CNN, speaks to camera for a while then stops and says, "No, lemme start over." Then he nails it:
And in case you missed it, here's the speech in full, below. You can peruse our live-blog coverage from last night here.
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January 21, 2015 Wednesday 4:06 PM GMT
Obama attacks Republican 'I am not a scientist' climate change denial in address;
President pivots State of the Union address to make sure Republicans do not undo climate change action but offered no concrete signs of new initiatives
BYLINE: Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
SECTION: US NEWS
LENGTH: 886 words
Barack Obama insisted forcefully before his newly empowered opposition on Tuesday that he would hold the line against attacks on his domestic and international climate agenda. But even though he called out climate deniers once again, the president offered no concrete sign of new initiatives on the horizon in his remaining two years in power.
After repeatedly using his executive authority to advance climate measures, Obama pivoted in his State of the Union address to making sure that Republicans did not undo what he has sought to accomplish on climate change.
That crucially applies to the international arena, where Obama recommitted America to help lead efforts in forging an international climate deal.
Related: 'I still believe': Obama's defiant State of the Union vows equality over hostility
"I will not let this Congress endanger the health of our children by turning back the clock on our efforts," Obama said. "I am determined to make sure American leadership drives international action," Obama said.
In the last 18 months, Obama has used his executive authority to introduce the first rules cutting carbon pollution from power plants, a joint US-Chinese emissions cutting deal, a pledge of $3bn to an international climate fund for developing countries and - just last week - new curbs on methane emissions from the oil and gas industry.
As on other high-visibility occasions, Obama used the speech to re-affirm climate change is occurring and to stick it to Republicans for climate denial. That will score Obama points with environmental groups heading into a year that set to culminate with climate talks in Paris.
In June 2013, when rolling out his climate action plan, Obama dismissed climate deniers as members of "the Flat Earth society".
In Tuesday night's address, he stepped on the Republicans' new "I am not a scientist" meme, which casts doubt on climate change while avoiding outright denial.
In one of his best lines of the night, Obama said: "I've heard some folks try to dodge the evidence by saying they're not scientists - that we don't have enough information to act. Well, I'm not a scientist, either. But you know what? I know a lot of really good scientists at Nasa, and Noaa, and at our major universities."
Calling out climate deniers - and appropriating Republican talking points - was popular with environmental groups. But they were lukewarm about his other climate remarks.
Greenpeace applauded the tough talk and Obama's some of recent initiatives - but said he had still not done enough.
"The president has worked to address climate change in certain areas," the group said in a statement. "Unfortunately, these advances are overshadowed by a weak proposed rule on methane emissions and subsidies for the continued extraction and export of climate-polluting fossil fuels. Advancements can no longer be negated by setbacks elsewhere. Addressing global climate disruption requires immediate global action."
The World Wildlife Fund said: "Tonight's words not only signal that climate change is a legacy issue for the President, but it is also a clear and present danger to America's national security. Now, he must continue his push to reduce the United States' greenhouse gas pollution and work with Congress to fully fund our promised fair share of the Green Climate Fund."
Republicans, as might be expected, objected to Obama's comments. "The president's war on fossil fuels and nuclear energy," said Jim Inhofe, the new Republican chair of the Senate environment and public works committee.
However, Inhofe held back from dismissing climate change as a hoax - as he has done in the past - arguing instead that Obama's climate plan would be ineffective.
"The president's climate agenda would only reduce CO2 concentration by less than one-half of a percent; it would only reduce the average global temperature by less than 2/100 thof a degree; and it would only reduce the rise of sea levels by 1/100 thof an inch - or the thickness of three sheets of paper."
Unlike previous addresses of this magnitude, Obama did not tout his "all of the above" energy strategy or play up the expansion of oil and gas drilling through fracking technology. Indeed, the president gave fairly short shrift to fossil fuels or clean energy - except for a passing reference to "converting sunlight into liquid fuel".
He made only indirect reference to the Keystone XL pipeline, suggesting the Republicans were misguided to focus on the project: "Let's set our sights higher than a single oil pipeline."
But after the fast pace of climate initiatives, it seemed Obama has just about exhausted the use of his executive authority to fight climate change in the US.
Recapping November's breakthrough emissions deal with China, Obama hinted at a way forward with international negotiations.
"Because the world's two largest economies came together," he said, "other nations are now stepping up, and offering hope that this year the world will finally reach an agreement to protect the one planet we've got."
The president offered no specifics on what he might do in the remaining two years in the White House - beyond what is already becoming obvious in his showdown with Congress over the Keystone XL pipeline, debate on which was expected to reopen on Thursday.
For now, at least, Obama has no intention of backing down.
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January 21, 2015 Wednesday 3:15 PM GMT
Shareholders challenge BP to confront climate change risk;
Over 150 investors, including Environment Agency and Church of England, demand that BP test whether their business model is compatible with international pledge to limit global warming to 2C
BYLINE: Damian Carrington
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 620 words
Oil giant BP is being challenged to confront the risk that climate change may pose to its future in a shareholder resolution published on Wednesday.
Pension funds controlling hundreds of billions of pounds are among the 150 investors demanding the company tests whether its business model is compatible with the international community's pledge to limit global warming to 2C.
The 2C target means only a quarter of existing, exploitable fossil fuel reserves are burnable, according to a series of recent analyses, implying that trillions of dollars of oil, gas and coal held by investors could become worthless and that further exploration for fossil fuels may be pointless.
The same shareholder resolution, which includes a ban on corporate bonuses for climate-harming activities, has been tabled with Shell and both will be voted on at forthcoming annual meetings.
"Climate change is a major business risk," said James Thornton, chief executive of the environmental law organisation ClientEarth, which helped coordinate the resolutions. "BP and Shell hold our financial and environmental future in their hands. They must do more to face the risks of climate change. Investors can help them by voting for these shareholder resolutions."
The co-filers of the resolution include local authority pensions funds in the EU and US as well as UK ones, such as Greater Manchester, Merseyside and Lambeth, the Environment Agency, the Church of England and the Methodist Church.
"The financial risks of climate change are greater in scale and closer in time than most investors realise," said Howard Covington, former chief executive of New Star Asset Management. "These resolutions help contain those risks at minimal cost. Investors have every reason to support them."
A BP spokesman said: "We continue to have constructive discussions with these and other shareholders on these points. The shareholder resolution is being filed for our 2015 AGM [in April], and we will carefully consider it and respond appropriately before the meeting."
Exxon Mobil responded to a similar shareholder challenge in 2014 by stating that it believed it was "highly unlikely" that governments would succeed in their aim of cutting carbon emissions by 80% by 2050. Shell's response to the same concerns was to state "there is a high degree of confidence that global warming will exceed 2C by [2100]." The 2C limit is widely seen as the threshold of dangerous climate change.
BP and Shell were targeted by the new shareholder resolutions because they have the biggest carbon footprints of all the companies listed on the London stock exchange. The resolutions also challenge the companies to reduce their own emissions and invest in renewable energy.
Financial experts, including the Bank of England, Goldman Sachs, Standard and Poor's and Axa IM, have warned of the risk climate change policies pose to fossil fuel companies. Coal, oil and gas companies are also under attack from a fast-growing campaign that aims to stigmatise them by persuading investors to dump their fossil fuel shares, a call backed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and others.
Some argue that engaging with fossil fuel companies is a more effective tactic than divestment. But Jonathon Porritt, one of the UK's most esteemed environmentalists who spent years working on sustainability projects with BP and Shell, last week said engagement was now futile because "hydrocarbon supremacists" at the companies had successfully ousted reformers wanting to diversify into green energy.
· This article was amended on 21 January 2015. The caption originally described BP as British Petroleum. It is not called this any more. This has been corrected.
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January 21, 2015 Wednesday 3:06 PM GMT
Davos 2015: climate change makes a comeback;
The financial crisis pushed global warming down the agenda but Lord Stern's respected climate economics are leading its way back up
BYLINE: Larry Elliott in Davos
SECTION: BUSINESS
LENGTH: 503 words
The private jets lined up at Zurich airport and the helicopter rides into the high Alps tell their own story. Executives running the world's biggest companies have always struggled to take the threat of climate disaster seriously.
In part, that's because they tend to have such short time horizons; they care more about the next set of quarterly results than what will happen to global temperatures in 2050. In part, that's because they live under the misconception that action to stop climate change will be bad for business. In part, that's because for the last five or six years they have had other things on their mind.
The financial crisis pushed climate down the Davos agenda. This year, there are clear signs that it has made a comeback. Al Gore gave the first big presentation in the main conference hall and, against a backdrop of pictures of flooding, death and destruction, warned that the world was in denial about the risks it was taking.
A bit later, Lord Nicholas Stern said decisions taken at the intergovernmental conference in Paris in late 2015 will shape the next 20 years.
In some ways, Stern's message to business was more important than Gore's tub-thumping. For most of those in the audience listening to the former US vice-president it was probably a case of in one ear and out the other. It is unlikely that many of them will be that interested in the series of Live Aid-style concerts planned for June this year.
But Stern is important because as a respected economist he talks a language that business understands. The message he delivered is pretty simple: burning fossil fuels may seem like the cheapest-cost option but it isn't. For a start, the cost of renewable energy is coming down fast, by a factor of 10 since Stern produced his seminal report on climate change in 2006. That same period has seen oil prices yoyo between almost $150 a barrel and below $40 a barrel. Renewable energy prices are heading in only one direction: downwards. Oil and gas prices are volatile, making it hard for businesses to plan.
Stern's broader point is that tackling climate change will lead to better growth. Not necessarily higher growth (although it might) but better growth, with less stress from sitting in traffic jams and cleaner air means fewer deaths from respiratory diseases.
The commonly held belief is that this is a bad time to be making the case for a different sort of energy policy since falling oil prices make renewables relatively more expensive. Stern doesn't agree. He says this is a good time to think about carbon taxes and removing energy subsidies, because the higher costs that will result for consumers and businesses will be offset by the falling price of crude.
Is business listening? Some certainly are, with the insurers standing to make huge losses from extreme weather the most attentive. Governments are also starting to pay attention, which is hardly surprising given that Stern says the estimated cost of pollution to China is 10-11% of GDP, higher than its annual growth rate.
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January 21, 2015 Wednesday 3:05 PM GMT
Pharrell Williams and Al Gore announce Live Earth 2015;
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Williams says the event will see 'humanity harmonise all at once'
BYLINE: Michael Hann
SECTION: MUSIC
LENGTH: 717 words
The unlikely combination of Pharrell Williams and Al Gore have announced what they hope to be the largest global campaign in history, in the form of a second round of Live Earth concerts to promote awareness of climate change. The concerts will take place across all seven continents - including Antarctica - on 18 June.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the pair were joined by producer Kevin Wall to unveil an event aiming for a global television audience of 2 billion across 193 television networks.
Williams, who is the event's creative director, did not reveal any details of who would be performing at the stadium shows, saying he was keeping surprises in store, but said: "Instead of just having people perform, we literally are going to have humanity harmonise all at once."
Williams recalled playing Live Earth in Rio de Janeiro in 2007, describing it as "a ball". However, he said, "You would have pundits and comedians who didn't understand global warming and we were often ridiculed. We wanted to do something very different this time." Williams's commitment to raising awareness of climate change is longstanding. When he collaborated with Madonna on the 2007 single Hey You, 25 cents from each of the first million downloads was donated to the Alliance for Climate Protection.
A promotional clip shown before Williams spoke offered a caption promising 100 artists in the seven shows. Each event will last from four to six hours.
Wall said: "The power of music is unique, because it's borderless, without language, Pharrell will use that power. When you combine music with a message, you can effect change."
The European leg of the event will take place in Paris, ahead of the 2015 UN climate change conference in the French capital, scheduled for December. The organisers say that 1o2 broadcasters have so far signed up to carry the event.
At the first Live Earth event - also organised by Gore and Wall - on 7 July 2007, more than 150 acts performed in 11 locations around the world. The concerts were used as the launchpad for a seven-point pledge that invited attendees:
To demand that my country join an international treaty within the following two years that cuts global warming pollution by 90% in developed countries and by more than half worldwide in time for the next generation to inherit a healthy Earth; To take personal action to help solve the climate crisis by reducing my own CO 2pollution as much as I can and offsetting the rest to become 'carbon neutral'; To fight for a moratorium on the construction of any new generating facility that burns coal without the capacity to safely trap and store the CO 2; To work for a dramatic increase in the energy efficiency of my home, workplace, school, place of worship, and means of transportation; To fight for laws and policies that expand the use of renewable energy sources and reduce dependence on oil and coal; To plant new trees and to join with others in preserving and protecting forests; and, To buy from businesses and support leaders who share my commitment to solving the climate crisis and building a sustainable, just, and prosperous world for the 21st century.
The concerts were broadcast to more than 130 countries. Though the coverage was watched by 19 million people in the US, and won a then-record online audience of more than 8 million viewers, the event was not a ratings success in the UK, with a peak audience of about 4.5 million. That was attributed to a combination of good weather, live Wimbledon coverage, and the fact that it came just six days after the Concert for Diana, which had attracted a TV audience three times larger.
The Guardian's Alexis Petridis was lukewarm about the London concert, writing: "There are moments of total bafflement: even with the lyrics changed to reference climate change, there's a certain majestic inappropriateness about David Gray and Damien Rice singing Que Sera Sera. What there isn't is any real emotional heft, or urgency, or sense of event."
Among the acts who appeared at the 2007 concerts were: Genesis, the Black Eyed Peas, Metallica, the Beastie Boys (all London), Alicia Keys, Kanye West, Bon Jovi, the Police (all New York), Angélique Kidjo, Baaba Maal (both Johannesburg), Linkin Park, Rihanna (both Tokyo), Snoop Dogg and MIA (both Hamburg).
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January 21, 2015 Wednesday 2:38 PM GMT
New Atlantis review - climate-change dystopia lets audience choose solution;
The Crystal, LondonHow to deal with global warming? This 2050-set drama asks us to decide but you could learn more from spending 80 minutes online
BYLINE: Lyn Gardner
SECTION: STAGE
LENGTH: 326 words
Star Rating: 2 stars
It's 2050 and global warming has brought the planet to its knees. London is gripped by drought, Miami has been abandoned because of rising sea levels and cases of historic climate abuse are being tried in the courts. The UN collapsed long ago and has been replaced by New Atlantis, which under the calming leadership of Secretary General Bryony Weller (Tricia Kelly) has restored some order. But the problems of ongoing climate change need to be urgently addressed, and with Weller sick and relinquishing her post early, the leadership of New Atlantis is up for grabs. Will it be the head of Industry, Defence or Reform who gets the job?
You get to vote, but only after you've spent 80 minutes wandering the building, hearing what they each have to say and watching what their departments do. Will you vote for Reform, who argue that it's people's behaviour that must change, even if it means introducing unpopular policies such as one child per family ? Industry claims it can solve problems through creating biofuels and asteroid mining, while Defence reckons that controlling the seas is crucial. Outside, the young are protesting their disenfranchisement and trying to make their voices heard.
It's a neat idea, but very imperfectly realised in a piece that despite the urgency of its subject matter lacks dramatic focus and momentum. You would actually find out more about climate change and the solutions proposed by spending 80 minutes online than you do by wandering around here and being confronted by scientists who lack acting skills and actors who lack scientific skills. There's too much nitty gritty and not nearly enough framing information about exactly how this world and New Atlantis operates. There's zero human interest too: these aren't characters, just mouthpieces. Less a piece of theatre and more of an imaginatively conceived but poorly executed education project.
· Until 25 January. Tickets: enlightenmentcafe.co.uk.
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January 21, 2015 Wednesday 9:48 AM GMT
India's tiger population increases by almost a third;
Population of the endangered species now at 2,226, with campaigners hailing the latest statistics
BYLINE: Jason Burke in Delhi
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 746 words
The number of tigers in India has increased by almost a third in the last three years, official figures released on Tuesday reveal.
The rise, from 1,706 in 2011 to 2,226 in 2014, will encourage campaigners fighting to protect the endangered species. Activists called the new statistics "robust" and "very good news".
Around 70% of the world's wild tigers live in India, where their habitat has been threatened by uncontrolled development and poaching.
Repeated efforts to stem trade and protect tigers from environmental pressures failed to stop their numbers in India dwindling to 1,411 in 2006.
Prakash Javadekar, the environment minister in the emerging south Asian power, said the latest figures showed a huge success story and demonstrated that the current strategy of creating reserves staffed by specialist government staff was working.
"That is why we want to create more tiger reserves. This is a proof of India's biodiversity and how we care for mitigating climate change. This is India's steps in the right direction, which the world will applaud," he said.
India, one of the world's biggest producers of carbon dioxide but still one of the poorest countries despite recent growth, is under pressure to announce measures on cutting greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change following a recent agreement between the US and China.
The new Indian government has also repeatedly said that it will prioritise economic growth, and has been criticised by some for rolling back moves to protect the environment.
Belinda Wright, of the Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI), said the increase in tiger numbers could be attributed to a new focus over the last three or four years which has led to better field patrolling and monitoring, among other factors.
"There still remains the habitat destruction and encroachment. Hopefully the new figures will increase the pressure on the government to tread carefully when it is a matter of development in tiger habitats," Wright said.
The new census was conducted by the National Tiger Conservation Authority and involved nearly 10,000 camera traps. Almost 80% of the tigers counted in the survey had been photographed and identified individually, Javadekar said.
Most of India's tigers live in nearly 50 wildlife reserves set up since the 1970s.
The natural habitat of tigers in India - tropical evergreen forests, deciduous forests, mangrove swamps, thorn forests and grass jungles - has almost disappeared outside reserves. Even inside designated zones, unchecked development of tourism and other industries has restricted space and food. Many end up foraging in areas with large human populations, leading to fatalities.
A 24-year-old man was killed by a tiger on the outskirts of one national park in the central state of Madhya Pradesh earlier this month.
Last year specialist hunters on elephants tracked a tiger in northern India that may have killed as many as 10 people on a 150-mile journey through villages, fields and forests, during which it crossed rivers and six-lane motorways.
"We must ensure animal-human conflict does not happen," said Javadekar. "We have proactively decided that we will create more grasslands and water storage in forest areas so that animals can live well."
In 2013 India's supreme court imposed a temporary ban on tourism in the areas of national parks where tigers live. It was lifted after four months, thanks to vociferous protests from tour operators and guides.
However governance appears to be the main factor. In Uttar Pradesh, the lawless and poor northern state, tiger numbers have fallen, officials have said, with some reserves losing almost half of their population.
Around 40 tigers were killed by poachers in India in 2013 - the highest number since 2005. A total of 923 tigers were killed by poachers between 1994 and 2010, according to WPSI.
Demand for their body parts for use in traditional medicine in China and elsewhere in east Asia remains robust. Leopards and rhinos are also targeted. Prosecution of poachers is rare, convictions rarer and intelligence-led preventive policing non-existent.
Wright, the conservationist, said a major problem was the lack of corridors linking reserves which would permit tigers to travel in search of mates outside their immediate community.
"We need to focus on tiger landscapes and gene-flow. Tigers need to disperse from the source population," she said.
The current tiger population is a fraction of the 45,000 that roamed India a century ago.
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January 21, 2015 Wednesday 5:46 AM GMT
Obama's 2015 State of the Union address - full text;
Read the full text from Obama's State of the Union address here, where the president promised Americans that 'Tonight, we turn the page'
BYLINE: Guardian staff
SECTION: US NEWS
LENGTH: 6586 words
Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of Congress, my fellow Americans:
We are 15 years into this new century. Fifteen years that dawned with terror touching our shores; that unfolded with a new generation fighting two long and costly wars; that saw a vicious recession spread across our nation and the world. It has been, and still is, a hard time for many.
But tonight, we turn the page. Tonight, after a breakthrough year for America, our economy is growing and creating jobs at the fastest pace since 1999. (Applause.) Our unemployment rate is now lower than it was before the financial crisis. More of our kids are graduating than ever before. More of our people are insured than ever before. (Applause.) And we are as free from the grip of foreign oil as we've been in almost 30 years. (Applause.)
Tonight, for the first time since 9/11, our combat mission in Afghanistan is over. (Applause.) Six years ago, nearly 180,000 American troops served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Today, fewer than 15,000 remain. And we salute the courage and sacrifice of every man and woman in this 9/11 Generation who has served to keep us safe. (Applause.) We are humbled and grateful for your service.
America, for all that we have endured; for all the grit and hard work required to come back; for all the tasks that lie ahead, know this: The shadow of crisis has passed, and the State of the Union is strong. (Applause.)
At this moment -- with a growing economy, shrinking deficits, bustling industry, booming energy production -- we have risen from recession freer to write our own future than any other nation on Earth. It's now up to us to choose who we want to be over the next 15 years and for decades to come.
Will we accept an economy where only a few of us do spectacularly well? Or will we commit ourselves to an economy that generates rising incomes and chances for everyone who makes the effort? (Applause.)
Will we approach the world fearful and reactive, dragged into costly conflicts that strain our military and set back our standing? Or will we lead wisely, using all elements of our power to defeat new threats and protect our planet?
Will we allow ourselves to be sorted into factions and turned against one another? Or will we recapture the sense of common purpose that has always propelled America forward?
In two weeks, I will send this Congress a budget filled with ideas that are practical, not partisan. And in the months ahead, I'll crisscross the country making a case for those ideas. So tonight, I want to focus less on a checklist of proposals, and focus more on the values at stake in the choices before us.
It begins with our economy. Seven years ago, Rebekah and Ben Erler of Minneapolis were newlyweds. (Laughter.) She waited tables. He worked construction. Their first child, Jack, was on the way. They were young and in love in America. And it doesn't get much better than that. "If only we had known," Rebekah wrote to me last spring, "what was about to happen to the housing and construction market."
As the crisis worsened, Ben's business dried up, so he took what jobs he could find, even if they kept him on the road for long stretches of time. Rebekah took out student loans and enrolled in community college, and retrained for a new career. They sacrificed for each other. And slowly, it paid off. They bought their first home. They had a second son, Henry. Rebekah got a better job and then a raise. Ben is back in construction -- and home for dinner every night.
"It is amazing," Rebekah wrote, "what you can bounce back from when you have to...we are a strong, tight-knit family who has made it through some very, very hard times." We are a strong, tight-knit family who has made it through some very, very hard times.
America, Rebekah and Ben's story is our story. They represent the millions who have worked hard and scrimped, and sacrificed and retooled. You are the reason that I ran for this office. You are the people I was thinking of six years ago today, in the darkest months of the crisis, when I stood on the steps of this Capitol and promised we would rebuild our economy on a new foundation. And it has been your resilience, your effort that has made it possible for our country to emerge stronger.
We believed we could reverse the tide of outsourcing and draw new jobs to our shores. And over the past five years, our businesses have created more than 11 million new jobs. (Applause.)
We believed we could reduce our dependence on foreign oil and protect our planet. And today, America is number one in oil and gas. America is number one in wind power. Every three weeks, we bring online as much solar power as we did in all of 2008. (Applause.) And thanks to lower gas prices and higher fuel standards, the typical family this year should save about $750 at the pump. (Applause.)
We believed we could prepare our kids for a more competitive world. And today, our younger students have earned the highest math and reading scores on record. Our high school graduation rate has hit an all-time high. More Americans finish college than ever before. (Applause.)
That's what middle-class economics is -- the idea that this country does best when everyone gets their fair shot, everyone does their fair share, everyone plays by the same set of rules. (Applause.) We don't just want everyone to share in America's success, we want everyone to contribute to our success. (Applause.)
So what does middle-class economics require in our time?
First, middle-class economics means helping working families feel more secure in a world of constant change. That means helping folks afford childcare, college, health care, a home, retirement. And my budget will address each of theWe believed that sensible regulations could prevent another crisis, shield families from ruin, and encourage fair competition. Today, we have new tools to stop taxpayer-funded bailouts, and a new consumer watchdog to protect us from predatory lending and abusive credit card practices. And in the past year alone, about 10 million uninsured Americans finally gained the security of health coverage. (Applause.)
At every step, we were told our goals were misguided or too ambitious; that we would crush jobs and explode deficits. Instead, we've seen the fastest economic growth in over a decade, our deficits cut by two-thirds, a stock market that has doubled, and health care inflation at its lowest rate in 50 years. (Applause.) This is good news, people. (Laughter and applause.)
So the verdict is clear. Middle-class economics works. Expanding opportunity works. And these policies will continue to work as long as politics don't get in the way. We can't slow down businesses or put our economy at risk with government shutdowns or fiscal showdowns. We can't put the security of families at risk by taking away their health insurance, or unraveling the new rules on Wall Street, or refighting past battles on immigration when we've got to fix a broken system. And if a bill comes to my desk that tries to do any of these things, I will veto it. It will have earned my veto. (Applause.)
Today, thanks to a growing economy, the recovery is touching more and more lives. Wages are finally starting to rise again. We know that more small business owners plan to raise their employees' pay than at any time since 2007. But here's the thing: Those of us here tonight, we need to set our sights higher than just making sure government doesn't screw things up; that government doesn't halt the progress we're making. We need to do more than just do no harm. Tonight, together, let's do more to restore the link between hard work and growing opportunity for every American. (Applause.)
Because families like Rebekah's still need our help. She and Ben are working as hard as ever, but they've had to forego vacations and a new car so that they can pay off student loans and save for retirement. Friday night pizza, that's a big splurge. Basic childcare for Jack and Henry costs more than their mortgage, and almost as much as a year at the University of Minnesota. Like millions of hardworking Americans, Rebekah isn't asking for a handout, but she is asking that we look for more ways to help families get ahead.
And in fact, at every moment of economic change throughout our history, this country has taken bold action to adapt to new circumstances and to make sure everyone gets a fair shot. We set up worker protections, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid to protect ourselves from the harshest adversity. We gave our citizens schools and colleges, infrastructure and the Internet -- tools they needed to go as far as their efse issues, lowering the taxes of working families and putting thousands of dollars back into their pockets each year. (Applause.)
Here's one example. During World War II, when men like my grandfather went off to war, having women like my grandmother in the workforce was a national security priority -- so this country provided universal childcare. In today's economy, when having both parents in the workforce is an economic necessity for many families, we need affordable, high-quality childcare more than ever. (Applause.)
It's not a nice-to-have -- it's a must-have. So it's time we stop treating childcare as a side issue, or as a women's issue, and treat it like the national economic priority that it is for all of us. (Applause.) And that's why my plan will make quality childcare more available and more affordable for every middle-class and low-income family with young children in America -- by creating more slots and a new tax cut of up to $3,000 per child, per year. (Applause.)
Here's another example. Today, we are the only advanced country on Earth that doesn't guarantee paid sick leave or paid maternity leave to our workers. Forty-three million workers have no paid sick leave -- 43 million. Think about that. And that forces too many parents to make the gut-wrenching choice between a paycheck and a sick kid at home. So I'll be taking new action to help states adopt paid leave laws of their own. And since paid sick leave won where it was on the ballot last November, let's put it to a vote right here in Washington. (Applause.) Send me a bill that gives every worker in America the opportunity to earn seven days of paid sick leave. It's the right thing to do. It's the right thing to do. (Applause.)
Of course, nothing helps families make ends meet like higher wages. That's why this Congress still needs to pass a law that makes sure a woman is paid the same as a man for doing the same work. (Applause.) It's 2015. (Laughter.) It's time. We still need to make sure employees get the overtime they've earned. (Applause.) And to everyone in this Congress who still refuses to raise the minimum wage, I say this: If you truly believe you could work full-time and support a family on less than $15,000 a year, try it. If not, vote to give millions of the hardest-working people in America a raise. (Applause.)
Now, these ideas won't make everybody rich, won't relieve every hardship. That's not the job of government. To give working families a fair shot, we still need more employers to see beyond next quarter's earnings and recognize that investing in their workforce is in their company's long-term interest. We still need laws that strengthen rather than weaken unions, and give American workers a voice. (Applause.)
But you know, things like childcare and sick leave and equal pay; things like lower mortgage premiums and a higher minimum wage -- these ideas will make a meaningful difference in the lives of millions of families. That's a fact. And that's what all of us, Republicans and Democrats alike, were sent here to do.
Second, to make sure folks keep earning higher wages down the road, we have to do more to help Americans upgrade their skills. (Applause.) America thrived in the 20th century because we made high school free, sent a generation of GIs to college, trained the best workforce in the world. We were ahead of the curve. But other countries caught on. And in a 21st century economy that rewards knowledge like never before, we need to up our game. We need to do more.
By the end of this decade, two in three job openings will require some higher education -- two in three. And yet, we still live in a country where too many bright, striving Americans are priced out of the education they need. It's not fair to them, and it's sure not smart for our future. That's why I'm sending this Congress a bold new plan to lower the cost of community college -- to zero. (Applause.)
Keep in mind 40 percent of our college students choose community college. Some are young and starting out. Some are older and looking for a better job. Some are veterans and single parents trying to transition back into the job market. Whoever you are, this plan is your chance to graduate ready for the new economy without a load of debt. Understand, you've got to earn it. You've got to keep your grades up and graduate on time.
Tennessee, a state with Republican leadership, and Chicago, a city with Democratic leadership, are showing that free community college is possible. I want to spread that idea all across America, so that two years of college becomes as free and universal in America as high school is today. (Applause.) Let's stay ahead of the curve. (Applause.) And I want to work with this Congress to make sure those already burdened with student loans can reduce their monthly payments so that student debt doesn't derail anyone's dreams. (Applause.)
Thanks to Vice President Biden's great work to update our job training system, we're connecting community colleges with local employers to train workers to fill high-paying jobs like coding, and nursing, and robotics. Tonight, I'm also asking more businesses to follow the lead of companies like CVS and UPS, and offer more educational benefits and paid apprenticeships -- opportunities that give workers the chance to earn higher-paying jobs even if they don't have a higher education.
And as a new generation of veterans comes home, we owe them every opportunity to live the American Dream they helped defend. Already, we've made strides towards ensuring that every veteran has access to the highest quality care. We're slashing the backlog that had too many veterans waiting years to get the benefits they need. And we're making it easier for vets to translate their training and experience into civilian jobs. And Joining Forces, the national campaign launched by Michelle and Jill Biden -- (applause) -- thank you, Michelle; thank you, Jill -- has helped nearly 700,000 veterans and military spouses get a new job. (Applause.) So to every CEO in America, let me repeat: If you want somebody who's going to get the job done and done right, hire a veteran. (Applause.)
Finally, as we better train our workers, we need the new economy to keep churning out high-wage jobs for our workers to fill. Since 2010, America has put more people back to work than Europe, Japan, and all advanced economies combined. (Applause.)
Our manufacturers have added almost 800,000 new jobs. Some of our bedrock sectors, like our auto industry, are booming. But there are also millions of Americans who work in jobs that didn't even exist 10 or 20 years ago -- jobs at companies like Google, and eBay, and Tesla.
So no one knows for certain which industries will generate the jobs of the future. But we do know we want them here in America. We know that. (Applause.) And that's why the third part of middle-class economics is all about building the most competitive economy anywhere, the place where businesses want to locate and hire.
Twenty-first century businesses need 21st century infrastructure -- modern ports, and stronger bridges, faster trains and the fastest Internet. Democrats and Republicans used to agree on this. So let's set our sights higher than a single oil pipeline. Let's pass a bipartisan infrastructure plan that could create more than 30 times as many jobs per year, and make this country stronger for decades to come. (Applause.) Let's do it. Let's get it done. Let's get it done. (Applause.)
Twenty-first century businesses, including small businesses, need to sell more American products overseas. Today, our businesses export more than ever, and exporters tend to pay their workers higher wages. But as we speak, China wants to write the rules for the world's fastest-growing region. That would put our workers and our businesses at a disadvantage. Why would we let that happen? We should write those rules. We should level the playing field. That's why I'm asking both parties to give me trade promotion authority to protect American workers, with strong new trade deals from Asia to Europe that aren't just free, but are also fair. It's the right thing to do. (Applause.)
Look, I'm the first one to admit that past trade deals haven't always lived up to the hype, and that's why we've gone after countries that break the rules at our expense. But 95 percent of the world's customers live outside our borders. We can't close ourselves off from those opportunities. More than half of manufacturing executives have said they're actively looking to bring jobs back from China. So let's give them one more reason to get it done.
Twenty-first century businesses will rely on American science and technology, research and development. I want the country that eliminated polio and mapped the human genome to lead a new era of medicine -- one that delivers the right treatment at the right time. (Applause.)
In some patients with cystic fibrosis, this approach has reversed a disease once thought unstoppable. So tonight, I'm launching a new Precision Medicine Initiative to bring us closer to curing diseases like cancer and diabetes, and to give all of us access to the personalized information we need to keep ourselves and our families healthier. We can do this. (Applause.)
I intend to protect a free and open Internet, extend its reach to every classroom, and every community -- (applause) -- and help folks build the fastest networks so that the next generation of digital innovators and entrepreneurs have the platform to keep reshaping our world.
I want Americans to win the race for the kinds of discoveries that unleash new jobs -- converting sunlight into liquid fuel; creating revolutionary prosthetics, so that a veteran who gave his arms for his country can play catch with his kids again. (Applause.) Pushing out into the solar system not just to visit, but to stay. Last month, we launched a new spacecraft as part of a reenergized space program that will send American astronauts to Mars. And in two months, to prepare us for those missions, Scott Kelly will begin a year-long stay in space. So good luck, Captain. Make sure to Instagram it. We're proud of you. (Applause.)
Now, the truth is, when it comes to issues like infrastructure and basic research, I know there's bipartisan support in this chamber. Members of both parties have told me so. Where we too often run onto the rocks is how to pay for these investments. As Americans, we don't mind paying our fair share of taxes as long as everybody else does, too. But for far too long, lobbyists have rigged the tax code with loopholes that let some corporations pay nothing while others pay full freight. They've riddled it with giveaways that the super-rich don't need, while denying a break to middle-class families who do.
This year, we have an opportunity to change that. Let's close loopholes so we stop rewarding companies that keep profits abroad, and reward those that invest here in America. (Applause.) Let's use those savings to rebuild our infrastructure and to make it more attractive for companies to bring jobs home. Let's simplify the system and let a small business owner file based on her actual bank statement, instead of the number of accountants she can afford. (Applause.) And let's close the loopholes that lead to inequality by allowing the top one percent to avoid paying taxes on their accumulated wealth. We can use that money to help more families pay for childcare and send their kids to college. We need a tax code that truly helps working Americans trying to get a leg up in the new economy, and we can achieve that together. (Applause.) We can achieve it together.
Helping hardworking families make ends meet. Giving them the tools they need for good-paying jobs in this new economy. Maintaining the conditions of growth and competitiveness. This is where America needs to go. I believe it's where the American people want to go. It will make our economy stronger a year from now, 15 years from now, and deep into the century ahead.
Of course, if there's one thing this new century has taught us, it's that we cannot separate our work here at home from challenges beyond our shores.
My first duty as Commander-in-Chief is to defend the United States of America. In doing so, the question is not whether America leads in the world, but how. When we make rash decisions, reacting to the headlines instead of using our heads; when the first response to a challenge is to send in our military -- then we risk getting drawn into unnecessary conflicts, and neglect the broader strategy we need for a safer, more prosperous world. That's what our enemies want us to do.
I believe in a smarter kind of American leadership. We lead best when we combine military power with strong diplomacy; when we leverage our power with coalition building; when we don't let our fears blind us to the opportunities that this new century presents. That's exactly what we're doing right now. And around the globe, it is making a difference.
First, we stand united with people around the world who have been targeted by terrorists -- from a school in Pakistan to the streets of Paris. (Applause.) We will continue to hunt down terrorists and dismantle their networks, and we reserve the right to act unilaterally, as we have done relentlessly since I took office to take out terrorists who pose a direct threat to us and our allies. (Applause.)
At the same time, we've learned some costly lessons over the last 13 years. Instead of Americans patrolling the valleys of Afghanistan, we've trained their security forces, who have now taken the lead, and we've honored our troops' sacrifice by supporting that country's first democratic transition. Instead of sending large ground forces overseas, we're partnering with nations from South Asia to North Africa to deny safe haven to terrorists who threaten America.
In Iraq and Syria, American leadership -- including our military power -- is stopping ISIL's advance. Instead of getting dragged into another ground war in the Middle East, we are leading a broad coalition, including Arab nations, to degrade and ultimately destroy this terrorist group. (Applause.) We're also supporting a moderate opposition in Syria that can help us in this effort, and assisting people everywhere who stand up to the bankrupt ideology of violent extremism.
Now, this effort will take time. It will require focus. But we will succeed. And tonight, I call on this Congress to show the world that we are united in this mission by passing a resolution to authorize the use of force against ISIL. We need that authority. (Applause.)
Second, we're demonstrating the power of American strength and diplomacy. We're upholding the principle that bigger nations can't bully the small -- by opposing Russian aggression, and supporting Ukraine's democracy, and reassuring our NATO allies. (Applause.)
Last year, as we were doing the hard work of imposing sanctions along with our allies, as we were reinforcing our presence with frontline states, Mr. Putin's aggression it was suggested was a masterful display of strategy and strength. That's what I heard from some folks. Well, today, it is America that stands strong and united with our allies, while Russia is isolated with its economy in tatters. That's how America leads -- not with bluster, but with persistent, steady resolve. (Applause.)
In Cuba, we are ending a policy that was long past its expiration date. (Applause.) When what you're doing doesn't work for 50 years, it's time to try something new. (Applause.) And our shift in Cuba policy has the potential to end a legacy of mistrust in our hemisphere. It removes a phony excuse for restrictions in Cuba. It stands up for democratic values, and extends the hand of friendship to the Cuban people. And this year, Congress should begin the work of ending the embargo. (Applause.)
As His Holiness, Pope Francis, has said, diplomacy is the work of "small steps." These small steps have added up to new hope for the future in Cuba. And after years in prison, we are overjoyed that Alan Gross is back where he belongs. Welcome home, Alan. We're glad you're here. (Applause.)
Our diplomacy is at work with respect to Iran, where, for the first time in a decade, we've halted the progress of its nuclear program and reduced its stockpile of nuclear material. Between now and this spring, we have a chance to negotiate a comprehensive agreement that prevents a nuclear-armed Iran, secures America and our allies -- including Israel, while avoiding yet another Middle East conflict. There are no guarantees that negotiations will succeed, and I keep all options on the table to prevent a nuclear Iran.
But new sanctions passed by this Congress, at this moment in time, will all but guarantee that diplomacy fails -- alienating America from its allies; making it harder to maintain sanctions; and ensuring that Iran starts up its nuclear program again. It doesn't make sense. And that's why I will veto any new sanctions bill that threatens to undo this progress. (Applause.) The American people expect us only to go to war as a last resort, and I intend to stay true to that wisdom.
Third, we're looking beyond the issues that have consumed us in the past to shape the coming century. No foreign nation, no hacker, should be able to shut down our networks, steal our trade secrets, or invade the privacy of American families, especially our kids. (Applause.) So we're making sure our government integrates intelligence to combat cyber threats, just as we have done to combat terrorism.
And tonight, I urge this Congress to finally pass the legislation we need to better meet the evolving threat of cyber attacks, combat identity theft, and protect our children's information. That should be a bipartisan effort. (Applause.)
If we don't act, we'll leave our nation and our economy vulnerable. If we do, we can continue to protect the technologies that have unleashed untold opportunities for people around the globe.
In West Africa, our troops, our scientists, our doctors, our nurses, our health care workers are rolling back Ebola -- saving countless lives and stopping the spread of disease. (Applause.) I could not be prouder of them, and I thank this Congress for your bipartisan support of their efforts. But the job is not yet done, and the world needs to use this lesson to build a more effective global effort to prevent the spread of future pandemics, invest in smart development, and eradicate extreme poverty.
In the Asia Pacific, we are modernizing alliances while making sure that other nations play by the rules -- in how they trade, how they resolve maritime disputes, how they participate in meeting common international challenges like nonproliferation and disaster relief. And no challenge -- no challenge -- poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change. (Applause.)
2014 was the planet's warmest year on record. Now, one year doesn't make a trend, but this does: 14 of the 15 warmest years on record have all fallen in the first 15 years of this century.
I've heard some folks try to dodge the evidence by saying they're not scientists; that we don't have enough information to act. Well, I'm not a scientist, either. But you know what, I know a lot of really good scientists at NASA, and at NOAA, and at our major universities. And the best scientists in the world are all telling us that our activities are changing the climate, and if we don't act forcefully, we'll continue to see rising oceans, longer, hotter heat waves, dangerous droughts and floods, and massive disruptions that can trigger greater migration and conflict and hunger around the globe. The Pentagon says that climate change poses immediate risks to our national security. We should act like it. (Applause.)
And that's why, over the past six years, we've done more than ever to combat climate change, from the way we produce energy to the way we use it. That's why we've set aside more public lands and waters than any administration in history. And that's why I will not let this Congress endanger the health of our children by turning back the clock on our efforts. I am determined to make sure that American leadership drives international action. (Applause.)
In Beijing, we made a historic announcement: The United States will double the pace at which we cut carbon pollution. And China committed, for the first time, to limiting their emissions. And because the world's two largest economies came together, other nations are now stepping up, and offering hope that this year the world will finally reach an agreement to protect the one planet we've got.
And there's one last pillar of our leadership, and that's the example of our values.
As Americans, we respect human dignity, even when we're threatened, which is why I have prohibited torture, and worked to make sure our use of new technology like drones is properly constrained. (Applause.) It's why we speak out against the deplorable anti-Semitism that has resurfaced in certain parts of the world. (Applause.) It's why we continue to reject offensive stereotypes of Muslims, the vast majority of whom share our commitment to peace. That's why we defend free speech, and advocate for political prisoners, and condemn the persecution of women, or religious minorities, or people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. We do these things not only because they are the right thing to do, but because ultimately they will make us safer. (Applause.)
As Americans, we have a profound commitment to justice. So it makes no sense to spend $3 million per prisoner to keep open a prison that the world condemns and terrorists use to recruit. (Applause.) Since I've been President, we've worked responsibly to cut the population of Gitmo in half. Now it is time to finish the job. And I will not relent in my determination to shut it down. It is not who we are. It's time to close Gitmo. (Applause.)
As Americans, we cherish our civil liberties, and we need to uphold that commitment if we want maximum cooperation from other countries and industry in our fight against terrorist networks. So while some have moved on from the debates over our surveillance programs, I have not. As promised, our intelligence agencies have worked hard, with the recommendations of privacy advocates, to increase transparency and build more safeguards against potential abuse. And next month, we'll issue a report on how we're keeping our promise to keep our country safe while strengthening privacy.
Looking to the future instead of the past. Making sure we match our power with diplomacy, and use force wisely. Building coalitions to meet new challenges and opportunities. Leading -- always -- with the example of our values. That's what makes us exceptional. That's what keeps us strong. That's why we have to keep striving to hold ourselves to the highest of standards -- our own.
You know, just over a decade ago, I gave a speech in Boston where I said there wasn't a liberal America or a conservative America; a black America or a white America -- but a United States of America. I said this because I had seen it in my own life, in a nation that gave someone like me a chance; because I grew up in Hawaii, a melting pot of races and customs; because I made Illinois my home -- a state of small towns, rich farmland, one of the world's great cities; a microcosm of the country where Democrats and Republicans and Independents, good people of every ethnicity and every faith, share certain bedrock values.
Over the past six years, the pundits have pointed out more than once that my presidency hasn't delivered on this vision. How ironic, they say, that our politics seems more divided than ever. It's held up as proof not just of my own flaws -- of which there are many -- but also as proof that the vision itself is misguided, naïve, that there are too many people in this town who actually benefit from partisanship and gridlock for us to ever do anything about it.
I know how tempting such cynicism may be. But I still think the cynics are wrong. I still believe that we are one people. I still believe that together, we can do great things, even when the odds are long. (Applause.)
I believe this because over and over in my six years in office, I have seen America at its best. I've seen the hopeful faces of young graduates from New York to California, and our newest officers at West Point, Annapolis, Colorado Springs, New London. I've mourned with grieving families in Tucson and Newtown, in Boston, in West Texas, and West Virginia. I've watched Americans beat back adversity from the Gulf Coast to the Great Plains, from Midwest assembly lines to the Mid-Atlantic seaboard. I've seen something like gay marriage go from a wedge issue used to drive us apart to a story of freedom across our country, a civil right now legal in states that seven in 10 Americans call home. (Applause.)
So I know the good, and optimistic, and big-hearted generosity of the American people who every day live the idea that we are our brother's keeper and our sister's keeper. And I know they expect those of us who serve here to set a better example.
So the question for those of us here tonight is how we, all of us, can better reflect America's hopes. I've served in Congress with many of you. I know many of you well. There are a lot of good people here, on both sides of the aisle. And many of you have told me that this isn't what you signed up for -- arguing past each other on cable shows, the constant fundraising, always looking over your shoulder at how the base will react to every decision.
Imagine if we broke out of these tired old patterns. Imagine if we did something different. Understand, a better politics isn't one where Democrats abandon their agenda or Republicans simply embrace mine. A better politics is one where we appeal to each other's basic decency instead of our basest fears. A better politics is one where we debate without demonizing each other; where we talk issues and values, and principles and facts, rather than "gotcha" moments, or trivial gaffes, or fake controversies that have nothing to do with people's daily lives. (Applause.)
A politics -- a better politics is one where we spend less time drowning in dark money for ads that pull us into the gutter, and spend more time lifting young people up with a sense of purpose and possibility, asking them to join in the great mission of building America.
If we're going to have arguments, let's have arguments, but let's make them debates worthy of this body and worthy of this country. We still may not agree on a woman's right to choose, but surely we can agree it's a good thing that teen pregnancies and abortions are nearing all-time lows, and that every woman should have access to the health care that she needs. (Applause.)
Yes, passions still fly on immigration, but surely we can all see something of ourselves in the striving young student, and agree that no one benefits when a hardworking mom is snatched from her child, and that it's possible to shape a law that upholds our tradition as a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants. I've talked to Republicans and Democrats about that. That's something that we can share.
We may go at it in campaign season, but surely we can agree that the right to vote is sacred; that it's being denied to too many -- (applause) -- and that on this 50th anniversary of the great march from Selma to Montgomery and the passage of the Voting Rights Act, we can come together, Democrats and Republicans, to make voting easier for every single American. (Applause.)
We may have different takes on the events of Ferguson and New York. But surely we can understand a father who fears his son can't walk home without being harassed. And surely we can understand the wife who won't rest until the police officer she married walks through the front door at the end of his shift. (Applause.) And surely we can agree that it's a good thing that for the first time in 40 years, the crime rate and the incarceration rate have come down together, and use that as a starting point for Democrats and Republicans, community leaders and law enforcement, to reform America's criminal justice system so that it protects and serves all of us. (Applause.)
That's a better politics. That's how we start rebuilding trust. That's how we move this country forward. That's what the American people want. And that's what they deserve.
I have no more campaigns to run. (Applause.) My only agenda -- (laughter) -- I know because I won both of them. (Applause.) My only agenda for the next two years is the same as the one I've had since the day I swore an oath on the steps of this Capitol -- to do what I believe is best for America. If you share the broad vision I outlined tonight, I ask you to join me in the work at hand. If you disagree with parts of it, I hope you'll at least work with me where you do agree. And I commit to every Republican here tonight that I will not only seek out your ideas, I will seek to work with you to make this country stronger. (Applause.)
Because I want this chamber, I want this city to reflect the truth -- that for all our blind spots and shortcomings, we are a people with the strength and generosity of spirit to bridge divides, to unite in common effort, to help our neighbors, whether down the street or on the other side of the world.
I want our actions to tell every child in every neighborhood, your life matters, and we are committed to improving your life chances as committed as we are to working on behalf of our own kids. (Applause.) I want future generations to know that we are a people who see our differences as a great gift, that we're a people who value the dignity and worth of every citizen -- man and woman, young and old, black and white, Latino, Asian, immigrant, Native American, gay, straight, Americans with mental illness or physical disability. Everybody matters. I want them to grow up in a country that shows the world what we still know to be true: that we are still more than a collection of red states and blue states; that we are the United States of America. (Applause.)
I want them to grow up in a country where a young mom can sit down and write a letter to her President with a story that sums up these past six years: "It's amazing what you can bounce back from when you have to...we are a strong, tight-knit family who's made it through some very, very hard times."
My fellow Americans, we, too, are a strong, tight-knit family. We, too, have made it through some hard times. Fifteen years into this new century, we have picked ourselves up, dusted ourselves off, and begun again the work of remaking America. We have laid a new foundation. A brighter future is ours to write. Let's begin this new chapter together -- and let's start the work right now. (Applause.)
Thank you. God bless you. God bless this country we love. Thank you.
LOAD-DATE: January 21, 2015
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394 of 500 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
January 21, 2015 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
Behind Drop in Oil Prices, a Federal Role
BYLINE: By EDUARDO PORTER
SECTION: Section B; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; ECONOMIC SCENE; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1400 words
Did the United States kill OPEC?
The plummeting price of oil since Saudi Arabia decided last fall not to cut production to counter rising supply elsewhere has fueled intense speculation about a downfall of the infamous cartel, once feared for its power to bend oil prices to its will.
Was OPEC's biggest oil producer unwilling or just unable to stop an emerging glut? Does this mean oil will never again reach $100 a barrel -- where the spendthrift governments of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries need it to be?
What's missing from the discussion is an understanding of how the oil market got to this juncture and, notably, who brought it here.
The answer is surprising. It was the United States, mostly. Last year, the United States produced more oil than it had in 25 years, surpassing Saudi Arabia as the world's largest producer.
Perhaps the most intriguing part of this story is that one of the main participants in this revolution is the American government.
Facing fears of a broad energy shortage, in the shadow of an embargo by Arab oil producers, the Nixon administration and Congress laid the foundation of an industrial policy that over the span of four decades developed the technologies needed to unleash American shale oil and natural gas onto world markets.
Environmentalists against any government involvement in the fossil fuels business will hate this, of course. But the collaboration between government and business in pursuit of energy independence offers a valuable lesson for policy makers forging a strategy to fit the current energy imperative: reducing carbon emissions to combat climate change.
Many have remarked that the Arab oil embargo of 1973 weakened OPEC's hold over the oil market by encouraging non-OPEC supply -- from places like Prudhoe Bay in Alaska, which came to market through a pipeline approved by Congress just weeks after the embargo. The embargo also encouraged development of nuclear energy and coal-fueled power. It prompted Congress to pass fuel economy standards.
By contrast, little has been said about the role the United States government played in developing new energy technologies. And yet for all the criticism aimed at the Obama administration's efforts to address long-term energy challenges -- and the derision over its failed investments in companies like Solyndra -- the government's most useful role might indeed be to support research and ventures that could deliver a low-carbon future.
''If there is one key lesson from the shale revolution, it is that public investments in technology innovation can bring a huge benefit for both the economy and the environment,'' said Michael Shellenberger, the president of the Breakthrough Institute, an advocacy group for sustainable development, in Oakland, Calif.
The Breakthrough Institute has done the most thorough investigation I've seen of how three decades of government subsidies for research, demonstration and production helped bring about the revolution.
Interest in shale deposits was driven by a search for gas, not oil.
But the oil embargo gave them a big boost. Congress passed the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974, creating the Energy Research and Development Administration -- which would soon become the Department of Energy.
This kick-started a period of heavy government investment in research and development to recover gas from shale. The agency provided funds for ''directionally deviated'' drilling, a precursor to the horizontal drilling used today. It subsidized the development of polycrystalline diamond compact bits to cut through the shale. It performed the first big hydraulic fracturing. Energy Department labs created a multi-well fracking test site.
Research at the Sandia National Laboratories into underground imaging -- based on microseismic monitoring once used to detect coal mine collapses -- was critical to map fractures and position wells.
George Mitchell, the shale fracking pioneer, got help from the government, including in the deployment of a horizontal well and microseismic mapping.
The government did not always get it right. In fact, research into fracking initially took a back seat to efforts to produce ''synthetic fuels'' from things like ''oil shales'' -- which to date have delivered little in terms of cost-effective energy.
The government could also stand in the way. Price regulation was a significant barrier to investment into ''unconventional'' gas deposits until it was freed during the Reagan administration.
Of course, the government assistance would have come to nothing without private entrepreneurs who took risks and followed market signals. Fracking was mostly reserved for gas until gas prices started falling a few years ago, shifting producers' efforts to oil, which could be exploited using similar technologies.
Yet Washington played a critical part in the story that led to oil's recent fall.
According to Jim Hamilton, an energy economist at the University of California, San Diego, the world's real income increased by nearly 28 percent from 2005 to 2013. To keep oil prices stable, supply would have had to increase by over 19 percent. But field production of crude increased by only 3.1 percent.
Supply was kept in check, in part, by unforeseen events: wars across the Middle East, attacks on oil infrastructure in Nigeria, sanctions on Iran. But OPEC's big producers, like Saudi Arabia, did not increase production, either. Excepting the momentary swoon after the financial crisis of 2008, flat output from the cartel kept prices on the rise for more than a decade.
What brought the arrangement crashing down was American shale oil.
By 2013, the United States was already producing 3.5 million barrels of shale oil. Given the new American supply, high prices could simply not hold. ''It was not feasible for the Saudis to defend $100 a barrel,'' Professor Hamilton said. ''It was a losing strategy. Fracking would have taken more of the market.''
A price of $45 a barrel does not portend a great future for American shale oil, which is comparatively expensive to produce. As investment in new shale production dwindles, oil prices are likely to recover.
But even if a bunch of shale producers are driven out of business, the industry -- which can add or cut production more quickly in response to price signals -- might still change oil markets for good, putting a ceiling on oil prices closer to $50 a barrel than to OPEC's preferred $100.
''We probably won't see $100 a barrel for a while,'' said Jeff Colgan, a political scientist at American University who has studied the evolution of global oil. ''Fracking does put a bit of a ceiling on the price.''
An important question is what this will do to efforts to combat climate change.
Just as the surge in natural gas from shale sharply reduced carbon emissions from the nation's power plants, the plunge in oil prices offers a sobering reminder of the power of markets over policy.
Consider, for instance, that the White House's middle estimate of the social cost of carbon -- which measures the broad damage of putting it into the air, a starting point for debates over a carbon tax -- is only about $43.39 per ton of carbon dioxide. That comes to about $18.66 per barrel of crude oil, a trivial sum compared with the significant price drop in recent weeks.
Oil's swoon could feed directly through to bigger sport utility vehicle sales and more driving. It could blunt the political impetus to tighten fuel emissions standards.
But oil's gyrations also offer an opportunity. ''Reducing our heavy dependence on oil will require us to pay forward the huge return on our 40-year shale investments through a similarly long-term effort to accelerate the transition to fuel cell, electric or some other vehicles,'' Mr. Shellenberger said.
The falling price of oil offers an opportunity for the government to raise the cash to do so.
Rock-bottom oil offers a great opportunity to increase the gasoline tax without damaging Americans' purchasing power. Many Republicans -- even those most dismissive of climate change -- realize that cheap oil creates an opportunity to raise gas taxes without angering voters.
If enough such Republicans could be found (a risky bet), the swoon in oil prices could be leveraged into a boon in tax revenue that the government could use to pick some of the winners that will help solve the problem.
Email: eporter@nytimes.com; Twitter: @portereduardo
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/21/business/economy/washingtons-role-in-oil-prices-recent-fall.html
LOAD-DATE: January 21, 2015
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: An oil rig control room. The United States has become the world's largest oil producer. (PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL STRAVATO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (B9) CHART: Enter American Shale Oil: While OPEC countries' share of world oil production has remained flat for 20 years, the United States' share has surged. (Source: Energy Information Administration) (B9)
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Obama's State of the Union 2015 Transcript (Full Text) and Video
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Following is the transcript of President Obama's State of the Union address, as transcribed by the Federal News Service.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you so much, please. Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, members of Congress, my fellow Americans.
We are 15 years into this new century, 15 years that dawned with terror touching our shores; that unfolded with a new generation fighting two long and costly wars; that saw a vicious recession spread across our nation and the world. It has been, and still is, a hard time for many. But tonight, we turn thepage.
Tonight, after a breakthrough year for America, our economy is growing and creating jobs at thefastest pace since 1999. (Applause.) Our unemployment rate is now lower than it was before thefinancial crisis. More of our kids are graduating than ever before; more of our people are insured than ever before -- (applause) -- and we are as free from the grip of foreign oil as we've been in almost 30 years. (Applause.)
Tonight, for the first time since 9/11, our combat mission in Afghanistan is over. Six years ago, nearly 180,000 American troops served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Today, fewer than 15,000 remain. And we salute the courage and sacrifice of every man and woman in this 9/11 Generation who has served to keep us safe. We are humbled and grateful for your service. (Applause.)
America, for all that we've endured, for all the grit and hard work required to come back, for all thetasks that lie ahead, know this: The shadow of crisis has passed, and the State of the Union is strong. (Applause.)
At this moment, with a growing economy, shrinking deficits, bustling industry, booming energy production, we have risen from recession freer to write our own future than any other nation on Earth. It's now up to us to choose who we want to be over the next fifteen years, and for decades to come.
Will we accept an economy where only a few of us do spectacularly well? Or will we commit ourselves to an economy that generates rising incomes and chances for everyone who makes theeffort? (Applause.)
Will we approach the world fearful and reactive, dragged into costly conflicts that strain our military and set back our standing? Or will we lead wisely, using all elements of our power to defeat new threats and protect our planet?
Will we allow ourselves to be sorted into factions and turned against one another, or will we recapturethe sense of common purpose that has always propelled America forward?
In two weeks, I will send this Congress a budget filled with ideas that are practical, not partisan. And in the months ahead, I'll crisscross the country making a case for those ideas.
So tonight, I want to focus less on a checklist of proposals, and focus more on the values at stake inthe choices before us.
It begins with our economy.
Seven years ago, Rebekah and Ben Erler of Minneapolis were newlyweds. She waited tables. He worked construction. Their first child, Jack, was on the way. They were young and in love in America, and it doesn't get much better than that.
''If only we had known,'' Rebekah wrote to me last spring, ''what was about to happen to the housing and construction market.''
As the crisis worsened, Ben's business dried up, so he took what jobs he could find, even if they kept him on the road for long stretches of time.
Rebekah took out student loans and enrolled in community college and retrained for a new career.
They sacrificed for each other, and slowly, it paid off. They bought their first home. They had a second son, Henry. Rebekah got a better job, and then a raise. Ben's back in construction and home for dinner every night.
''It is amazing,'' Rebekah wrote, ''what you can bounce back from when you have to. We are a strong, tight-knit family who has made it through some very, hard times.''
''We are a strong, tight-knit family who has made it through some very, hard times.''
America, Rebekah and Ben's story is our story. They represent the millions who've worked hard and scrimped and sacrificed and retooled.
You are the reason that I ran for this office. You are the people I was thinking of six years ago today in the darkest months of the crisis when I stood on the steps of this Capitol and promised we would rebuild our economy on a new foundation. And it has been your resilience, your effort that has made it possible for our country to emerge stronger.
We believed we could reverse the tide of outsourcing, and draw new jobs to our shores. And over thepast five years, our businesses have created more than 11 million new jobs. (Applause.)
We believed we could reduce our dependence on foreign oil and protect our planet. And today, America is number one in oil and gas. America is number one in wind power. Every three weeks, we bring online as much solar power as we did in all of 2008. (Applause.)
And thanks to lower gas prices and higher fuel standards, the typical family this year should save about $750 at the pump. (Applause.)
We believed we could prepare our kids for a more competitive world. And today, our younger students have earned the highest math and reading scores on record. Our high school graduation rate has hit an all-time high. More Americans finish college than ever before. (Applause.
We believed that sensible regulations could prevent another crisis, shield families from ruin, and encourage fair competition.
Today, we have new tools to stop taxpayer-funded bailouts, and a new consumer watchdog to protect us from predatory lending and abusive credit card practices. And in the past year alone, about ten million uninsured Americans finally gained the security of health coverage. (Applause.)
At every step, we were told our goals were misguided or too ambitious, that we would crush jobs and explode deficits. Instead, we've seen the fastest economic growth in over a decade, our deficits cut by two thirds, a stock market that has doubled and health care inflation at its lowest rate in 50 years. (Applause.)
This is good news, people. (Laughter.) So -- (applause) -- so the verdict is clear. Middle-class economics works, expanding opportunity works, and these policies will continue to work as long as politics don't get in the way.
We can't slow down businesses or put our economy at risk with government shutdowns or fiscal showdowns. We can't put the security of families at risk by taking away their health insurance or unraveling the new rules on Wall Street or refighting past battles on immigration when we've got to fix a broken system.
And if a bill comes to my desk that tries to do any of these things, it will veto it. It will have earned my veto. (Applause.)
Today, thanks to a growing economy, the recovery is touching more and more lives. Wages are finally starting to rise again. We know that more small-business owners plan to raise their employees' pay than at any time since 2007.
But here's the thing. Those of us here tonight, we need to set our sights higher than just making sure government doesn't screw things up, the government doesn't halt the progress we're making. We need to do more than just do no harm.
Tonight, together, let's do more to restore the link between hard work and growing opportunity for every American. (Applause.)
Because families like Rebekah's still need our help. She and Ben are working as hard as ever, but they've had to forego vacations and a new car so that they can pay off student loans and save for retirement. Friday night pizza, that's a big splurge. Basic child care for Jack and Henry costs more than their mortgage, and almost as much as a year at the University of Minnesota.
Like millions of hardworking Americans, Rebekah isn't asking for a handout, but she is asking that we look for more ways to help families get ahead.
And in fact, at every moment of economic change throughout our history, this country has taken bold action to adapt to new circumstances and to make sure everyone gets a fair shot.
We set up worker protections, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid to protect ourselves from theharshest adversity. We gave our citizens schools and colleges, infrastructure and the Internet, tools they needed to go as far as their efforts and their dreams will take them.
That's what middle-class economics is: the idea that this country does best when everyone gets their fair shot, everyone does their fair share, everyone plays by the same set of rules. (Applause.) We don't just want everyone to share in America's success; we want everyone to contribute to our success. (Applause.)
So -- so what does middle-class economics require in our time?
First, middle-class economics means helping working families feel more secure in a world of constant change. That means helping folks afford child care, college, health care, a home, retirement, and my budget will address each of these issues, lowering the taxes of working families and putting thousands of dollars back into their pockets each year. (Applause.)
Here's one example: During World War II, when men like my grandfather went off to war, having women like my grandmother in the workforce was a national security priority. So this country provided universal child care.
In today's economy, when having both parents in the workforce is an economic necessity for many families, we need affordable, high-quality child care more than ever. (Applause.)
It's not a nice-to-have: it's a must-have. So it's time we stop treating childcare as a side issue, or a women's issue, and treat it like the national economic priority that it is for all of us. (Applause.)
And that's why my plan will make quality childcare more available, and more affordable, for every middle-class and low-income family with young children in America, by creating more slots and a new tax cut of up to $3,000 per child, per year. (Applause.)
Here's another example. Today, we are the only advanced country on Earth that doesn't guarantee paid sick leave or paid maternity leave to our workers. 43 million workers have no paid sick leave. 43 million. Think about that.
And that forces too many parents to make the gut-wrenching choice between a paycheck and a sick kid at home. So I'll be taking new action to help states adopt paid leave laws of their own. And since paid sick leave won where it was on the ballot last November, let's put it to a vote right here in Washington. (Applause.) Send me a bill that gives every worker in America the opportunity to earn seven days of paid sick leave.
It's the right thing to do. (Applause.)
Of course, nothing helps families make ends meet like higher wages. That's why this Congress still needs to pass a law that makes sure a woman is paid the same as a man for doing the same work. (Applause.) It's 2015. It's time. We still need to make sure employees get the overtime they've earned -- (applause) -- and everyone in this Congress who still refuses to raise the minimum wage, I say this: If you truly believe you could work full-time and support a family on less than $15,000 a year, try it. (Laughter.) If not, vote to give millions of the hardest-working people in America a raise. (Applause.)
These ideas won't make everybody rich, won't relieve every hardship. That's not the job ofgovernment.
To give working families a fair shot, we still need more employers to see beyond next quarter's earnings and recognize that investing in their workforce is in their company's long-term interest.
We still need laws that strengthen rather than weaken unions, and give American workers a voice. (Applause.)
But -- but you know, things like child care and sick leave and equal pay, things like lower mortgage premiums and a higher minimum wage, these ideas will make a meaningful difference in the lives ofmillions of families. That's a fact. And that's what all of us, Republicans and Democrats alike, were sent here to do.
Second, to make sure folks keep earning higher wages down the road, we have to do more to help Americans upgrade their skills. (Applause.)
Now America thrived in the 20th century because we made high school free, sent a generation ofG.I.s to college, trained the best workforce in the world. We were ahead of the curve. But other countries caught on. And in a 21st century economy that rewards knowledge like never before, we need to up our game. We need to do more.
By the end of this decade, two in three job openings will require some higher education. Two in three. And yet, we still live in a country where too many bright, striving Americans are priced out of theeducation they need. It's not fair to them, and it's sure not smart for our future. That's why I am sending this Congress a bold new plan to lower the cost of community college to zero. (Applause.)
Keep in mind, 40 percent of our college students choose community college. Some are young and starting out. Some are older and looking for a better job. Some are veterans and single parents trying to transition back into the job market.
Whoever you are, this plan is your chance to graduate ready for the new economy, without a load ofdebt. Understand, you've got to earn it. You've got to keep your grades up and graduate on time.
Tennessee, a state with Republican leadership, and Chicago, a city with Democratic leadership, are showing that free community college is possible. I want to spread that idea all across America so that two years of college becomes as free and universal in America as high school is today. (Applause.) Let's stay ahead of the curve.
And -- and I want to work with this Congress to make sure Americans already burdened with student loans can reduce their monthly payments so that student debt doesn't derail anyone's dreams. (Applause.)
Thanks to Vice President Biden's great work to update our job training system, we're connecting community colleges with local employers to train workers to fill high-paying jobs like coding and nursing and robotics.
Tonight, I'm also asking more businesses to follow the lead of companies like CVS and UPS and offer more educational benefits and paid apprenticeships, opportunities that give workers the chance to earn higher-paying jobs, even if they don't have a higher education.
And as a new generation of veterans comes home, we owe them every opportunity to live theAmerican Dream they helped defend.
Already, we've made strides towards ensuring that every veteran has access to the highest quality care, we're slashing the backlog that had too many veterans waiting years to get the benefits they need, and we're making it easier for vets to translate their training and experience into civilian jobs.
And joining forces, the national campaign launched by Michelle and Jill Biden -- (applause) -- thank you, Michelle, thank you, Jill -- has helped nearly 700,000 veterans and military spouses get a new job. (Applause.)
So to every CEO in America, let me repeat: If you want somebody who's going to get the job done, and done right, hire a veteran. (Applause.)
Finally, as we better train our workers, we need the new economy to keep churning out high-wage jobs for our workers to fill. Since 2010, America has put more people back to work than Europe, Japan, and all advanced economies combined. (Applause.)
Our manufacturers have added almost 800,000 new jobs. Some of our bedrock sectors, like our auto industry, are booming. But there are also millions of Americans who work in jobs that didn't even exist 10 or 20 years ago: jobs at companies like Google, and eBay, and Tesla.
So no one knows for certain which industries will generate the jobs of the future. But we do know we want them here in America. (Applause.) We know that.
That's why the third part of middle-class economics is all about building the most competitive economy anywhere, the place where businesses want to locate and hire.
Twenty-first st century businesses need 21st century infrastructure: modern ports, and stronger bridges, faster trains and the fastest Internet. (Applause.)
Democrats and Republicans used to agree on this. So let's set our sights higher than a single oil pipeline; let's pass a bipartisan -- (applause) -- infrastructure plan that could create more than 30 times as many jobs per year and make this country stronger for decades to come.
Let's do it. Let's get it done. (Applause.) Let's get it done.
21st century businesses, including small businesses, need to sell more American products overseas. Today, our businesses export more than ever, and exporters tend to pay their workers higher wages.
But as we speak, China wants to write the rules for the world's fastest-growing region. That would put our workers and our businesses at a disadvantage.
Why would we let that happen? We should write those rules. We should level the playing field.
That's why I'm asking both parties to give me trade promotion authority to protect American workers with strong new trade deals from Asia to Europe --(applause) -- that aren't just free but are also fair. It's the right thing to do.
Look, I'm -- I'm the first one to admit -- I'm the first one to admit that past trade deals haven't always lived up to the hype, and that's why we've gone after countries --- (applause) -- that break the rules at our expense. But 95 percent of the world's customers live outside our borders. We can't close ourselves off from those opportunities. More than half of manufacturing executives have said they're actively looking to bring jobs back from China. So let's give them one more reason to get it done.
21st century businesses will rely on American science and technology, research and development. I want the country that eliminated polio and mapped the human genome to lead a new era of medicine: one that delivers the right treatment at the right time. (Applause.)
In some patients with cystic fibrosis, this approach has reversed a disease once thought unstoppable. Tonight, I'm launching a new Precision Medicine Initiative to bring us closer to curing diseases like cancer and diabetes and to give all of us access to the personalized information we need to keep ourselves and our families healthier. We can do this. (Applause.)
I intend to protect a free and open Internet, to extend its reach to every classroom, and every community -- (applause) -- and help folks build the fastest networks, so that the next generation ofdigital innovators and entrepreneurs have the platform to keep reshaping our world.
I want Americans to win the race for the kinds of discoveries that unleash new jobs: converting sunlight into liquid fuel; creating revolutionary prosthetics, so that a veteran who gave his arms for his country can play catch with his kids again. (Applause.)
Pushing out into the solar system not just to visit, but to stay. Last month, we launched a new spacecraft as part of a re-energized space program that will send American astronauts to Mars. And in two months, to prepare us for those missions, Scott Kelly will begin a year-long stay in space. So good luck, Captain. (Applause.) Make sure to Instagram it. We're proud of you.
Now, the truth is when it comes to issues like infrastructure and basic research, I know there's bipartisan support in this chamber. Members of both parties have told me so.
Where we too often run onto the rocks is how to pay for these investments. As Americans, we don't mind paying our fair share of taxes, as long as everybody else does too.
But for far too long, lobbyists have rigged the tax code with loopholes that let some corporations pay nothing while others pay full freight. They've riddled it with giveaways that the super rich don't need, while denying a break to middle-class families who do.
This year, we have an opportunity to change that. Let's close loopholes so we stop rewarding companies that keep profits abroad, and reward those that invest in America. (Applause.) Let's use those savings to rebuild our infrastructure and make it more attractive for companies to bring jobs home. Let's simplify the system and let a small-business owner file based on her actual bank statement instead of the number of accountants she can afford. (Applause.)
And let's close the loopholes that lead to inequality by allowing the top one percent to avoid paying taxes on their accumulated wealth. We can use that money to help more families pay for childcare and send their kids to college. We need a tax code that truly helps working Americans trying to get a leg up in the new economy, and we can achieve that together. (Applause.) We can achieve it together.
Helping hardworking families make ends meet. Giving them the tools they need for good-paying jobs in this new economy. Maintaining the conditions of growth and competitiveness. This is where America needs to go. I believe it's where the American people want to go. It will make our economy stronger a year from now, 15 years from now, and deep into the century ahead.
Of course, if there's one thing this new century has taught us, it's that we cannot separate our work at home from challenges beyond our shores.
My first duty as Commander-in-Chief is to defend the United States of America. In doing so, thequestion is not -- in doing so the question is not whether America leads in the world, but how.
When we make rash decisions, reacting to the headlines instead of using our heads; when the first response to a challenge is to send in our military, then we risk getting drawn into unnecessary conflicts, and neglect the broader strategy we need for a safer, more prosperous world. That's what our enemies want us to do.
I believe in a smarter kind of American leadership. We lead best when we combine military power with strong diplomacy; when we leverage our power with coalition building; when we don't let our fears blind us to the opportunities that this new century presents.
That's exactly what we're doing right now, and around the globe, it is making a difference.
First, we stand united with people around the world who've been targeted by terrorists, from a school in Pakistan to the streets of Paris.
We will continue -- (applause) -- to hunt down terrorists and dismantle their networks, and we reservethe right to act unilaterally, as we have done relentlessly since I took office, to take out terrorists who pose a direct threat to us and our allies. (Applause.)
At the same time, we've learned some costly lessons over the last 13 years. Instead of Americans patrolling the valleys of Afghanistan, we've trained their security forces, who've now taken the lead, and we've honored our troops' sacrifice by supporting that country's first democratic transition.
Instead of sending large ground forces overseas, we're partnering with nations from South Asia to North Africa to deny safe haven to terrorists who threaten America.
In Iraq and Syria, American leadership, including our military power, is stopping ISIL's advance. Instead of getting dragged into another ground war in the Middle East, we are leading a broad coalition, including Arab nations, to degrade and ultimately destroy this terrorist group. (Applause.)
We're also supporting a moderate opposition in Syria that can help us in this effort and assisting people everywhere who stand up to the bankrupt ideology of violent extremism.
Now, this effort will take time. It will require focus. But we will succeed. And tonight, I call on this Congress to show the world that we are united in this mission by passing a resolution to authorize theuse of force against ISIL. (Applause.) We need that authority.
Second, we are demonstrating the power of American strength and diplomacy. We're upholding theprinciple that bigger nations can't bully the small by opposing Russian aggression and supporting Ukraine's democracy, and reassuring our NATO allies. (Applause.)
Last year, as we were doing the hard work of imposing sanctions along with our allies, as we were reinforcing our presence with the frontline states, Mr. Putin's aggression, it was suggested, was a masterful display of strategy and strength. That's what I heard from some folks. Well, today, it is America that stands strong and united with our allies, while Russia is isolated, with its economy in tatters. That's how America leads: not with bluster, but with persistent, steady resolve. (Applause.)
In Cuba, we are ending a policy -- (applause) -- that was long past its expiration date. When what you're doing doesn't work for 50 years, it's time to try something new. (Applause.) And our shift in Cuba policy has the potential to end a legacy of mistrust in our hemisphere and removes the phony excuse for restrictions in Cuba, stands up for democratic values and extends the hand of friendship tothe Cuban people. And this year, Congress should begin the work of ending the embargo. (Applause.)
As -- as his Holiness, Pope Francis, has said, diplomacy is the work of small steps. These small steps have added up to new hope for the future in Cuba. And after years in prison, we are overjoyed that Alan Gross is back where he belongs. (Applause.) Welcome home, Alan. We're glad you're here.
Our diplomacy is at work with respect to Iran, where, for the first time in a decade, we've halted theprogress of its nuclear program and reduced its stockpile of nuclear material.
Between now and this spring, we have a chance to negotiate a comprehensive agreement that prevents a nuclear-armed Iran, secures America and our allies, including Israel, while avoiding yet another Middle East conflict.
There're no guarantees that negotiations will succeed, and I keep all options on the table to prevent a nuclear Iran. But new sanctions passed by this Congress at this moment in time will all but guarantee that diplomacy fails, alienating America from its allies, making it harder to maintain sanctions and ensuring that Iran starts up its nuclear program again. It doesn't make sense. That is why I will veto any new sanctions bill that threatens to undo this progress. (Applause.) The American people expect us to only go to war as a last resort, and I intend to stay true to that wisdom.
Third, we're looking beyond the issues that have consumed us in the past to shape the coming century.
No foreign nation, no hacker, should be able to shut down our networks, steal our trade secrets, or invade the privacy of American families, especially our kids. (Applause.)
But we are making sure our government integrates intelligence to combat cyber threats, just as we have done to combat terrorism. And tonight, I urge this Congress to finally pass the legislation we need to better meet the evolving threat of cyber-attacks, combat identity theft, and protect our children's information. That should be a bipartisan effort. (Applause.)
You know, if we don't act, we'll leave our nation and our economy vulnerable. If we do, we can continue to protect the technologies that have unleashed untold opportunities for people around theglobe.
In West Africa, our troops, our scientists, our doctors, our nurses and healthcare workers are rolling back Ebola, saving countless lives and stopping the spread of disease. (Applause.) I could not be prouder of them, and I thank this Congress for your bipartisan support of their efforts.
But the job is not yet done, and the world needs to use this lesson to build a more effective global effort to prevent the spread of future pandemics, invest in smart development and eradicate extreme poverty.
In the Asia Pacific, we are modernizing alliances while making sure that other nations play by therules in how they trade, how they resolve maritime disputes, how they participate in meeting common international challenges like nonproliferation and disaster relief. And no challenge, no challenge, poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change. (Applause.) 2014 was the planet's warmest year on record.
Now, one year doesn't make a trend, but this does: 14 of the 15 warmest years on record have all fallen in the first 15 years of this century.
I've heard some folks try to dodge the evidence by saying they're not scientists, that we don't have enough information to act. Well, I'm not a scientist either. But you know what? I know a lot of really good scientists at NASA and at NOAA and at our major universities, and the best scientists in theworld are all telling us that our activities are changing the climate, and if we don't act forcefully, we'll continue to see rising oceans, longer, hotter heat waves, dangerous droughts and floods, and massive disruptions that can trigger greater migration and conflict and hunger around the globe. ThePentagon says that climate change poses immediate risks to our national security. We should act like it. (Applause.)
That's why, over the past six years, we've done more than ever to combat climate change, from theway we produce energy, to the way we use it. That's why we've set aside more public lands and waters than any administration in history. And that's why I will not let this Congress endanger thehealth of our children by turning back the clock on our efforts. I am determined to make sure American leadership drives international action. (Applause.)
In Beijing, we made a historic announcement: the United States will double the pace at which we cut carbon pollution, and China committed, for the first time, to limiting their emissions. And because theworld's two largest economies came together, other nations are now stepping up, and offering hope that, this year, the world will finally reach an agreement to protect the one planet we've got.
And There's one last pillar of our leadership, and that's the example of our values.
As Americans, we respect human dignity, even when we're threatened, which is why I've prohibited torture, and worked to make sure our use of new technology like drones is properly constrained. (Applause.) It's why we speak out against the deplorable anti-Semitism that has resurfaced in certain parts of the world. (Applause.)
It's why we continue to reject offensive stereotypes of Muslims, the vast majority of whom share our commitment to peace. That's why we defend free speech and advocate for political prisoners and condemn the persecution of women or religious minorities or people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. We do these things not only because they are the right thing to do -- (applause) -- but because ultimately, they make us safer.
As Americans, we have a profound commitment to justice. So it makes no sense to spend $3 million per prisoner to keep open a prison that the world condemns and terrorists use to recruit. (Applause.)
Since I've been president, we've worked responsibly to cut the population of Gitmo in half. Now it is time to finish the job, and I will not relent in my determination to shut it down. It is not who we are. (Applause.) It's time to close Gitmo.
As Americans, we cherish our civil liberties, and we need to uphold that commitment if we want maximum cooperation from other countries and industry in our fight against terrorist networks. So while some have moved on from the debates over our surveillance programs, I have not. As promised, our intelligence agencies have worked hard, with the recommendations of privacy advocates to increase transparency and build more safeguards against potential abuse.
And next month, we'll issue a report on how we're keeping our promise to keep our country safe while strengthening privacy.
Looking to the future instead of the past, making sure we match our power with diplomacy and use force wisely. Building coalitions to meet new challenges and opportunities. Leading always with theexample of our values. That's what makes us exceptional. That's what keeps us strong. And that's why we have to keep striving to hold ourselves to the highest of standards: our own.
You know, just over a decade ago, I gave a speech in Boston where I said there wasn't a liberal America, or a conservative America; a black America or a white America, but a United States ofAmerica.
I said this because I had seen it in my own life, in a nation that gave someone like me a chance; because I grew up in Hawaii, a melting pot of races and customs; because I made Illinois my home, astate of small towns, rich farmland, and one of the world's great cities; a microcosm of the country where Democrats and Republicans and Independents, good people of every ethnicity and every faith, share certain bedrock values.
Over the past six years, the pundits have pointed out more than once that my presidency hasn't delivered on this vision. How ironic, they say, that our politics seems more divided than ever. It's held up as proof not just of my own flaws, of which there are many, but also as proof that the vision itself is misguided, naive, that there are too many people in this town who actually benefit from partisanship and gridlock for us to ever do anything about it.
I know how tempting such cynicism may be. But I still think the cynics are wrong. I still believe that we are one people. I still believe that together -- (applause) -- we can do great things, even when theodds are long.
I believe this because over and over in my six years in office, I have seen America at its best. I've seen the hopeful faces of young graduates from New York to California; and our newest officers at West Point, Annapolis, Colorado Springs, and New London. I've mourned with grieving families in Tucson and Newtown; in Boston, and West Texas, and West Virginia. I've watched Americans beat back adversity from the Gulf Coast to the Great Plains; from Midwest assembly lines to the Mid-Atlantic seaboard.
I've seen something like gay marriage go from a wedge issue used to drive us apart to a story offreedom across our country, a civil right now legal -- (applause) -- in states that seven in ten Americans call home.
So I know the good, and optimistic, and big-hearted generosity of the American people who, every day, live the idea that we are our brother's keeper, and our sister's keeper. And I know they expect those of us who serve here to set a better example.
So the question for those of us here tonight is how we, all of us, can better reflect America's hopes. I've served in Congress with many of you. I know many of you well. There are a lot of good people here, on both sides of the aisle.
And many of you have told me that this isn't what you signed up for -- arguing past each other on cable shows, the constant fundraising, always looking over your shoulder at how the base will react to every decision.
Imagine if we broke out of these tired old patterns. Imagine if we did something different.
Understand, a better politics isn't one where Democrats abandon their agenda or Republicans simply embrace mine; a better politics is one where we appeal to each other's basic decency instead of our basest fears.
A better politics is one where we debate without demonizing each other, where we talk issues and values and principles and facts, rather than ''gotcha'' moments or trivial gaffes or fake controversies that have nothing to do with people's daily lives. (Applause.)
A politics -- a better politics is one where we spend less time drowning in dark money for ads that pull us into the gutter, and spend more time lifting young people up with a sense of purpose and possibility, asking them to join in the great mission of building America.
If we're going to have arguments, let's have arguments. But let's make them debates worthy of this body and worthy of this country.
We still may not agree on a woman's right to choose, but surely, we can agree it's a good thing that teen pregnancies and abortions are nearing all-time lows, and that every woman should have access to the health care that she needs. (Applause.)
Yes, passions still fly on immigration, but surely we can all see something of ourselves in the striving young student, and agree that no one benefits when a hardworking mom is snatched from her child, and that it's possible to shape a law that upholds our tradition as a nation of laws and a nation ofimmigrants. I've talked to Republicans and Democrats about that. That's something that we can share.
We may go at it in campaign season, but surely we can agree that the right to vote is sacred -- (applause) -- that it's being denied to too many; and that, on this 50th anniversary of the great march from Selma to Montgomery and the passage of the Voting Rights Act, we can come together, Democrats and Republicans, to make voting easier for every single American. (Applause.)
We may have different takes on the events of Ferguson and New York. But surely we can understand a father who fears his son can't walk home without being harassed. And surely we can understandthe wife who won't rest until the police officer she married walks through the front door at the end ofhis shift. (Applause.)
And surely we can agree it's a good thing that for the first time in 40 years, the crime rate and theincarceration rate have come down together, and use that as a starting point for Democrats and Republicans, community leaders and law enforcement, to reform America's criminal justice system so that it protects and serves all of us. (Applause.)
That's a better politics. That's how we start rebuilding trust. That's how we move this country forward. That's what the American people want. That's what they deserve. I have no more campaigns to run. My only agenda -- (applause, laughter) -- I know, because I won both of them. (Applause, laughter.) My only agenda for the next two years is the same as the one I've had since the day I swore an oath on the steps of this Capitol: to do what I believe is best for America.
If you share the broad vision I outlined tonight, I ask you to join me in the work at hand. If you disagree with parts of it, I hope you'll at least work with me where you do agree. And I commit to every Republican here tonight that I will not only seek out your ideas, I will seek to work with you to make this country stronger. (Applause.)
Because -- because I want this chamber, I want this city, to reflect the truth that for all our blind spots and shortcomings, we are a people with the strength and generosity of spirit to bridge divides, to unite in common effort, to help our neighbors, whether down the street or on the other side of the world.
I want our actions to tell every child, in every neighborhood: your life matters, and we are as committed to improving your life chances -- (applause) -- as committed as we are we are to working on behalf of our own kids.
I want future generations to know that we are a people who see our differences as a great gift, that we are a people who value the dignity and worth of every citizen: man and woman, young and old, black and white, Latino and Asian, immigrant and Native American, gay and straight, Americans with mental illness or physical disability. Everybody matters.
I want them to grow up in a country that shows the world what we still know to be true: that we are still more than a collection of red states and blue states; that we are the United States of America. (Applause.) I want them to grow up in a country where a young mom can sit down and write a letter to her president with a story that sums up these past six years:
''It is amazing what you can bounce back from when you have to. We are a strong, tight-knit family who has made it through some very, very hard times.''
My fellow Americans, we too are a strong, tight-knit family. We, too, have made it through some hard times. Fifteen years into this new century, we have picked ourselves up, dusted ourselves off and begun again the work of remaking America. We have laid a new foundation. A brighter future is ours to write.
Let's begin this new chapter together, and let's start the work right now.
Thank you. God bless you. (Applause.) God bless this country we love. Thank you.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/21/us/politics/obamas-state-of-the-union-2015-address.html
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January 21, 2015 Wednesday
How 'Warmest Ever' Headlines and Debates Can Obscure What Matters About Climate Change
BYLINE: ANDREW C. REVKIN
SECTION: OPINION
LENGTH: 1402 words
HIGHLIGHT: The complex calculations behind federal scientists’ conclusion that 2014 was “easily” the warmest since records began in 1880.
If you track developments related to human-driven global warming, my guess is you're aware that the federal agencies that analyze climate conditions released the final word on 2014's climate on Friday.
Both NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration firmly concluded that last year beat out 2010 and 2005, the previous years that had held the title of warmest since methodical record-keeping began in 1880.
N.O.A.A. went the furthest, saying its calculations showed 2014 "easily breaking the previous records":
Ever since, there've been salvos from criticsdecrying the definitiveness with which both agencies summarized the 2014 findings (each agency had a distinct methodology and slightly different conclusions).
I talked about this yesterday on Brian Lehrer's radio show, making the point that it's a distraction to focus on records - as the media and elected officials tend to do - given how year-to-year differences in global temperature are measured in a few hundredths of a degree Fahrenheit, and given the implicit uncertainty in such measurements. You can listen here.
Such fights divert attention from long-term trends:
If you want to dig in on whether the agencies oversimplified, read on to learn why I think so. I think it would have been better to have been clear up front that the case for 2014 is probabilistic, not set in stone.
But I also agree with Gavin A. Schmidt, the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who noted in an email that it's unlikely those focused on sowing doubt about global warming will magically cheer if the agencies get every dot and dash right:
There is no proportionality in the size of the backlash against word choices and framing. It should be be obvious why. These are the same people every time looking for a reason to distract, dissemble and yes, deny, that anything is happening.
To see where the issue lies, you have to dig into the agency websites or look at the separate analysis done by James Hansen of Columbia University along with Schmidt of NASA and others. When you do, you see abundant references to the uncertainties behind the news releases and news headlines.
The N.O.A.A. website has a page describing how it reached its conclusions about last year - "Calculating the Probability of Rankings for 2014" - which states:
Taking into account the uncertainty and assuming all years (1880-2014) in the time series are independent, the chance of 2014 being....
- Warmest year on record: 48.0%- One of the five warmest years: 90.4%- One of the 10 warmest years: 99.2%
Using the agency's characterizations at the bottom of the page, the 48-percent probability is "more unlikely than likely."
I queried the agency press office yesterday, asking how that can be squared with saying 2014 "easily" set a new record?
They put me in touch with Derek Arndt, one of the National Climatic Data Center scientists who worked on the 2014 report. He said it's not that simple, explaining that it's the relative ranking of probabilities of last year and previous warm years that leads to the conclusion that 2014 tops the list.
On this point, he wrote:
[P]lease reference the N.O.A.A. half of slide 5 of [the agencies' online briefing]:
These are the probabilities of the given years being the warmest on record, using calculations based upon the uncertainties (and the shape of those uncertainties) associated with each year's value. 2014 comes in at 48%. The next most likely year is 2010, at 18%. This means that 2014 is a little more than 2.5 times more likely than 2010 to be the warmest on record.
This may seem pedantic, but it's an important point: there is a warmest year on record. One of the 135 years in that history is the warmest. 2014 is clearly, and by a very large margin, the most likely warmest year. Not only is its central estimate relatively distant from (warmer than) the prior record, but even accounting for known uncertainties, and their known shapes, it still emerges as easily the most likely warmest year on record.
Another agency Web page provides detail on this point.
Arndt also said some critics and some news media missed, or misconstrued, that the odds of each year being the warmest are expressed in different ranges, not single numbers, but this still can reveal a clear leader. He alluded to this helpful graph produced and tweeted by Gavin Schmidt at NASA:
For more on all of this, Andrew Freedman at Mashable has a nice summary of the arguments used by NASA and N.O.A.A. climate scientists defending their definitiveness and explaining how critics are either misunderstanding or mischaracterizing sources of uncertainty.
An independent climate research group, Berkeley Earth, put 2014 in a tie with 2005 and 2010, noting the uncertainties.
In his State of the Union address to Congress last night, President Obama (no surprise) echoed the agencies' definitiveness on 2014's record heat, but wisely didn't dwell on that, making the point that the pattern is the key (along with the accumulating science pointing to specific rising risks):
2014 was the planet's warmest year on record. Now, one year doesn't make a trend, but this does - 14 of the 15 warmest years on record have all fallen in the first 15 years of this century.
I've heard some folks try to dodge the evidence by saying they're not scientists; that we don't have enough information to act. Well, I'm not a scientist, either. But you know what - I know a lot of really good scientists at NASA, and N.O.A.A., and at our major universities. The best scientists in the world are all telling us that our activities are changing the climate, and if we do not act forcefully, we'll continue to see rising oceans, longer, hotter heat waves, dangerous droughts and floods, and massive disruptions that can trigger greater migration, conflict, and hunger around the globe. The Pentagon says that climate change poses immediate risks to our national security. We should act like it.
A "Scientific Dante's Inferno"
For a last word from an independent authority on how climate science intersects uncomfortably with the policy arena, here's Peter W. Thorne, a senior researcher at the Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center in Bergen, Norway, who was a lead author on the most recent science assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:
Scientifically I agree wholeheartedly that the message is the longer-term changes and that this is absolutely the core message.... Chasing annual averages is fixating on individual trees at the expense of a view of the forest.
The core issue is that there is a demonstrated demand for annual (and even monthly or daily) monitoring and reporting. If the customer has their heart set on a Ferrari (annual data), offering them a Porsche (trend / decadal) is not, sadly, going to work out well for either the supplier or the customer. Now, you can argue about how we got into this situation but the reality is that we are in a position where there is a demonstrable expectation from multiple stakeholders that annual averages are reported at year end.
But, scientifically we do not, never have, and never will, observe perfectly the true measure of surface temperatures across the entire globe. The observations are incomplete in space and time and contain both random and systematic artifacts. Now, many uncertainties cancel as you average in space and time, but not all of them, and not completely. So, there is an irreducible uncertainty that remains and always will. A lot of effort is expended trying to understand the data, remove biases and constrain the uncertainty in a defensible way.
So, having established a clear "need" for annual reporting and that scientifically it is beyond doubt that there is real and irreducible uncertainty in the true annual means I think its less Catch-22 and more a proverbial scientific Dante's Inferno. Each step to increase the degree of scientific veracity of reporting yields a more and more complicated picture to paint. Meanwhile, whispering in the scientists' ears are people urging simple messaging. It is an unenviable, and impossible to please all people, position to be put into. I doubt there is a single sweet spot to find in all this.
I, personally, believe that the two groups did about as good a job as you could in reporting what is complex information as simply as possible. Is it exactly how I would have done so? No. Would I have signed off on it? Yes.
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(The Learning Network)
January 21, 2015 Wednesday
Ideas for E.L.L.s | Teaching About Weather and Seasons
BYLINE: LARRY FERLAZZO
SECTION: EDUCATION
LENGTH: 1372 words
HIGHLIGHT: The weather is a great topic for English Language Learners — it’s an issue that affects them every day. There are opportunities to discuss it all the time. Praising a nice day is nice, but who doesn’t love to complain about a bad one? And the topic provides easy reading, writing, speaking and listening opportunities
A related article about a significant November 2014 snowfall.
The weather is a great topic for English Language Learners - it's an issue that affects them every day. There are opportunities to discuss it all the time. Praising a nice day is nice, but who doesn't love to complain about a bad one? And the topic provides easy reading, writing, speaking and listening opportunities.
Here are some lessons to take advantage of both our ever-changing outside environment and The New York Times.
Jazz Chants
Carolyn Graham is well-known for developing the concept of "Jazz Chants" to teach English, and there's plenty of research to back their use with E.L.L.s. These are short, rhythmic chants that reinforce vocabulary and grammar lessons in a fun way, particularly with beginners.
She encourages teachers to create their own chants. One of her recommendations is to start with three words - the first one having two syllables, the second three, and the third having one. For example, if your thematic unit is "weather," a "vocabulary" chant could be:
raining, umbrella, wetraining, umbrella, wetraining, umbrella, wet
A reinforcing activity could feature students clapping and chanting in unison for a minute or two, with the teacher or a student pointing to pictures representing each word - perhaps this one of falling rain, this one of a man with an umbrella, and the one above of two women, one with an umbrella and one without.
Or, as Ms. Graham suggests, the same words could be turned into a "grammar" chant, like these teaching pronouns and contractions related to weather:
It's raining outsideHe's got an umbrellaShe's wetShe's wet
These could be chanted together or in "rounds."
Of course, just about anything could be turned into a chant, and the chants don't have to meet this criteria. For example, a chant could be structured as a question and response with students on different sides of the room saying one or the other. ("Is it sunny?" "Yes, it's sunny." or "No, it's cloudy.") Advanced students could also create their own chants and teach them to the class.
Weather Photos for Language Development
There are countless ways to use images for all levels of English Language Learners, and there are no shortages of visually-striking photos on The Times website. You can find them by going to Times Topics pages like this one for "Rain," this one for "Snow and Snowstorms" or this one for "Drought."Hurricanes and Tropical Storms or tornadoes Or, put a query, like "rain" into Times image search. Clicking on any of the images that result will take you to the original article from which it comes.
Previous posts in the Ideas For E.L.L.s series have described in detail the Picture Word Inductive Model ,Picture Dictation, and using images to construct Compare/Contrast essays. In addition to those three instructional strategies, here are a few other that can be used when showing weather-related (or, for that matter, any) photos:
- Have students describe what they see in a photo, then have then write and talk about what they imagine occurred just before it was taken - and just after.
- Students might brainstorm questions - both literal and interpretive - that they have about an image. The teacher should provide some question "stems" like the ones on Pages 2 and 4 in this document (PDF) to help them get started. Students could share all their questions and then categorize them, perhaps into "literal" and "interpretive," then develop more questions that would fit into those categories. As a follow-up speaking activity, students could take turns asking each other some of those questions and coming up with potential answers.
- Next, a teacher could create a series of questions with sentence-stem answers that students could complete for one image and then use as a model for future ones. See this link to a weather image and an example of the kind of questions that could be used.
- As mentioned in previous posts, The Times occasionally publishes multimedia image grids or "quilts" that can be very useful tools for language development, especially for descriptive language. Project either these grids of reader pictures of snow or of the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy on a wall whiteboard (you may want to hold the Control/Command key down and tap "+" to enlarge the size of the photos) and write a visible number on each image before the beginning of class. Then, tell students, "I'm going to describe one of the images and ask you which number I'm talking about." Students might then take turns doing the describing themselves, in partners or in front of the class.
The Seasons
There are plenty of ways to teach the different seasons, and this post from The Learning Network about "celebrating summer" provides quite a few ideas, from having students talk or write about what makes a season special to them to describing what makes their area, or the place they come from originally, unique each season. They might even develop a class guide to "Celebrating Winter" (or Spring, or Autumn) based on The Learning Network's summer post.
One way to help students learn the "basics" of the four seasons would be to have them use some simple online activities like this story and video, followed by a game where these exercises are projected on a screen and students work in small groups with small whiteboards and "compete" to get the correct answers.
Afterward, students can create collages representing each season with drawings and images cut out from magazines, perhaps accompanied by student-written text describing memories of those seasons. The collages can be literal or more abstract, like this vision of autumn created by artist Kara Walker. Students can verbally describe their collages to others, or, to add a high-tech aspect to the activity, teachers could take pictures of students creations and record their audio descriptions with a free app like Shadow Puppet Edu. You can see an example of what my students did with a similar activity on learning to tell time in English.
Climate Change
If the topic of climate change is part of your discussion of weather and seasons, The Learning Network has many posts to help, including a full resource page with links to multimedia, articles, Opinion pieces, photos and more. A number of those suggestions on that page can be modified for English Language Learners - for instance, they might learn basic vocabulary around the science of climate change to investigate how it is impacting their hometowns, then annotate maps with what they find.
More From The Learning Network on Weather
Student Crossword | Weather
Student Crossword | Winter Weather
Poetry Pairing | 'Bleak Weather'
Poetry Pairing | Crystalline Weather
Teach the Cold: Science Ideas for Working With Winter Weather
Teaching the Heat Wave: Games, Lessons and More
More Learning Network posts on weather and severe weather.
Standards
This resource may be used to address the academic standards listed below.
Common Core E.L.A. Anchor Standards
Reading
9 Analyze how two or more texts address similar themes or topics in order to build knowledge or to compare the approaches the authors take.
Speaking and Listening
1 Prepare for and participate effectively in a range of conversations and collaborations with diverse partners, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.
2 Integrate and evaluate information presented in diverse media and formats, including visually, quantitatively, and orally.
6 Adapt speech to a variety of contexts and communicative tasks, demonstrating command of formal English when indicated or appropriate.
Language
1 Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking.
3 Apply knowledge of language to understand how language functions in different contexts, to make effective choices for meaning or style, and to comprehend more fully when reading or listening.
4 Determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases by using context clues, analyzing meaningful word parts, and consulting general and specialized reference materials, as appropriate.
5 Demonstrate understanding of figurative language, word relationships, and nuances in word meanings.
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The Guardian
January 20, 2015 Tuesday 10:20 PM GMT
'It is profitable to let the world go to hell';
As politicians and business leaders gather in Davos, climate expert Jørgen Randers argues that democracy will continue to hamper climate actionHow concerned are CEOs about climate change? Not at allMore than talking heads: why Davos matters'Ethnic inequality is a drag on the economy'
BYLINE: Jo Confino
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 1172 words
How depressed would you be if you had spent more than 40 years warning of an impending global catastrophe, only to be continually ignored even as you watch the disaster unfolding?
So spare a thought for Jørgen Randers, who back in 1972 co-authored the seminal work Limits to Growth (pdf), which highlighted the devastating impacts of exponential economic and population growth on a planet with finite resources.
As politicians and business leaders gather in Davos to look at ways to breathe new life into the global battle to address climate change, they would do well to listen to Randers' sobering perspective.
The professor of climate strategy at the Norwegian Business School has been pretty close to giving up his struggle to wake us up to our unsustainable ways, and in 2004 published a pessimistic update of his 1972 report showing the predictions made at the time are turning out to be largely accurate.
What he cannot bear is how politicians of all persuasions have failed to act even as the scientific evidence of climate change mounts up, and as a result he has largely lost faith in the democratic process to handle complex issues.
Related: Our economic system enriches the most powerful at the expense of the 99%
In a newly published paper in the Swedish magazine Extrakt he writes:
It is cost-effective to postpone global climate action. It is profitable to let the world go to hell. I believe that the tyranny of the short term will prevail over the decades to come. As a result, a number of long-term problems will not be solved, even if they could have been, and even as they cause gradually increasing difficulties for all voters.
Randers says the reason for inaction is that there will be little observable benefit during the first 20 years of any fiscal sacrifice, even though tougher regulations and taxes will guarantee a better climate for our children and grandchildren.
He has personal experience of this, having chaired a commission in Norway that in 2006 came up with a 15-point plan to solve the climate problem if every Norwegian was willing to pay (EURO)250 (£191) in extra taxes every year for the next generation or so.
If the plan had been given the green light, it would have allowed the country to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by two-thirds by 2050 and provide a case study other rich countries could learn from.
He says:
In my mind, the cost was ridiculously low, equivalent to an increase in income taxes from 36% to 37%, given that this plan would eliminate the most serious threat to the rich world in this century. In spite of this, a vast majority of Norwegians were against this sacrifice. To be frank, most voters preferred to use the money for other causes - like yet another weekend trip to London or Sweden for shopping.
When it comes to more regulation or higher taxes, Randers says voters tend to revolt and, as a result, politicians will continue to refuse to take courageous steps for fear of being thrown out of office at the next election.
"The capitalist system does not help," says Randers. "Capitalism is carefully designed to allocate capital to the most profitable projects. And this is exactly what we don't need today.
"We need investments into more expensive wind and solar power, not into cheap coal and gas. The capitalistic market won't do this on its own. It needs different frame conditions - alternative prices or new regulation."
Related: From water to weather: where to make money sustainably
An obvious solution is putting a price on carbon so that companies are forced to internalise the external costs of CO2 emissions, but despite many progressive companies calling for such a tax, Randers says voters will be loath to pay more.
Optimists who believe this stalemate will end once it becomes profitable to solve the climate problem have a very long time to wait, according to Randers.
"It will always cost more to produce clean power from coal, than to produce dirty coal power as we do today," he says. "It will always cost to collect the CO2 emitted from the burning of coal. And global society will be burning coal for a very long time unless something drastic is done.
In the face of such intractable opposition, what can we do? Randers says the first step is to communicate effectively to citizens that short-termism represents a real threat to the sustainability of democratic society.
Second, we should argue for the use of low discount rates in public cost-benefit analyses and encourage the use of common sense rather than quantitative analyses when deciding whether to make long-term investments. One way would be to set aside a fraction of society's investment flow for long-term purposes, in similar fashion to the military budget.
Another sensible change, he argues, would be to lengthen the election period in order to give politicians time to implement unpopular measures before they lose the next election, and to guarantee all workers receive an adequate salary after their "dirty" jobs have been closed down until they get new "clean" jobs.
Randers says:
These five solutions have all been proposed, and sadly rejected by a democratic majority, as has the most obvious sixth solution, which is to reinstall enlightened dictatorship for a time limited period in critical policy areas, like the Romans did when the city was challenged and which is the solution currently pursued by the Chinese Communist party, with obvious success in the poverty/energy/climate area. But I agree that the obvious solution of strong government appears unrealistic in the democratic west.
Given that Randers believes these proposals will fail, what does he suggest? Rather than being idealistic, he says we need to promote policies that offer long-term solutions and short-term benefits.
Related: More than talking heads: why Davos matters
He gives the example of the Tesla electric car, which offers superior short-term advantages that compensate for the high price. He also highlights the introduction of huge subsidies in Germany for those who were willing to install solar panels on their rooftops or windmills in their fields, although Randers points to the system ending after many years because voters did not like the extra tax.
For many decades, Randers has refused to sweeten the bitter pill of climate change and is not going to start now. Some dismiss his pessimism as belonging to the past and argue we are transitioning to a new era of global climate action. But they would be wrong to ignore the warnings of an elder who has borne his scars with honour and dignity, and who continues to devote his energy to solving the greatest challenges facing humanity.
This Davos coverage is funded by The B Team. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled "brought to you by". Find out more here.
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The Guardian
January 20, 2015 Tuesday 10:11 PM GMT
More than talking heads: why Davos matters;
As the World Economic Forum meeting kicks off in Davos this week, here's what we've accomplished so far - and what we're hoping to tackle this yearHow concerned are CEOs about climate change? Not at all'It is profitable to let the world go to hell''Ethnic inequality is a drag on the economy'
BYLINE: Dominic Waughray
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 893 words
As government representatives, business leaders, philanthropists and academics head to Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum 2015 meeting, it's time to ask the perennial question: what will it actually accomplish?
For 45 years, the meeting has provided an informal space for leaders to meet with each other, discuss the pressing issues of the day and ascertain if they can help improve the situation to the benefit of all. The concept is simple: from a diverse gathering of leaders, innovations for the global good can be born.
The idea has borne fruit in the past. In the late 1990s, for example, there was great concern that children in rich countries had access to newer, more expensive vaccinations, while children in poor countries did not. The idea emerged for an alliance of relevant organizations, foundations and companies to focus their combined financing firepower to get vaccines to children in poorer countries. The Global Alliance for Vaccinations and Immunisation, launched at Davos in 2000, has since disbursed over $7bn to 70 countries to scale up vaccinations.
Another example that underlines the Davos spirit of "entrepreneurialism in the global public interest" is the Global Fund, which was conceived at the 2002 meeting as a partnership between governments, civil society and businesses to accelerate the end of Aids, tuberculosis and malaria. By 2012 the Global Fund had deployed about $23bn to support programmes in over 150 countries. It has become the main funding platform to fight these global diseases.
More recently, there has been growing interest at Davos for exploring how public-private collaboration can help governments address systemic or chronic global challenges. I'm referring to big-ticket issues - such as closing the jobs gap, promoting inclusive growth, achieving food security or managing our common environmental resources - on which traditional intergovernmental negotiations seem to falter.
Take climate change, for example. In 2013, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon invited informal collaboration with the World Economic Forum to help promote public-private cooperation on climate change. Specifically, he wanted to see whether the meeting at Davos could identify five or six global action areas that could help reduce emissions or improve climate resiliency.
Guided by the world's best climate scientists and economists, Davos 2014 gave an unprecedented focus to climate change. Global public-private alliances in areas such as sustainable agricultural commodity sourcing to reduce deforestation, addressing climate risk in financial systems, improving corporate carbon disclosure in financial reporting, accelerating energy efficiency and scaling carbon pricing found their feet at Davos last year.
Many of these coalitions grew rapidly through 2014 in time for Ban Ki-moon's Climate Summit in September. One success story is the swift growth of collaboration to reduce deforestation from palm oil. In autumn 2013, less than 5% of the global palm oil trade was committed to zero-deforestation principles. By the autumn of 2014, major companies such as Wilmar, Cargill and Bunge - together representing an estimated 96% of global palm oil trade, according to the Climate Advisers think tank - had adopted no-deforestation sourcing policies for palm oil.
Furthermore, these and many other companies came together with governments, NGOs and indigenous peoples' groups at the Climate Summit to launch the New York Declaration on Forests - a commitment to at least halve the rate of loss of natural forests globally by 2020 and to end natural forest loss by 2030.
These are outcomes the global climate negotiations could not have triggered. They also create a sense of momentum, which in turn creates a more positive mood for government negotiations. At Davos this year, the French government is encouraging more informal public-private collaboration to fight climate change, as part of the path towards the Paris climate summit.
This evolution in what Davos does, and - more importantly - what the international community increasingly has been asking Davos to do, has prompted an evolution in the World Economic Forum's strategy.
This year, the forum is committed to providing an impartial and trusted space for collaboration on 10 of the world's most pressing global challenges (pdf), including - but not limited to - climate change. The hope is that this will increase understanding of these key issues, as well as identify and catalyse innovative new solutions through public-private cooperation.
In an increasingly complex world, fraught this year it seems with a zeitgeist of uncertainty, leaders must come together and focus on the long-term impact they can make in addressing our global challenges. We convene in Davos to do just that.
More from Davos 2015:
· 'It is profitable to let the world go to hell'
· From water to weather: where to make money in sustainability
This Davos coverage is funded by The B Team. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled "brought to you by". Find out more here.
Join the community of sustainability professionals and experts. Become a GSB member to get more stories like this direct to your inbox.
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The Guardian
January 20, 2015 Tuesday 6:52 PM GMT
How concerned are CEOs about climate change? Not at all;
In an annual PwC survey of chief executives, global warming didn't even make the list of key concerns or priorities, falling far below regulation and taxation'It is profitable to let the world go to hell'How do we include everyone in global prosperity?More than talking heads: why Davos matters
BYLINE: Jo Confino
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 733 words
In a critical year for action to prevent runaway climate change, one would hope the issue would rank high on chief executives' list of business risks to worry about.
So it comes as a shock to discover that climate change appears so low on their list of concerns that professional services group PricewaterhouseCoopers did not even bother to include it in its global survey of business leaders.
PwC's 18th annual global CEO survey, released Tuesday to coincide with the opening of the World Economic Forum in Davos, failed to even ask 1,322 business leaders about their global warming concerns after only 10% registered concern the previous year.
A spokeswoman for PwC said that climate change did not make it into the top 19 risks CEOs were questioned about because of their lack of interest in the subject.
At a time when sustainability experts are calling for tougher regulation to drive climate action, the PwC survey shows that overregulation leads the list of CEOs' perceived risks, with 78% saying it threatens their organisation's growth prospects.
This level of concern is the highest ever seen in the survey and up six points from last year. Countries where concern about overregulation is highest include Argentina (98%), Venezuela (96%), the US (90%), Germany (90%), the UK (87%) and China (85%).
Other high-priority risks include the lack of key skills in the talent pool, government responses to fiscal deficit and debt burden, geopolitical uncertainty, cyber security and social instability.
More evidence that CEOs are not engaged on climate change comes from the responses to a question about their top priorities for government. Only 6% of respondents listed reducing the risk of climate change as a priority, putting it at the bottom of the list.
What CEOs most want from politicians is to maintain a competitive and efficient tax system, a priority cited by two-thirds of those surveyed, followed by access to a skilled workforce, physical infrastructure, affordable capital and digital infrastructure.
Unfortunately, the bad news does not end there. When CEOs were asked about the changes they are seeing in international policies and regulations, collaboration between governments and businesses to mitigating climate change risks more effectively again ended up on the very bottom of the list. Nearly half said collaboration was not improving, with less than a third seeing an improvement.
These survey results suggest that beyond the very few progressive companies that are taking the risks of climate change seriously, the majority are failing to register the magnitude of the problem. It seems that CEOs are so overwhelmed by short-term fears that they are failing to look further ahead.
What they care most about is meeting their short-term growth targets: according to the survey, CEOs are less optimistic about global growth prospects than a year ago, with just over a third expecting global economic growth to improve in 2015, down from 44% last year. Significantly, 17% of CEOs - more than twice as many as a year ago - believe global economic growth will decline.
The survey highlights just how little CEOs understand climate change and the impacts it will have for generations to come. Unless action is taken now, it will be impossible to keep within the global goal of a 2C temperature rise (pdf) to prevent irreversible climate change.
While optimism abounded during the climate change talks in New York last year, business hardly had any presence at the annual UN climate change conference in Lima, Peru, in December.
The meeting at Davos this week will include a number of sustainability-related events, and it would be wise for participants to reflect on whether they are making as much progress as they had hoped - and how to do more.
The truth is that politicians will fail to act decisively on climate issues unless they are confident that enough companies are prepared to support their stand.
Unless we see a sea change in the global business community's involvement in fighting climate change, corporations will continue to be seen as part of the problem rather than the solution - and consumers' trust that companies will do the right thing will fade even further.
This Davos coverage is funded by The B Team. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled "brought to you by". Find out more here.
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The Guardian
January 20, 2015 Tuesday 4:54 PM GMT
This year's development summits have many mountains to climb;
The central goal of the 2015 summits is to chart a course towards the eradication of extreme poverty, more equitable globalisation, and climate stability, writes Kevin Watkins
BYLINE: Kevin Watkins
SECTION: BUSINESS
LENGTH: 985 words
Welcome to the mother of all years for summits on international development. The 2015 calendar includes a major gathering in July in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on financing. After that the summit caravan will head to the UN general assembly in New York, where governments will adopt a new set of global development targets to replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The year closes with negotiations in Paris on a new climate change agreement.
Will any of this deliver meaningful change for poor people and the planet?
It's hard to exaggerate the importance of that question. The central goal of the summits is to chart a course towards the eradication of extreme poverty, more equitable globalisation, and climate stability.
Our current direction of travel is not encouraging. Global inequality is reaching ever more obscene proportions. Almost 1 billion people live in extreme poverty. And while governments have pledged to restrict global warming to 2C above pre-industrial level, carbon-intensive energy systems are driving us towards a 4C world - an outcome that would lead to unprecedented reversals in human development.
The 2015 summits are linked. An ambitious agreement at the Addis financing conference will provide momentum for the dialogue on the sustainable development goals, which will in turn create an impetus ahead of the critical climate talks.
We are a long way from that virtuous circle. Preparations for the 2015 summits have been hampered by a paralysing lack of ambition, weak leadership, and the absence of a credible agenda to galvanise public engagement.
The proposed post-2015 development goals are part of the problem. What the world needs is a plan of action to replace the Millennium Development Goals. What's on offer is a shopping list. The 17 goals and 169 targets cover everything from the urgent and measurable - eliminating poverty, cutting child deaths, universal provision of education, water and sanitation, and climate stability - to the vaguely aspirational ('ensure the proper functioning of commodity markets', whatever that means).
What is missing, apart from clarity of purpose, is a focus on inequality. Eradicating poverty by 2030 is a laudable objective. But current growth patterns are skewed against the poor and will leave 266 million below the $1.25 poverty line in Africa alone. Eliminating avoidable child deaths is a goal that should unite every country.
Unfortunately, malnutrition and unequal access to health services will on current trends leave us with 4 million such deaths in 2030.
In the case of education inequality has emerged as a brake on progress. The new goals envisage universal secondary schooling by 2030. Yet progress towards primary education for all has stalled with 57 million children out of school. Girls in rural Africa can look forward to universal schooling sometime after 2080 on current trends.
If governments want the sustainable development goals to have some credibility, they need to turn the policy spotlight on those who are being left behind. They could start by framing targets aimed at, say, halving wealth-based disparities in child survival and school attendance over the next five years.
Part of the challenge in Addis is to underpin a high level of ambition on development and climate with real financial resources. Four priorities stand out.
The first is to put poverty at the heart of the agenda. Learning from the experience of the global fund for HIV/Aids, the summit provides an opportunity to mobilise support for initiatives aimed at delivering universal health coverage, education, and social protection.
Taking into account the fiscal capacity of governments in developing countries, it would take around $75bn (£49.44bn) to finance the cash transfers needed to lift people to the $1.25 extreme poverty line, fund a basic health package and get all children in school. To put this figure in context, acting on the commitment to invest 0.7% of OECD income in aid would generate $184bn.
Of course, there is more to the aid challenge than money. Much of the increase in aid is needed in around 50 of the very poorest countries, many of them affected by conflict. These countries currently receive one-fifth of the aid per person as richer developing countries. Meanwhile, as the current crisis in Syria has highlighted, the humanitarian system is unfit for the purpose of supporting desperately vulnerable refugees.
The second priority is to strengthen international cooperation in areas where much has been promised, but little delivered. Infrastructure financing, a major constraint on growth, is a major gap in the current financing system. So is the absence of enforceable rules on tax evasion and illicit transfers. Sub-Saharan Africa alone loses $68bn - more than the region receives in aid.
Third, the Addis summit provides an opportunity to link the poverty and climate agendas. Cutting consumption subsidies for fossil fuels is a starting point. Indonesia has just used the saving from the country's fuel subsidy programme to fund an initiative that provides cash, health and education support to 15 million households.
Others should follow suit.
The G20 countries could provide leadership. Currently, they spend some $88bn subsidising exploration for new fossil fuel reserves. Exploiting these reserves will guarantee dangerous climate change. In effect, taxpayer's money is being used to finance mutually assured destruction through dangerous climate change. Yet several countries - including the UK - are increasing tax breaks for oil exploration.
Achieving a successful outcome in 2015 will not be easy. We do not live in the best of times for international co-operation. Yet the summits provide an opportunity to build the coalitions needed to address some of the defining challenge of our day - and to restore the credibility of multilateralism.
· Kevin Watkins is director of the Overseas Development Institute
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The Guardian
January 20, 2015 Tuesday 4:15 PM GMT
Why it's good to laugh at climate change;
Climate gags are notable by their absence, but an RSA event on Tuesday night hopes to show that climate change comedy can raise laughs and awareness
BYLINE: Adam Corner
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 774 words
Did you hear the one about the climate policy analyst? Or the polar bear who walked into a bar?
Climate change is not generally considered a source of amusement: in terms of comedic material, the forecast is an ongoing cultural drought. But perhaps campaigners have missed a trick in overlooking the powerful role that satire and subversion can play in social change. Could humour cut through the malaise that has smothered the public discourse, activating our cultural antennae in a way that graphs, infographics and images of melting ice could never do?
This is the challenge that a panel of British comedians, including Marcus Brigstocke - a seasoned climate humourist, will take up at an event on Tuesday evening hosted by the RSA and the Climate Outreach and Information Network in London (the event is fully booked but it will be streamed live online ). Maybe laughing about something as serious as climate change is just another form of denial. But perhaps its relative absence from the comedy realm is another warning sign: despite decades of awareness raising, the cultural footprint of climate change is faint, fragile and all-too-easily ignored.
The first example of a climate-policy parody was probably the ' Cheat Neutral ' project: a slick spoof of the logic of carbon offsetting whereby people could pay someone else to be faithful, giving them the opportunity to cheat on their husband or wife. And there have other good video mockeries - including one warning that wind farms will blow the Earth off-orbit - which have captured the comedy potential of bizarre debates about energy policy.
This year, Greenpeace teamed up with the surreal comedian Reggie Watts to promote the idea of a 100% renewably powered internet. There have been sporadic examples of climate change ' stand-up '. And the ever-reliable Simpsons has been occasionally willing to engage.
But these are the exceptions that prove the rule: for the most part, climate gags are notable by their absence.
An ongoing challenge is the polarised nature of the climate debate, with climate scepticism closely pegged to political ideology. According to Nick Comer-Calder, of the Climate Media Net, getting people laughing is a good first step to getting them talking - even across political divides. One analysis found that major US satirists, such as Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert, have given more coverage to climate change than many of the news channels - although admittedly, this is a pretty low bar to clear.
But while online ridicule directed towards climate 'deniers' (generally portrayed as either too stupid to understand the science, or as conspiracy theorists) may appeal to the usual crowd, its hard to see how this kind of approach will breach the political divide. After all, the feeling of being laughed at by a sneering, left-leaning elite is not appealing. One notorious attempt by the 10:10 campaign and director Richard Curtis at 'humorously' marginalising opposition towards environmentalism backfired completely. It turns out that most people don't find graphic depictions of children's heads exploding all that hilarious after all...
What's required is for climate change to seep into the fabric of satirical and humourous TV programming, in the same way that other 'current affairs' often provide the backdrop and context for creative output. Jokes 'about' climate change can in fact be 'about' any of the dozens of subjects - family disputes over energy bills, travel and tourism, or changing consumer habits - that are directly impacted by climate change.
Its an interesting irony that while the 'pro-climate' discourse can often feel po-faced and pious, climate sceptics have wasted no time in parodying the climate community. The Heretic, a play by Richard Bean, built its dramatic tension around the conflict between a sceptical climate scientist and her cynical departmental head who is suppressing her data in order to keep his grants flowing. The characters are overdrawn and instantly recognisable. And, as a result, it works: it is good drama, entertaining, and laugh-out-loud funny.
While climate change itself is never going to be a barrel of laughs, we seem to be suffering from a collective lack of imagination in teasing out the tragi-comic narratives that climate change surely provides.
Thinking harder about how to plug climate change into our cultural circuits - not as 'edutainment' but simply as a target of satire in its own right - will be crucial in overcoming the social silence around the issue. The science-communicators don't seem to be making much progress with the public: maybe its time to let the comedians have their turn.
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The Guardian
January 20, 2015 Tuesday 12:44 PM GMT
EU to launch diplomatic offensive ahead of Paris climate talks;
Celebrities to front ambitious climate campaign, as army of diplomats is mobilised for an emissions-cutting push ahead of a crunch UN summit in Paris in December
BYLINE: Arthur Neslen, Brussels
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 741 words
Europe is launching a major diplomatic push for an ambitious deal on global warming, mobilising A-list celebrities and tens of thousands of diplomats to exert "maximum pressure" on key countries in international climate negotiations.
The EU plan, endorsed by ministers on Monday in Brussels, will see 90,000 diplomats in over 3,000 missions lobbying to win new pledges on carbon cuts from countries ahead of a crunch UN climate summit in Paris this December.
European stars, of a calibre of US public figures such as Leonardo DiCaprio and Al Gore, will front a push to make climate action a "strategic priority" at G7, G20 and Major Economies Forum summits.
The action plan, seen by the Guardian, calls for a 'Climate Action Day' in June and a '100 days to Paris countdown' event later in the year.
The aim is to raise the EU's profile and cement alliances by winning new pledges for greenhouse gas cuts - intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs) in UN jargon, the backbone of any deal in Paris - before June at the latest.
"The EU has enormous soft power and we must use that to push for an ambitious agenda in Paris," the Danish foreign minister Martin Lidegaard told the Guardian. "I have urged my colleagues to commit to including climate diplomacy in their activities in the run up to COP21 [the Paris summit] - and the EU's foreign service to work more on this. We should focus our efforts on the major growth economies and climate financing."
A UK government spokesman described the diplomatic blitz as "a welcome step to ramp up European climate diplomacy globally".
The action plan cites climate change as "a key element of preventive diplomacy," aimed at preventing future violent conflicts through cooperation and dialogue. It also goes further than past EU communications, describing climate change as "a strategic threat affecting natural resource availability, economic stability and hence overall national and regional security".
A diplomatic strategy plays to the EU's strengths, according to Jason Anderson, the head of WWF's climate and energy policy. "The EU is not going to be a big dog in the fight like the US or China and having this huge diplomatic network is a real resource that it makes sense to rely on," he said. "It can have added value in preparations to build constituencies of interest ahead of Paris."
However, the plan's recommendation that "climate financing expectations need to be managed," may disappoint emerging economies. Rich countries last year raised slightly less than 10% of the first tranche of a Green Climate Fund, which is supposed to provide $100bn-a-year of climate aid to poorer countries by 2020.
The action plan does note the value of multilateral action but also says that "particular focus should be put on mobilising the private sector as a major source of financing and of innovation to tackle climate change."
Many developed countries are wary of profit-taking by multinationals with limited interest in helping them to adapt to droughts, floods or extreme weather events.
"Shifting the EU's legal and moral responsibility on climate finance to the private sector will not wash with poorer countries," said Asad Rehman, a senior international climate campaigner for Friends of the Earth.
"The private sector can only ever be an addition to, but never replace the much needed public finance that can help poorer countries deal with climate impacts and grow cleanly," he added. "If the EU doesn't shift this policy approach its charm offensive risks being viewed as primarily in the interests of EU businesses."
In 2011, the EU was central to the 'Durban alliance' of Least Developed Countries, small island states threatened by rising sea levels and the 'Cartagena group' of progressive countries. Together, the bloc is thought to have constrained less climate-friendly stances from China or India.
But the EU's global stock has declined a little since then as its politicians have appeared torn between a desire to help global decarbonisation while balancing that with growing rightwing populist parties opposed to more climate aid at a time of austerity.
In the run-up to 2015, EU officials are reportedly looking to a coalition with the AILAC bloc of Latin American countries, such as Costa Rica, Chile, Colombia and Peru.
"The EU is in a unique position to bridge the developed and the developing world," Lidegaard said. "We saw that in Durban and that bridge is a precondition for success."
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The Guardian
January 20, 2015 Tuesday 5:49 AM GMT
More than $1.7bn needed to improve water quality on the Great Barrier Reef;
Further government funding is essential to reduce agricultural runoff and other pollutants flowing into the marine park's waters, new analysis finds
BYLINE: Oliver Milman
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 774 words
Improving water quality on the Great Barrier Reef will cost $785m over the next five years, with further improvements requiring an investment totalling more than $1bn after 2020, according to a new report.
The analysis, compiled by the six regional natural resources management groups that oversee the river catchments that flow into the reef's waters, found that further funding was "essential" to improve the health of the world heritage-listed ecosystem.
The report warns there is a "fundamental concern to all Great Barrier Reef stakeholders" that the current level of state and federal government funding to protect the reef is insufficient.
According to the analysis, improvement in agricultural practices, such as reducing the amount of chemicals flowing onto the reef, will cost $175m over the next five years.
Ensuring water quality outcomes will cost a further $180m, while repairing systems that deal with pollutants will cost $200m. Further funding for stormwater management and support and education programs make up the rest of the $785m total.
If targets around the amount of pollutants entering the reef are met, they are likely to be increased, requiring more than $1bn of further funding beyond 2020, the report states.
The report calls for a fundamental change in the way farmers use land to ensure the reef isn't inadvertently harmed, although improving land use practice is "unlikely to be enough" due to environmental damage that has resulted in up to 80% of fresh to brackish wetlands being lost in the wet tropics and Whitsunday areas.
Initiatives backed by the government have seen annual average nitrogen load in rivers decrease by 10% between 2008 and 2013, according to the Reef Report Card, with sediment load falling 11%. Pesticide load fell by 28%, with a third of graziers and half of sugar cane growers adopting improved practices.
However, the report states that more funding will be needed to meet targets set out in the federal and state governments' long-term sustainability plan, which aims for a 60% reduction in pesticides flowing onto the reef and for 90% of agricultural land to be following best practice.
The long-term plan was drawn up in response to concerns raised by Unesco over the health of the reef, which has lost half of its coral cover in the past 30 years and is deemed to be in "poor" condition by the Great Barrier Reef marine park authority.
The government plan to restore the reef's fortunes has been criticised by scientists for being inadequate, with little mention of climate change despite it being identified by the marine park authority as the leading threat to the ecosystem.
This latest report by the regional natural resources management groups states that climate change's impact upon the reef is an "area of very confused public policy".
A number of government initiatives have targeted the other, more direct, threats to the reef, including pollutants and a plague of coral-eating starfish.
The five-year Reef Rescue program has invested $200m to help reduce run-off of chemicals onto the reef, while the government has a $40m Reef Trust to improve water quality, control the starfish outbreak and protect species such as dugongs and turtles.
The government has pointed to these efforts in intense lobbying efforts to argue the reef should not be listed as "in danger" by Unesco's world heritage committee later this year.
The World Wildlife Fund said the reef requires funding of "billions not millions" to reverse its decline.
"The reef needs a massive new injection of funds now, backed up by enforceable targets. Repackaging existing commitments will simply not be enough," said Dermot O'Gorman, chief executive of WWF Australia.
"If done properly, this could be a game changer in our efforts to turn around reef health. We must also ensure that any new investments in the reef's health are not undermined by destructive activities such as dredging and dumping in the world heritage area."
A spokesman for Greg Hunt, the federal environment minister, said state and federal governments would be spending $2bn over the next decade to protect the reef. "Our [federal and Queensland governments] combined investment is significant and we are directing funds where they will have the greatest benefit," he said. "We are committed to ensuring the Great Barrier Reef can be enjoyed by future generations. "In addition to significant financial investment, we've taken deep and powerful steps to improve water quality. The most significant step being the banning of capital dredge disposal in the marine park - something Labor never did."
The Queensland Farmers' Federation was contacted for comment.
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The New York Times
January 20, 2015 Tuesday
The New York Times on the Web
Let's Address the State of Food
BYLINE: By MARK BITTMAN
SECTION: Section ; Column 0; OpEd; CONTRIBUTING OP-ED WRITER; Pg.
LENGTH: 1109 words
The state of the union, food-wise, is not good. The best evidence is that more than 46.5 million Americans are receiving SNAP benefits -- formerly food stamps -- a number that has not changed much since 2013, when it reached its highest level ever.
Even if you allow for fraud, which barely exists (imagine being so desperate that you'd risk imprisonment for $130 a month; I doubt you can), the number would be far higher if everyone who was eligible knew it, if pride and stigma were not issues and if it were easier to enroll. Still, 15 percent of the nation is bad enough; it's roughly equivalent to the population of Spain.
Yet when you look at the ''Your Feedback'' page on the White House website, among the 16 suggested topics on what the administration should address in its last two years, the word ''food'' is used precisely zero times. No surprise, because President Obama has been steadfastly short-sighted about this. (He has not been blind, and compared to his predecessor he's been downright brilliant. But you need a better yardstick than W. by which to measure presidents.)
As I've written before, there are no hungry people with money. I'm all for the administration's stated goal of boosting income for the least well-off, but raising the minimum wage in minimal fashion is not going to cut it, because its value, adjusted for inflation, is only marginally up from the all-time low. Even a raise to $10 would not bring it to its 1968 value, which is why the cry for a national minimum of $15 makes so much sense.
So does the establishment of a national food policy, something on which we can hope the new White House senior policy adviser for nutrition policy, Deb Eschmeyer, can focus. Because the issues that confront most Americans directly are income, food (thereby, agriculture), health and climate change. (And, of course, war, but let's leave that aside for now.)
These are all related: You can't address climate change without fixing agriculture, you can't fix health without improving diet, you can't improve diet without addressing income, and so on. The production, marketing and consumption of food is key to nearly everything. (It's one of the keys to war, too, because large-scale agriculture is dependent on control of global land, oil, minerals and water.)
The president's hands are famously tied by Congress, though not entirely. He has shown resolve on immigration, on Keystone XL and on climate change in general -- his new rules on methane are tame but welcome, especially given the increasing power of loony climate-change deniers in the Senate. Although we don't know the endgame here, at least there's a welcome willingness to fight.
But we need Obama to show that same resolve in defending SNAP, because as usual the program is under siege -- despite the fact that the number of people eligible for food stamps has not declined during the so-called economic recovery, which has been largely meaningless for the vast majority of Americans.
In fact, as the economy ''recovers,'' the corporate elite -- who were rescued in 2009 after nearly self-destructing in 2008 -- have become richer, while the income of most Americans has stagnated or declined. (Although real median income is up from its 2011 low, it remains down about 6 percent since 2008. Some recovery.) While raising the minimum wage and addressing income inequality are huge issues, protecting existing programs for the less well off is the most important battle right now.
In a similar boat are the improvements to the Child Nutrition Act (the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act), which, to President and Mrs. Obama's credit, are powerful forces for good in the American diet, because by positively influencing eating patterns in young people you positively influence them for life. Yet these progressive dietary steps are also being attacked by Big Food and its reactionary Congressional allies. Again, it's critically important to defend this good work.
We might hear a word or two about this tonight, but I doubt it. And there are a number of other food-related themes and opportunities for progress that President Obama might mention that he will not. (I will ecstatically apologize if I'm wrong -- not that this matters much.) A promise to develop a national food policy could ostensibly address all of them at once, but let me single out some crucial issues in most need of attention.
Get antibiotics out of the food supply. The Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) voluntary guidelines for reducing those antibiotics given to animals (some 80 percent of all antibiotics in the country, and a leading factor in the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria) should be declared a failure, and a mandatory ban on the use of antibiotics in animal husbandry -- with the exception of treating sick animals, of course -- should be put in place.
Tie reducing greenhouse gas emissions to reining in the industrial production of animals. Regardless of the eminently debatable percentage of GHG emissions attributed to animal production, it's significant. In my view, the administration has all but ignored this.
Support the strongest front-of-package food labeling that the FDA can possibly develop. There are a number of directions the FDA may go with new product labeling, and one that quantifies the amount of sugar, in language people can actually understand, would be most helpful.
Defend the menu-labeling program that's mandated under the Affordable Care Act.
In preparing to write this piece, I asked some friends and colleagues (Raj Patel, Marion Nestle, Scott Faber, Ricardo Salvador, Michael Pollan and a few others) to suggest what I might include. Nestle's response -- ''Make sure that no American goes hungry'' -- pretty much sums up the priorities of everyone who responded. And I think it's safe to say that all of us are in at least general agreement on what I've written above. If not, I'll hear from the dissenters, trust me, and post those notes on my blog.
But let me quote Pollan on what he'd like to hear the president say:
''I am expanding the portfolio of my new senior policy adviser for nutrition policy, Deb Eschmeyer, to encompass all the policy areas that food touches: agriculture, nutritional health and environmental health. She will be charged with harmonizing our policies across these three areas, so that, for example, our agricultural policies contribute not just to the prosperity of American farmers but to the health of our people and the land.''
All the president has to do tonight is recite that paragraph, and he'll have gained more credibility with advocates of good food than he's likely to do in his remaining two years in office.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/20/opinion/lets-address-the-state-of-food.html
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The New York Times
January 20, 2015 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final
Davos Gets Around to Gay Rights
BYLINE: By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN
SECTION: Section B; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; DEALBOOK; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 32090 words
The World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, which begins this week, has been a top venue for controversial conversations over the years. Israelis and Palestinians have debated, for example, and luminaries from the public and private sectors have faced off on big topics like climate change, inequality and gender diversity.
One issue, though, seems to have long been officially off limits: anything related to gay and lesbian rights.
But at a time when Timothy D. Cook, the chief executive of Apple, the world's largest company by market value, has disclosed that he is gay, and with the United States Supreme Court saying last week that it would rule on whether same-sex marriage is a constitutional right, the topic has reached a tipping point.
This year, for the first time, the World Economic Forum is addressing the issue of gay and lesbian rights on the formal agenda for Davos. It is a good first step.
Still, the topic looks buried on the Davos program. It seems to have been included mainly because of pressure applied by a pair of activist hedge fund managers who usually wage their wars against companies, but have made a cause of defending the rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
It is not too hard to decipher why the topic might have been forbidden at Davos in the past. After all, the guest list is filled with officials from countries like Russia, Nigeria and Uganda whose records on human rights for the gay and transgender community are repressive and sometimes even violent. In Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- countries with officials in attendance in Davos -- same-sex conduct is punishable by death.
But last year at Davos, Human Rights Campaign, along with representatives for Paul Singer, founder of the hedge fund Elliott Management, whose son is gay, and Daniel S. Loeb, the founder of Third Point, who with his wife is active in many philanthropic causes, approached the World Economic Forum about the need to publicly host a dialogue about gay rights. The forum organizers demurred.
So Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb decided last year to hold a breakfast off the premises and off the formal program -- known as an ''off-piste'' event in Davos-speak -- to address the issue.
That breakfast panel was moderated by the journalist Fareed Zakaria and included Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb as well as Masha Gessen, a Russian gay rights activist. Also participating were Alice Nkom, a lawyer from Cameroon who has fought to end the criminalization of homosexuality in her country, and Dane Lewis, who runs Jamaica's largest gay rights advocacy organization.
The breakfast became one of the most talked about events at Davos. The room was packed with an audience of boldface names, like Muhtar Kent, the chief executive of Coca-Cola; Richard Branson of Virgin; Navi Pillay, then the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights; and a United States senator, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont.
Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire investor, was so moved by the panel that he started making calls to friends in his home country that day to begin a dialogue before the following month's Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, which became a global lightning rod for human-rights criticism.
Human Rights Campaign takes credit for pushing the World Economic Forum to finally put the topic on the agenda this year.
''There's no doubt that it served as inspiration for inclusion in the formal program in 2015,'' said Fred Sainz, a vice president at Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy group.
But the World Economic Forum takes umbrage at the idea that it was bullied by its high-minded participants to address the issue.
''That impression might come from people who only observe the World Economic Forum through the prism of Davos, and who perhaps are not aware of what we do year-round,'' said Adrian Monck, the forum's head of communications. He said issues related to gay rights had been discussed at conferences held by the forum in Abuja, Nigeria, and Tianjin, China.
''The forum believes that societies need to use all their talent to be effective and inclusive, and that diversity brings with it further positive benefits beyond simply being morally the right thing to do,'' Mr. Monck said.
Still, not all participants are satisfied that the World Economic Forum is adequately addressing the issue. There is only one panel on the agenda -- buried late on Saturday after many participants will have left -- that mentions the term ''L.G.B.T.'' in the program. And none of the panels include the kind of outspoken, controversial advocates who were at last year's breakfast.
''In many countries, L.G.B.T. individuals face arrest, imprisonment, torture and even execution just for being who they are,'' Mr. Singer said. ''Some of the worst offenders are governments which are frequently invited to these meetings of world leaders. When these world leaders assemble, leaders from the L.G.B.T. activist community should be included, too.''
Forum organizers point out that there are two other panels on the agenda that touch on gay rights.
In addition to the formal program, this year Microsoft and the management consulting firms Accenture and EY are sponsoring off-piste events about gay rights issues, including work force inclusion.
Mr. Loeb, who with Mr. Singer helped finance a campaign to push through same-sex marriage in New York State, said he hoped the discussion of gay rights had finally found a home in Davos. ''I hope this notable first step begins an overdue conversation among prominent global leaders about the importance of advancing and protecting human rights for L.G.B.T. individuals,'' he said.
Proponents of gay rights can cite global progress in the business world. Human Rights Campaign started a Corporate Equality Index 13 years ago, benchmarking corporate policies ''pertinent to L.G.B.T. employees.'' When it started, only 13 companies scored a perfect 100 percent. But in the most recent survey, despite more stringent criteria, 366 companies around the world had perfect scores.
That may be progress, but if the debate about how to address the issue in Davos is any indication, there is clearly a lot more to do.
Andrew Ross Sorkin is the editor at large of DealBook. Twitter: @andrewrsorkin
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.
The World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, which begins this week, has been a top venue for controversial conversations over the years. Israelis and Palestinians have debated, for example, and luminaries from the public and private sectors have faced off on big topics like climate change, inequality and gender diversity.
One issue, though, seems to have long been officially off limits: anything related to gay and lesbian rights.
But at a time when Timothy D. Cook, the chief executive of Apple, the world's largest company by market value, has disclosed that he is gay, and with the United States Supreme Court saying last week that it would rule on whether same-sex marriage is a constitutional right, the topic has reached a tipping point.
This year, for the first time, the World Economic Forum is addressing the issue of gay and lesbian rights on the formal agenda for Davos. It is a good first step.
Still, the topic looks buried on the Davos program. It seems to have been included mainly because of pressure applied by a pair of activist hedge fund managers who usually wage their wars against companies, but have made a cause of defending the rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
It is not too hard to decipher why the topic might have been forbidden at Davos in the past. After all, the guest list is filled with officials from countries like Russia, Nigeria and Uganda whose records on human rights for the gay and transgender community are repressive and sometimes even violent. In Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- countries with officials in attendance in Davos -- same-sex conduct is punishable by death.
But last year at Davos, Human Rights Campaign, along with representatives for Paul Singer, founder of the hedge fund Elliott Management, whose son is gay, and Daniel S. Loeb, the founder of Third Point, who with his wife is active in many philanthropic causes, approached the World Economic Forum about the need to publicly host a dialogue about gay rights. The forum organizers demurred.
So Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb decided last year to hold a breakfast off the premises and off the formal program -- known as an ''off-piste'' event in Davos-speak -- to address the issue.
That breakfast panel was moderated by the journalist Fareed Zakaria and included Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb as well as Masha Gessen, a Russian gay rights activist. Also participating were Alice Nkom, a lawyer from Cameroon who has fought to end the criminalization of homosexuality in her country, and Dane Lewis, who runs Jamaica's largest gay rights advocacy organization.
The breakfast became one of the most talked about events at Davos. The room was packed with an audience of boldface names, like Muhtar Kent, the chief executive of Coca-Cola; Richard Branson of Virgin; Navi Pillay, then the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights; and a United States senator, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont.
Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire investor, was so moved by the panel that he started making calls to friends in his home country that day to begin a dialogue before the following month's Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, which became a global lightning rod for human-rights criticism.
Human Rights Campaign takes credit for pushing the World Economic Forum to finally put the topic on the agenda this year.
''There's no doubt that it served as inspiration for inclusion in the formal program in 2015,'' said Fred Sainz, a vice president at Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy group.
But the World Economic Forum takes umbrage at the idea that it was bullied by its high-minded participants to address the issue.
''That impression might come from people who only observe the World Economic Forum through the prism of Davos, and who perhaps are not aware of what we do year-round,'' said Adrian Monck, the forum's head of communications. He said issues related to gay rights had been discussed at conferences held by the forum in Abuja, Nigeria, and Tianjin, China.
''The forum believes that societies need to use all their talent to be effective and inclusive, and that diversity brings with it further positive benefits beyond simply being morally the right thing to do,'' Mr. Monck said.
Still, not all participants are satisfied that the World Economic Forum is adequately addressing the issue. There is only one panel on the agenda -- buried late on Saturday after many participants will have left -- that mentions the term ''L.G.B.T.'' in the program. And none of the panels include the kind of outspoken, controversial advocates who were at last year's breakfast.
''In many countries, L.G.B.T. individuals face arrest, imprisonment, torture and even execution just for being who they are,'' Mr. Singer said. ''Some of the worst offenders are governments which are frequently invited to these meetings of world leaders. When these world leaders assemble, leaders from the L.G.B.T. activist community should be included, too.''
Forum organizers point out that there are two other panels on the agenda that touch on gay rights.
In addition to the formal program, this year Microsoft and the management consulting firms Accenture and EY are sponsoring off-piste events about gay rights issues, including work force inclusion.
Mr. Loeb, who with Mr. Singer helped finance a campaign to push through same-sex marriage in New York State, said he hoped the discussion of gay rights had finally found a home in Davos. ''I hope this notable first step begins an overdue conversation among prominent global leaders about the importance of advancing and protecting human rights for L.G.B.T. individuals,'' he said.
Proponents of gay rights can cite global progress in the business world. Human Rights Campaign started a Corporate Equality Index 13 years ago, benchmarking corporate policies ''pertinent to L.G.B.T. employees.'' When it started, only 13 companies scored a perfect 100 percent. But in the most recent survey, despite more stringent criteria, 366 companies around the world had perfect scores.
That may be progress, but if the debate about how to address the issue in Davos is any indication, there is clearly a lot more to do.
Andrew Ross Sorkin is the editor at large of DealBook. Twitter: @andrewrsorkin
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.
The World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, which begins this week, has been a top venue for controversial conversations over the years. Israelis and Palestinians have debated, for example, and luminaries from the public and private sectors have faced off on big topics like climate change, inequality and gender diversity.
One issue, though, seems to have long been officially off limits: anything related to gay and lesbian rights.
But at a time when Timothy D. Cook, the chief executive of Apple, the world's largest company by market value, has disclosed that he is gay, and with the United States Supreme Court saying last week that it would rule on whether same-sex marriage is a constitutional right, the topic has reached a tipping point.
This year, for the first time, the World Economic Forum is addressing the issue of gay and lesbian rights on the formal agenda for Davos. It is a good first step.
Still, the topic looks buried on the Davos program. It seems to have been included mainly because of pressure applied by a pair of activist hedge fund managers who usually wage their wars against companies, but have made a cause of defending the rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
It is not too hard to decipher why the topic might have been forbidden at Davos in the past. After all, the guest list is filled with officials from countries like Russia, Nigeria and Uganda whose records on human rights for the gay and transgender community are repressive and sometimes even violent. In Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- countries with officials in attendance in Davos -- same-sex conduct is punishable by death.
But last year at Davos, Human Rights Campaign, along with representatives for Paul Singer, founder of the hedge fund Elliott Management, whose son is gay, and Daniel S. Loeb, the founder of Third Point, who with his wife is active in many philanthropic causes, approached the World Economic Forum about the need to publicly host a dialogue about gay rights. The forum organizers demurred.
So Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb decided last year to hold a breakfast off the premises and off the formal program -- known as an ''off-piste'' event in Davos-speak -- to address the issue.
That breakfast panel was moderated by the journalist Fareed Zakaria and included Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb as well as Masha Gessen, a Russian gay rights activist. Also participating were Alice Nkom, a lawyer from Cameroon who has fought to end the criminalization of homosexuality in her country, and Dane Lewis, who runs Jamaica's largest gay rights advocacy organization.
The breakfast became one of the most talked about events at Davos. The room was packed with an audience of boldface names, like Muhtar Kent, the chief executive of Coca-Cola; Richard Branson of Virgin; Navi Pillay, then the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights; and a United States senator, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont.
Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire investor, was so moved by the panel that he started making calls to friends in his home country that day to begin a dialogue before the following month's Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, which became a global lightning rod for human-rights criticism.
Human Rights Campaign takes credit for pushing the World Economic Forum to finally put the topic on the agenda this year.
''There's no doubt that it served as inspiration for inclusion in the formal program in 2015,'' said Fred Sainz, a vice president at Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy group.
But the World Economic Forum takes umbrage at the idea that it was bullied by its high-minded participants to address the issue.
''That impression might come from people who only observe the World Economic Forum through the prism of Davos, and who perhaps are not aware of what we do year-round,'' said Adrian Monck, the forum's head of communications. He said issues related to gay rights had been discussed at conferences held by the forum in Abuja, Nigeria, and Tianjin, China.
''The forum believes that societies need to use all their talent to be effective and inclusive, and that diversity brings with it further positive benefits beyond simply being morally the right thing to do,'' Mr. Monck said.
Still, not all participants are satisfied that the World Economic Forum is adequately addressing the issue. There is only one panel on the agenda -- buried late on Saturday after many participants will have left -- that mentions the term ''L.G.B.T.'' in the program. And none of the panels include the kind of outspoken, controversial advocates who were at last year's breakfast.
''In many countries, L.G.B.T. individuals face arrest, imprisonment, torture and even execution just for being who they are,'' Mr. Singer said. ''Some of the worst offenders are governments which are frequently invited to these meetings of world leaders. When these world leaders assemble, leaders from the L.G.B.T. activist community should be included, too.''
Forum organizers point out that there are two other panels on the agenda that touch on gay rights.
In addition to the formal program, this year Microsoft and the management consulting firms Accenture and EY are sponsoring off-piste events about gay rights issues, including work force inclusion.
Mr. Loeb, who with Mr. Singer helped finance a campaign to push through same-sex marriage in New York State, said he hoped the discussion of gay rights had finally found a home in Davos. ''I hope this notable first step begins an overdue conversation among prominent global leaders about the importance of advancing and protecting human rights for L.G.B.T. individuals,'' he said.
Proponents of gay rights can cite global progress in the business world. Human Rights Campaign started a Corporate Equality Index 13 years ago, benchmarking corporate policies ''pertinent to L.G.B.T. employees.'' When it started, only 13 companies scored a perfect 100 percent. But in the most recent survey, despite more stringent criteria, 366 companies around the world had perfect scores.
That may be progress, but if the debate about how to address the issue in Davos is any indication, there is clearly a lot more to do.
Andrew Ross Sorkin is the editor at large of DealBook. Twitter: @andrewrsorkin
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.
The World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, which begins this week, has been a top venue for controversial conversations over the years. Israelis and Palestinians have debated, for example, and luminaries from the public and private sectors have faced off on big topics like climate change, inequality and gender diversity.
One issue, though, seems to have long been officially off limits: anything related to gay and lesbian rights.
But at a time when Timothy D. Cook, the chief executive of Apple, the world's largest company by market value, has disclosed that he is gay, and with the United States Supreme Court saying last week that it would rule on whether same-sex marriage is a constitutional right, the topic has reached a tipping point.
This year, for the first time, the World Economic Forum is addressing the issue of gay and lesbian rights on the formal agenda for Davos. It is a good first step.
Still, the topic looks buried on the Davos program. It seems to have been included mainly because of pressure applied by a pair of activist hedge fund managers who usually wage their wars against companies, but have made a cause of defending the rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
It is not too hard to decipher why the topic might have been forbidden at Davos in the past. After all, the guest list is filled with officials from countries like Russia, Nigeria and Uganda whose records on human rights for the gay and transgender community are repressive and sometimes even violent. In Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- countries with officials in attendance in Davos -- same-sex conduct is punishable by death.
But last year at Davos, Human Rights Campaign, along with representatives for Paul Singer, founder of the hedge fund Elliott Management, whose son is gay, and Daniel S. Loeb, the founder of Third Point, who with his wife is active in many philanthropic causes, approached the World Economic Forum about the need to publicly host a dialogue about gay rights. The forum organizers demurred.
So Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb decided last year to hold a breakfast off the premises and off the formal program -- known as an ''off-piste'' event in Davos-speak -- to address the issue.
That breakfast panel was moderated by the journalist Fareed Zakaria and included Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb as well as Masha Gessen, a Russian gay rights activist. Also participating were Alice Nkom, a lawyer from Cameroon who has fought to end the criminalization of homosexuality in her country, and Dane Lewis, who runs Jamaica's largest gay rights advocacy organization.
The breakfast became one of the most talked about events at Davos. The room was packed with an audience of boldface names, like Muhtar Kent, the chief executive of Coca-Cola; Richard Branson of Virgin; Navi Pillay, then the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights; and a United States senator, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont.
Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire investor, was so moved by the panel that he started making calls to friends in his home country that day to begin a dialogue before the following month's Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, which became a global lightning rod for human-rights criticism.
Human Rights Campaign takes credit for pushing the World Economic Forum to finally put the topic on the agenda this year.
''There's no doubt that it served as inspiration for inclusion in the formal program in 2015,'' said Fred Sainz, a vice president at Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy group.
But the World Economic Forum takes umbrage at the idea that it was bullied by its high-minded participants to address the issue.
''That impression might come from people who only observe the World Economic Forum through the prism of Davos, and who perhaps are not aware of what we do year-round,'' said Adrian Monck, the forum's head of communications. He said issues related to gay rights had been discussed at conferences held by the forum in Abuja, Nigeria, and Tianjin, China.
''The forum believes that societies need to use all their talent to be effective and inclusive, and that diversity brings with it further positive benefits beyond simply being morally the right thing to do,'' Mr. Monck said.
Still, not all participants are satisfied that the World Economic Forum is adequately addressing the issue. There is only one panel on the agenda -- buried late on Saturday after many participants will have left -- that mentions the term ''L.G.B.T.'' in the program. And none of the panels include the kind of outspoken, controversial advocates who were at last year's breakfast.
''In many countries, L.G.B.T. individuals face arrest, imprisonment, torture and even execution just for being who they are,'' Mr. Singer said. ''Some of the worst offenders are governments which are frequently invited to these meetings of world leaders. When these world leaders assemble, leaders from the L.G.B.T. activist community should be included, too.''
Forum organizers point out that there are two other panels on the agenda that touch on gay rights.
In addition to the formal program, this year Microsoft and the management consulting firms Accenture and EY are sponsoring off-piste events about gay rights issues, including work force inclusion.
Mr. Loeb, who with Mr. Singer helped finance a campaign to push through same-sex marriage in New York State, said he hoped the discussion of gay rights had finally found a home in Davos. ''I hope this notable first step begins an overdue conversation among prominent global leaders about the importance of advancing and protecting human rights for L.G.B.T. individuals,'' he said.
Proponents of gay rights can cite global progress in the business world. Human Rights Campaign started a Corporate Equality Index 13 years ago, benchmarking corporate policies ''pertinent to L.G.B.T. employees.'' When it started, only 13 companies scored a perfect 100 percent. But in the most recent survey, despite more stringent criteria, 366 companies around the world had perfect scores.
That may be progress, but if the debate about how to address the issue in Davos is any indication, there is clearly a lot more to do.
Andrew Ross Sorkin is the editor at large of DealBook. Twitter: @andrewrsorkin
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.
The World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, which begins this week, has been a top venue for controversial conversations over the years. Israelis and Palestinians have debated, for example, and luminaries from the public and private sectors have faced off on big topics like climate change, inequality and gender diversity.
One issue, though, seems to have long been officially off limits: anything related to gay and lesbian rights.
But at a time when Timothy D. Cook, the chief executive of Apple, the world's largest company by market value, has disclosed that he is gay, and with the United States Supreme Court saying last week that it would rule on whether same-sex marriage is a constitutional right, the topic has reached a tipping point.
This year, for the first time, the World Economic Forum is addressing the issue of gay and lesbian rights on the formal agenda for Davos. It is a good first step.
Still, the topic looks buried on the Davos program. It seems to have been included mainly because of pressure applied by a pair of activist hedge fund managers who usually wage their wars against companies, but have made a cause of defending the rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
It is not too hard to decipher why the topic might have been forbidden at Davos in the past. After all, the guest list is filled with officials from countries like Russia, Nigeria and Uganda whose records on human rights for the gay and transgender community are repressive and sometimes even violent. In Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- countries with officials in attendance in Davos -- same-sex conduct is punishable by death.
But last year at Davos, Human Rights Campaign, along with representatives for Paul Singer, founder of the hedge fund Elliott Management, whose son is gay, and Daniel S. Loeb, the founder of Third Point, who with his wife is active in many philanthropic causes, approached the World Economic Forum about the need to publicly host a dialogue about gay rights. The forum organizers demurred.
So Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb decided last year to hold a breakfast off the premises and off the formal program -- known as an ''off-piste'' event in Davos-speak -- to address the issue.
That breakfast panel was moderated by the journalist Fareed Zakaria and included Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb as well as Masha Gessen, a Russian gay rights activist. Also participating were Alice Nkom, a lawyer from Cameroon who has fought to end the criminalization of homosexuality in her country, and Dane Lewis, who runs Jamaica's largest gay rights advocacy organization.
The breakfast became one of the most talked about events at Davos. The room was packed with an audience of boldface names, like Muhtar Kent, the chief executive of Coca-Cola; Richard Branson of Virgin; Navi Pillay, then the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights; and a United States senator, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont.
Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire investor, was so moved by the panel that he started making calls to friends in his home country that day to begin a dialogue before the following month's Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, which became a global lightning rod for human-rights criticism.
Human Rights Campaign takes credit for pushing the World Economic Forum to finally put the topic on the agenda this year.
''There's no doubt that it served as inspiration for inclusion in the formal program in 2015,'' said Fred Sainz, a vice president at Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy group.
But the World Economic Forum takes umbrage at the idea that it was bullied by its high-minded participants to address the issue.
''That impression might come from people who only observe the World Economic Forum through the prism of Davos, and who perhaps are not aware of what we do year-round,'' said Adrian Monck, the forum's head of communications. He said issues related to gay rights had been discussed at conferences held by the forum in Abuja, Nigeria, and Tianjin, China.
''The forum believes that societies need to use all their talent to be effective and inclusive, and that diversity brings with it further positive benefits beyond simply being morally the right thing to do,'' Mr. Monck said.
Still, not all participants are satisfied that the World Economic Forum is adequately addressing the issue. There is only one panel on the agenda -- buried late on Saturday after many participants will have left -- that mentions the term ''L.G.B.T.'' in the program. And none of the panels include the kind of outspoken, controversial advocates who were at last year's breakfast.
''In many countries, L.G.B.T. individuals face arrest, imprisonment, torture and even execution just for being who they are,'' Mr. Singer said. ''Some of the worst offenders are governments which are frequently invited to these meetings of world leaders. When these world leaders assemble, leaders from the L.G.B.T. activist community should be included, too.''
Forum organizers point out that there are two other panels on the agenda that touch on gay rights.
In addition to the formal program, this year Microsoft and the management consulting firms Accenture and EY are sponsoring off-piste events about gay rights issues, including work force inclusion.
Mr. Loeb, who with Mr. Singer helped finance a campaign to push through same-sex marriage in New York State, said he hoped the discussion of gay rights had finally found a home in Davos. ''I hope this notable first step begins an overdue conversation among prominent global leaders about the importance of advancing and protecting human rights for L.G.B.T. individuals,'' he said.
Proponents of gay rights can cite global progress in the business world. Human Rights Campaign started a Corporate Equality Index 13 years ago, benchmarking corporate policies ''pertinent to L.G.B.T. employees.'' When it started, only 13 companies scored a perfect 100 percent. But in the most recent survey, despite more stringent criteria, 366 companies around the world had perfect scores.
That may be progress, but if the debate about how to address the issue in Davos is any indication, there is clearly a lot more to do.
Andrew Ross Sorkin is the editor at large of DealBook. Twitter: @andrewrsorkin
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.
The World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, which begins this week, has been a top venue for controversial conversations over the years. Israelis and Palestinians have debated, for example, and luminaries from the public and private sectors have faced off on big topics like climate change, inequality and gender diversity.
One issue, though, seems to have long been officially off limits: anything related to gay and lesbian rights.
But at a time when Timothy D. Cook, the chief executive of Apple, the world's largest company by market value, has disclosed that he is gay, and with the United States Supreme Court saying last week that it would rule on whether same-sex marriage is a constitutional right, the topic has reached a tipping point.
This year, for the first time, the World Economic Forum is addressing the issue of gay and lesbian rights on the formal agenda for Davos. It is a good first step.
Still, the topic looks buried on the Davos program. It seems to have been included mainly because of pressure applied by a pair of activist hedge fund managers who usually wage their wars against companies, but have made a cause of defending the rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
It is not too hard to decipher why the topic might have been forbidden at Davos in the past. After all, the guest list is filled with officials from countries like Russia, Nigeria and Uganda whose records on human rights for the gay and transgender community are repressive and sometimes even violent. In Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- countries with officials in attendance in Davos -- same-sex conduct is punishable by death.
But last year at Davos, Human Rights Campaign, along with representatives for Paul Singer, founder of the hedge fund Elliott Management, whose son is gay, and Daniel S. Loeb, the founder of Third Point, who with his wife is active in many philanthropic causes, approached the World Economic Forum about the need to publicly host a dialogue about gay rights. The forum organizers demurred.
So Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb decided last year to hold a breakfast off the premises and off the formal program -- known as an ''off-piste'' event in Davos-speak -- to address the issue.
That breakfast panel was moderated by the journalist Fareed Zakaria and included Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb as well as Masha Gessen, a Russian gay rights activist. Also participating were Alice Nkom, a lawyer from Cameroon who has fought to end the criminalization of homosexuality in her country, and Dane Lewis, who runs Jamaica's largest gay rights advocacy organization.
The breakfast became one of the most talked about events at Davos. The room was packed with an audience of boldface names, like Muhtar Kent, the chief executive of Coca-Cola; Richard Branson of Virgin; Navi Pillay, then the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights; and a United States senator, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont.
Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire investor, was so moved by the panel that he started making calls to friends in his home country that day to begin a dialogue before the following month's Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, which became a global lightning rod for human-rights criticism.
Human Rights Campaign takes credit for pushing the World Economic Forum to finally put the topic on the agenda this year.
''There's no doubt that it served as inspiration for inclusion in the formal program in 2015,'' said Fred Sainz, a vice president at Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy group.
But the World Economic Forum takes umbrage at the idea that it was bullied by its high-minded participants to address the issue.
''That impression might come from people who only observe the World Economic Forum through the prism of Davos, and who perhaps are not aware of what we do year-round,'' said Adrian Monck, the forum's head of communications. He said issues related to gay rights had been discussed at conferences held by the forum in Abuja, Nigeria, and Tianjin, China.
''The forum believes that societies need to use all their talent to be effective and inclusive, and that diversity brings with it further positive benefits beyond simply being morally the right thing to do,'' Mr. Monck said.
Still, not all participants are satisfied that the World Economic Forum is adequately addressing the issue. There is only one panel on the agenda -- buried late on Saturday after many participants will have left -- that mentions the term ''L.G.B.T.'' in the program. And none of the panels include the kind of outspoken, controversial advocates who were at last year's breakfast.
''In many countries, L.G.B.T. individuals face arrest, imprisonment, torture and even execution just for being who they are,'' Mr. Singer said. ''Some of the worst offenders are governments which are frequently invited to these meetings of world leaders. When these world leaders assemble, leaders from the L.G.B.T. activist community should be included, too.''
Forum organizers point out that there are two other panels on the agenda that touch on gay rights.
In addition to the formal program, this year Microsoft and the management consulting firms Accenture and EY are sponsoring off-piste events about gay rights issues, including work force inclusion.
Mr. Loeb, who with Mr. Singer helped finance a campaign to push through same-sex marriage in New York State, said he hoped the discussion of gay rights had finally found a home in Davos. ''I hope this notable first step begins an overdue conversation among prominent global leaders about the importance of advancing and protecting human rights for L.G.B.T. individuals,'' he said.
Proponents of gay rights can cite global progress in the business world. Human Rights Campaign started a Corporate Equality Index 13 years ago, benchmarking corporate policies ''pertinent to L.G.B.T. employees.'' When it started, only 13 companies scored a perfect 100 percent. But in the most recent survey, despite more stringent criteria, 366 companies around the world had perfect scores.
That may be progress, but if the debate about how to address the issue in Davos is any indication, there is clearly a lot more to do.
Andrew Ross Sorkin is the editor at large of DealBook. Twitter: @andrewrsorkin
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.
The World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, which begins this week, has been a top venue for controversial conversations over the years. Israelis and Palestinians have debated, for example, and luminaries from the public and private sectors have faced off on big topics like climate change, inequality and gender diversity.
One issue, though, seems to have long been officially off limits: anything related to gay and lesbian rights.
But at a time when Timothy D. Cook, the chief executive of Apple, the world's largest company by market value, has disclosed that he is gay, and with the United States Supreme Court saying last week that it would rule on whether same-sex marriage is a constitutional right, the topic has reached a tipping point.
This year, for the first time, the World Economic Forum is addressing the issue of gay and lesbian rights on the formal agenda for Davos. It is a good first step.
Still, the topic looks buried on the Davos program. It seems to have been included mainly because of pressure applied by a pair of activist hedge fund managers who usually wage their wars against companies, but have made a cause of defending the rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
It is not too hard to decipher why the topic might have been forbidden at Davos in the past. After all, the guest list is filled with officials from countries like Russia, Nigeria and Uganda whose records on human rights for the gay and transgender community are repressive and sometimes even violent. In Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- countries with officials in attendance in Davos -- same-sex conduct is punishable by death.
But last year at Davos, Human Rights Campaign, along with representatives for Paul Singer, founder of the hedge fund Elliott Management, whose son is gay, and Daniel S. Loeb, the founder of Third Point, who with his wife is active in many philanthropic causes, approached the World Economic Forum about the need to publicly host a dialogue about gay rights. The forum organizers demurred.
So Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb decided last year to hold a breakfast off the premises and off the formal program -- known as an ''off-piste'' event in Davos-speak -- to address the issue.
That breakfast panel was moderated by the journalist Fareed Zakaria and included Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb as well as Masha Gessen, a Russian gay rights activist. Also participating were Alice Nkom, a lawyer from Cameroon who has fought to end the criminalization of homosexuality in her country, and Dane Lewis, who runs Jamaica's largest gay rights advocacy organization.
The breakfast became one of the most talked about events at Davos. The room was packed with an audience of boldface names, like Muhtar Kent, the chief executive of Coca-Cola; Richard Branson of Virgin; Navi Pillay, then the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights; and a United States senator, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont.
Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire investor, was so moved by the panel that he started making calls to friends in his home country that day to begin a dialogue before the following month's Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, which became a global lightning rod for human-rights criticism.
Human Rights Campaign takes credit for pushing the World Economic Forum to finally put the topic on the agenda this year.
''There's no doubt that it served as inspiration for inclusion in the formal program in 2015,'' said Fred Sainz, a vice president at Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy group.
But the World Economic Forum takes umbrage at the idea that it was bullied by its high-minded participants to address the issue.
''That impression might come from people who only observe the World Economic Forum through the prism of Davos, and who perhaps are not aware of what we do year-round,'' said Adrian Monck, the forum's head of communications. He said issues related to gay rights had been discussed at conferences held by the forum in Abuja, Nigeria, and Tianjin, China.
''The forum believes that societies need to use all their talent to be effective and inclusive, and that diversity brings with it further positive benefits beyond simply being morally the right thing to do,'' Mr. Monck said.
Still, not all participants are satisfied that the World Economic Forum is adequately addressing the issue. There is only one panel on the agenda -- buried late on Saturday after many participants will have left -- that mentions the term ''L.G.B.T.'' in the program. And none of the panels include the kind of outspoken, controversial advocates who were at last year's breakfast.
''In many countries, L.G.B.T. individuals face arrest, imprisonment, torture and even execution just for being who they are,'' Mr. Singer said. ''Some of the worst offenders are governments which are frequently invited to these meetings of world leaders. When these world leaders assemble, leaders from the L.G.B.T. activist community should be included, too.''
Forum organizers point out that there are two other panels on the agenda that touch on gay rights.
In addition to the formal program, this year Microsoft and the management consulting firms Accenture and EY are sponsoring off-piste events about gay rights issues, including work force inclusion.
Mr. Loeb, who with Mr. Singer helped finance a campaign to push through same-sex marriage in New York State, said he hoped the discussion of gay rights had finally found a home in Davos. ''I hope this notable first step begins an overdue conversation among prominent global leaders about the importance of advancing and protecting human rights for L.G.B.T. individuals,'' he said.
Proponents of gay rights can cite global progress in the business world. Human Rights Campaign started a Corporate Equality Index 13 years ago, benchmarking corporate policies ''pertinent to L.G.B.T. employees.'' When it started, only 13 companies scored a perfect 100 percent. But in the most recent survey, despite more stringent criteria, 366 companies around the world had perfect scores.
That may be progress, but if the debate about how to address the issue in Davos is any indication, there is clearly a lot more to do.
Andrew Ross Sorkin is the editor at large of DealBook. Twitter: @andrewrsorkin
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.
The World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, which begins this week, has been a top venue for controversial conversations over the years. Israelis and Palestinians have debated, for example, and luminaries from the public and private sectors have faced off on big topics like climate change, inequality and gender diversity.
One issue, though, seems to have long been officially off limits: anything related to gay and lesbian rights.
But at a time when Timothy D. Cook, the chief executive of Apple, the world's largest company by market value, has disclosed that he is gay, and with the United States Supreme Court saying last week that it would rule on whether same-sex marriage is a constitutional right, the topic has reached a tipping point.
This year, for the first time, the World Economic Forum is addressing the issue of gay and lesbian rights on the formal agenda for Davos. It is a good first step.
Still, the topic looks buried on the Davos program. It seems to have been included mainly because of pressure applied by a pair of activist hedge fund managers who usually wage their wars against companies, but have made a cause of defending the rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
It is not too hard to decipher why the topic might have been forbidden at Davos in the past. After all, the guest list is filled with officials from countries like Russia, Nigeria and Uganda whose records on human rights for the gay and transgender community are repressive and sometimes even violent. In Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- countries with officials in attendance in Davos -- same-sex conduct is punishable by death.
But last year at Davos, Human Rights Campaign, along with representatives for Paul Singer, founder of the hedge fund Elliott Management, whose son is gay, and Daniel S. Loeb, the founder of Third Point, who with his wife is active in many philanthropic causes, approached the World Economic Forum about the need to publicly host a dialogue about gay rights. The forum organizers demurred.
So Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb decided last year to hold a breakfast off the premises and off the formal program -- known as an ''off-piste'' event in Davos-speak -- to address the issue.
That breakfast panel was moderated by the journalist Fareed Zakaria and included Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb as well as Masha Gessen, a Russian gay rights activist. Also participating were Alice Nkom, a lawyer from Cameroon who has fought to end the criminalization of homosexuality in her country, and Dane Lewis, who runs Jamaica's largest gay rights advocacy organization.
The breakfast became one of the most talked about events at Davos. The room was packed with an audience of boldface names, like Muhtar Kent, the chief executive of Coca-Cola; Richard Branson of Virgin; Navi Pillay, then the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights; and a United States senator, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont.
Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire investor, was so moved by the panel that he started making calls to friends in his home country that day to begin a dialogue before the following month's Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, which became a global lightning rod for human-rights criticism.
Human Rights Campaign takes credit for pushing the World Economic Forum to finally put the topic on the agenda this year.
''There's no doubt that it served as inspiration for inclusion in the formal program in 2015,'' said Fred Sainz, a vice president at Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy group.
But the World Economic Forum takes umbrage at the idea that it was bullied by its high-minded participants to address the issue.
''That impression might come from people who only observe the World Economic Forum through the prism of Davos, and who perhaps are not aware of what we do year-round,'' said Adrian Monck, the forum's head of communications. He said issues related to gay rights had been discussed at conferences held by the forum in Abuja, Nigeria, and Tianjin, China.
''The forum believes that societies need to use all their talent to be effective and inclusive, and that diversity brings with it further positive benefits beyond simply being morally the right thing to do,'' Mr. Monck said.
Still, not all participants are satisfied that the World Economic Forum is adequately addressing the issue. There is only one panel on the agenda -- buried late on Saturday after many participants will have left -- that mentions the term ''L.G.B.T.'' in the program. And none of the panels include the kind of outspoken, controversial advocates who were at last year's breakfast.
''In many countries, L.G.B.T. individuals face arrest, imprisonment, torture and even execution just for being who they are,'' Mr. Singer said. ''Some of the worst offenders are governments which are frequently invited to these meetings of world leaders. When these world leaders assemble, leaders from the L.G.B.T. activist community should be included, too.''
Forum organizers point out that there are two other panels on the agenda that touch on gay rights.
In addition to the formal program, this year Microsoft and the management consulting firms Accenture and EY are sponsoring off-piste events about gay rights issues, including work force inclusion.
Mr. Loeb, who with Mr. Singer helped finance a campaign to push through same-sex marriage in New York State, said he hoped the discussion of gay rights had finally found a home in Davos. ''I hope this notable first step begins an overdue conversation among prominent global leaders about the importance of advancing and protecting human rights for L.G.B.T. individuals,'' he said.
Proponents of gay rights can cite global progress in the business world. Human Rights Campaign started a Corporate Equality Index 13 years ago, benchmarking corporate policies ''pertinent to L.G.B.T. employees.'' When it started, only 13 companies scored a perfect 100 percent. But in the most recent survey, despite more stringent criteria, 366 companies around the world had perfect scores.
That may be progress, but if the debate about how to address the issue in Davos is any indication, there is clearly a lot more to do.
Andrew Ross Sorkin is the editor at large of DealBook. Twitter: @andrewrsorkin
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.
The World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, which begins this week, has been a top venue for controversial conversations over the years. Israelis and Palestinians have debated, for example, and luminaries from the public and private sectors have faced off on big topics like climate change, inequality and gender diversity.
One issue, though, seems to have long been officially off limits: anything related to gay and lesbian rights.
But at a time when Timothy D. Cook, the chief executive of Apple, the world's largest company by market value, has disclosed that he is gay, and with the United States Supreme Court saying last week that it would rule on whether same-sex marriage is a constitutional right, the topic has reached a tipping point.
This year, for the first time, the World Economic Forum is addressing the issue of gay and lesbian rights on the formal agenda for Davos. It is a good first step.
Still, the topic looks buried on the Davos program. It seems to have been included mainly because of pressure applied by a pair of activist hedge fund managers who usually wage their wars against companies, but have made a cause of defending the rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
It is not too hard to decipher why the topic might have been forbidden at Davos in the past. After all, the guest list is filled with officials from countries like Russia, Nigeria and Uganda whose records on human rights for the gay and transgender community are repressive and sometimes even violent. In Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- countries with officials in attendance in Davos -- same-sex conduct is punishable by death.
But last year at Davos, Human Rights Campaign, along with representatives for Paul Singer, founder of the hedge fund Elliott Management, whose son is gay, and Daniel S. Loeb, the founder of Third Point, who with his wife is active in many philanthropic causes, approached the World Economic Forum about the need to publicly host a dialogue about gay rights. The forum organizers demurred.
So Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb decided last year to hold a breakfast off the premises and off the formal program -- known as an ''off-piste'' event in Davos-speak -- to address the issue.
That breakfast panel was moderated by the journalist Fareed Zakaria and included Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb as well as Masha Gessen, a Russian gay rights activist. Also participating were Alice Nkom, a lawyer from Cameroon who has fought to end the criminalization of homosexuality in her country, and Dane Lewis, who runs Jamaica's largest gay rights advocacy organization.
The breakfast became one of the most talked about events at Davos. The room was packed with an audience of boldface names, like Muhtar Kent, the chief executive of Coca-Cola; Richard Branson of Virgin; Navi Pillay, then the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights; and a United States senator, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont.
Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire investor, was so moved by the panel that he started making calls to friends in his home country that day to begin a dialogue before the following month's Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, which became a global lightning rod for human-rights criticism.
Human Rights Campaign takes credit for pushing the World Economic Forum to finally put the topic on the agenda this year.
''There's no doubt that it served as inspiration for inclusion in the formal program in 2015,'' said Fred Sainz, a vice president at Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy group.
But the World Economic Forum takes umbrage at the idea that it was bullied by its high-minded participants to address the issue.
''That impression might come from people who only observe the World Economic Forum through the prism of Davos, and who perhaps are not aware of what we do year-round,'' said Adrian Monck, the forum's head of communications. He said issues related to gay rights had been discussed at conferences held by the forum in Abuja, Nigeria, and Tianjin, China.
''The forum believes that societies need to use all their talent to be effective and inclusive, and that diversity brings with it further positive benefits beyond simply being morally the right thing to do,'' Mr. Monck said.
Still, not all participants are satisfied that the World Economic Forum is adequately addressing the issue. There is only one panel on the agenda -- buried late on Saturday after many participants will have left -- that mentions the term ''L.G.B.T.'' in the program. And none of the panels include the kind of outspoken, controversial advocates who were at last year's breakfast.
''In many countries, L.G.B.T. individuals face arrest, imprisonment, torture and even execution just for being who they are,'' Mr. Singer said. ''Some of the worst offenders are governments which are frequently invited to these meetings of world leaders. When these world leaders assemble, leaders from the L.G.B.T. activist community should be included, too.''
Forum organizers point out that there are two other panels on the agenda that touch on gay rights.
In addition to the formal program, this year Microsoft and the management consulting firms Accenture and EY are sponsoring off-piste events about gay rights issues, including work force inclusion.
Mr. Loeb, who with Mr. Singer helped finance a campaign to push through same-sex marriage in New York State, said he hoped the discussion of gay rights had finally found a home in Davos. ''I hope this notable first step begins an overdue conversation among prominent global leaders about the importance of advancing and protecting human rights for L.G.B.T. individuals,'' he said.
Proponents of gay rights can cite global progress in the business world. Human Rights Campaign started a Corporate Equality Index 13 years ago, benchmarking corporate policies ''pertinent to L.G.B.T. employees.'' When it started, only 13 companies scored a perfect 100 percent. But in the most recent survey, despite more stringent criteria, 366 companies around the world had perfect scores.
That may be progress, but if the debate about how to address the issue in Davos is any indication, there is clearly a lot more to do.
Andrew Ross Sorkin is the editor at large of DealBook. Twitter: @andrewrsorkin
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.
The World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, which begins this week, has been a top venue for controversial conversations over the years. Israelis and Palestinians have debated, for example, and luminaries from the public and private sectors have faced off on big topics like climate change, inequality and gender diversity.
One issue, though, seems to have long been officially off limits: anything related to gay and lesbian rights.
But at a time when Timothy D. Cook, the chief executive of Apple, the world's largest company by market value, has disclosed that he is gay, and with the United States Supreme Court saying last week that it would rule on whether same-sex marriage is a constitutional right, the topic has reached a tipping point.
This year, for the first time, the World Economic Forum is addressing the issue of gay and lesbian rights on the formal agenda for Davos. It is a good first step.
Still, the topic looks buried on the Davos program. It seems to have been included mainly because of pressure applied by a pair of activist hedge fund managers who usually wage their wars against companies, but have made a cause of defending the rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
It is not too hard to decipher why the topic might have been forbidden at Davos in the past. After all, the guest list is filled with officials from countries like Russia, Nigeria and Uganda whose records on human rights for the gay and transgender community are repressive and sometimes even violent. In Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- countries with officials in attendance in Davos -- same-sex conduct is punishable by death.
But last year at Davos, Human Rights Campaign, along with representatives for Paul Singer, founder of the hedge fund Elliott Management, whose son is gay, and Daniel S. Loeb, the founder of Third Point, who with his wife is active in many philanthropic causes, approached the World Economic Forum about the need to publicly host a dialogue about gay rights. The forum organizers demurred.
So Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb decided last year to hold a breakfast off the premises and off the formal program -- known as an ''off-piste'' event in Davos-speak -- to address the issue.
That breakfast panel was moderated by the journalist Fareed Zakaria and included Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb as well as Masha Gessen, a Russian gay rights activist. Also participating were Alice Nkom, a lawyer from Cameroon who has fought to end the criminalization of homosexuality in her country, and Dane Lewis, who runs Jamaica's largest gay rights advocacy organization.
The breakfast became one of the most talked about events at Davos. The room was packed with an audience of boldface names, like Muhtar Kent, the chief executive of Coca-Cola; Richard Branson of Virgin; Navi Pillay, then the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights; and a United States senator, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont.
Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire investor, was so moved by the panel that he started making calls to friends in his home country that day to begin a dialogue before the following month's Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, which became a global lightning rod for human-rights criticism.
Human Rights Campaign takes credit for pushing the World Economic Forum to finally put the topic on the agenda this year.
''There's no doubt that it served as inspiration for inclusion in the formal program in 2015,'' said Fred Sainz, a vice president at Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy group.
But the World Economic Forum takes umbrage at the idea that it was bullied by its high-minded participants to address the issue.
''That impression might come from people who only observe the World Economic Forum through the prism of Davos, and who perhaps are not aware of what we do year-round,'' said Adrian Monck, the forum's head of communications. He said issues related to gay rights had been discussed at conferences held by the forum in Abuja, Nigeria, and Tianjin, China.
''The forum believes that societies need to use all their talent to be effective and inclusive, and that diversity brings with it further positive benefits beyond simply being morally the right thing to do,'' Mr. Monck said.
Still, not all participants are satisfied that the World Economic Forum is adequately addressing the issue. There is only one panel on the agenda -- buried late on Saturday after many participants will have left -- that mentions the term ''L.G.B.T.'' in the program. And none of the panels include the kind of outspoken, controversial advocates who were at last year's breakfast.
''In many countries, L.G.B.T. individuals face arrest, imprisonment, torture and even execution just for being who they are,'' Mr. Singer said. ''Some of the worst offenders are governments which are frequently invited to these meetings of world leaders. When these world leaders assemble, leaders from the L.G.B.T. activist community should be included, too.''
Forum organizers point out that there are two other panels on the agenda that touch on gay rights.
In addition to the formal program, this year Microsoft and the management consulting firms Accenture and EY are sponsoring off-piste events about gay rights issues, including work force inclusion.
Mr. Loeb, who with Mr. Singer helped finance a campaign to push through same-sex marriage in New York State, said he hoped the discussion of gay rights had finally found a home in Davos. ''I hope this notable first step begins an overdue conversation among prominent global leaders about the importance of advancing and protecting human rights for L.G.B.T. individuals,'' he said.
Proponents of gay rights can cite global progress in the business world. Human Rights Campaign started a Corporate Equality Index 13 years ago, benchmarking corporate policies ''pertinent to L.G.B.T. employees.'' When it started, only 13 companies scored a perfect 100 percent. But in the most recent survey, despite more stringent criteria, 366 companies around the world had perfect scores.
That may be progress, but if the debate about how to address the issue in Davos is any indication, there is clearly a lot more to do.
Andrew Ross Sorkin is the editor at large of DealBook. Twitter: @andrewrsorkin
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.
The World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, which begins this week, has been a top venue for controversial conversations over the years. Israelis and Palestinians have debated, for example, and luminaries from the public and private sectors have faced off on big topics like climate change, inequality and gender diversity.
One issue, though, seems to have long been officially off limits: anything related to gay and lesbian rights.
But at a time when Timothy D. Cook, the chief executive of Apple, the world's largest company by market value, has disclosed that he is gay, and with the United States Supreme Court saying last week that it would rule on whether same-sex marriage is a constitutional right, the topic has reached a tipping point.
This year, for the first time, the World Economic Forum is addressing the issue of gay and lesbian rights on the formal agenda for Davos. It is a good first step.
Still, the topic looks buried on the Davos program. It seems to have been included mainly because of pressure applied by a pair of activist hedge fund managers who usually wage their wars against companies, but have made a cause of defending the rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
It is not too hard to decipher why the topic might have been forbidden at Davos in the past. After all, the guest list is filled with officials from countries like Russia, Nigeria and Uganda whose records on human rights for the gay and transgender community are repressive and sometimes even violent. In Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- countries with officials in attendance in Davos -- same-sex conduct is punishable by death.
But last year at Davos, Human Rights Campaign, along with representatives for Paul Singer, founder of the hedge fund Elliott Management, whose son is gay, and Daniel S. Loeb, the founder of Third Point, who with his wife is active in many philanthropic causes, approached the World Economic Forum about the need to publicly host a dialogue about gay rights. The forum organizers demurred.
So Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb decided last year to hold a breakfast off the premises and off the formal program -- known as an ''off-piste'' event in Davos-speak -- to address the issue.
That breakfast panel was moderated by the journalist Fareed Zakaria and included Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb as well as Masha Gessen, a Russian gay rights activist. Also participating were Alice Nkom, a lawyer from Cameroon who has fought to end the criminalization of homosexuality in her country, and Dane Lewis, who runs Jamaica's largest gay rights advocacy organization.
The breakfast became one of the most talked about events at Davos. The room was packed with an audience of boldface names, like Muhtar Kent, the chief executive of Coca-Cola; Richard Branson of Virgin; Navi Pillay, then the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights; and a United States senator, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont.
Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire investor, was so moved by the panel that he started making calls to friends in his home country that day to begin a dialogue before the following month's Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, which became a global lightning rod for human-rights criticism.
Human Rights Campaign takes credit for pushing the World Economic Forum to finally put the topic on the agenda this year.
''There's no doubt that it served as inspiration for inclusion in the formal program in 2015,'' said Fred Sainz, a vice president at Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy group.
But the World Economic Forum takes umbrage at the idea that it was bullied by its high-minded participants to address the issue.
''That impression might come from people who only observe the World Economic Forum through the prism of Davos, and who perhaps are not aware of what we do year-round,'' said Adrian Monck, the forum's head of communications. He said issues related to gay rights had been discussed at conferences held by the forum in Abuja, Nigeria, and Tianjin, China.
''The forum believes that societies need to use all their talent to be effective and inclusive, and that diversity brings with it further positive benefits beyond simply being morally the right thing to do,'' Mr. Monck said.
Still, not all participants are satisfied that the World Economic Forum is adequately addressing the issue. There is only one panel on the agenda -- buried late on Saturday after many participants will have left -- that mentions the term ''L.G.B.T.'' in the program. And none of the panels include the kind of outspoken, controversial advocates who were at last year's breakfast.
''In many countries, L.G.B.T. individuals face arrest, imprisonment, torture and even execution just for being who they are,'' Mr. Singer said. ''Some of the worst offenders are governments which are frequently invited to these meetings of world leaders. When these world leaders assemble, leaders from the L.G.B.T. activist community should be included, too.''
Forum organizers point out that there are two other panels on the agenda that touch on gay rights.
In addition to the formal program, this year Microsoft and the management consulting firms Accenture and EY are sponsoring off-piste events about gay rights issues, including work force inclusion.
Mr. Loeb, who with Mr. Singer helped finance a campaign to push through same-sex marriage in New York State, said he hoped the discussion of gay rights had finally found a home in Davos. ''I hope this notable first step begins an overdue conversation among prominent global leaders about the importance of advancing and protecting human rights for L.G.B.T. individuals,'' he said.
Proponents of gay rights can cite global progress in the business world. Human Rights Campaign started a Corporate Equality Index 13 years ago, benchmarking corporate policies ''pertinent to L.G.B.T. employees.'' When it started, only 13 companies scored a perfect 100 percent. But in the most recent survey, despite more stringent criteria, 366 companies around the world had perfect scores.
That may be progress, but if the debate about how to address the issue in Davos is any indication, there is clearly a lot more to do.
Andrew Ross Sorkin is the editor at large of DealBook. Twitter: @andrewrsorkin
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.
The World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, which begins this week, has been a top venue for controversial conversations over the years. Israelis and Palestinians have debated, for example, and luminaries from the public and private sectors have faced off on big topics like climate change, inequality and gender diversity.
One issue, though, seems to have long been officially off limits: anything related to gay and lesbian rights.
But at a time when Timothy D. Cook, the chief executive of Apple, the world's largest company by market value, has disclosed that he is gay, and with the United States Supreme Court saying last week that it would rule on whether same-sex marriage is a constitutional right, the topic has reached a tipping point.
This year, for the first time, the World Economic Forum is addressing the issue of gay and lesbian rights on the formal agenda for Davos. It is a good first step.
Still, the topic looks buried on the Davos program. It seems to have been included mainly because of pressure applied by a pair of activist hedge fund managers who usually wage their wars against companies, but have made a cause of defending the rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
It is not too hard to decipher why the topic might have been forbidden at Davos in the past. After all, the guest list is filled with officials from countries like Russia, Nigeria and Uganda whose records on human rights for the gay and transgender community are repressive and sometimes even violent. In Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- countries with officials in attendance in Davos -- same-sex conduct is punishable by death.
But last year at Davos, Human Rights Campaign, along with representatives for Paul Singer, founder of the hedge fund Elliott Management, whose son is gay, and Daniel S. Loeb, the founder of Third Point, who with his wife is active in many philanthropic causes, approached the World Economic Forum about the need to publicly host a dialogue about gay rights. The forum organizers demurred.
So Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb decided last year to hold a breakfast off the premises and off the formal program -- known as an ''off-piste'' event in Davos-speak -- to address the issue.
That breakfast panel was moderated by the journalist Fareed Zakaria and included Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb as well as Masha Gessen, a Russian gay rights activist. Also participating were Alice Nkom, a lawyer from Cameroon who has fought to end the criminalization of homosexuality in her country, and Dane Lewis, who runs Jamaica's largest gay rights advocacy organization.
The breakfast became one of the most talked about events at Davos. The room was packed with an audience of boldface names, like Muhtar Kent, the chief executive of Coca-Cola; Richard Branson of Virgin; Navi Pillay, then the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights; and a United States senator, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont.
Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire investor, was so moved by the panel that he started making calls to friends in his home country that day to begin a dialogue before the following month's Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, which became a global lightning rod for human-rights criticism.
Human Rights Campaign takes credit for pushing the World Economic Forum to finally put the topic on the agenda this year.
''There's no doubt that it served as inspiration for inclusion in the formal program in 2015,'' said Fred Sainz, a vice president at Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy group.
But the World Economic Forum takes umbrage at the idea that it was bullied by its high-minded participants to address the issue.
''That impression might come from people who only observe the World Economic Forum through the prism of Davos, and who perhaps are not aware of what we do year-round,'' said Adrian Monck, the forum's head of communications. He said issues related to gay rights had been discussed at conferences held by the forum in Abuja, Nigeria, and Tianjin, China.
''The forum believes that societies need to use all their talent to be effective and inclusive, and that diversity brings with it further positive benefits beyond simply being morally the right thing to do,'' Mr. Monck said.
Still, not all participants are satisfied that the World Economic Forum is adequately addressing the issue. There is only one panel on the agenda -- buried late on Saturday after many participants will have left -- that mentions the term ''L.G.B.T.'' in the program. And none of the panels include the kind of outspoken, controversial advocates who were at last year's breakfast.
''In many countries, L.G.B.T. individuals face arrest, imprisonment, torture and even execution just for being who they are,'' Mr. Singer said. ''Some of the worst offenders are governments which are frequently invited to these meetings of world leaders. When these world leaders assemble, leaders from the L.G.B.T. activist community should be included, too.''
Forum organizers point out that there are two other panels on the agenda that touch on gay rights.
In addition to the formal program, this year Microsoft and the management consulting firms Accenture and EY are sponsoring off-piste events about gay rights issues, including work force inclusion.
Mr. Loeb, who with Mr. Singer helped finance a campaign to push through same-sex marriage in New York State, said he hoped the discussion of gay rights had finally found a home in Davos. ''I hope this notable first step begins an overdue conversation among prominent global leaders about the importance of advancing and protecting human rights for L.G.B.T. individuals,'' he said.
Proponents of gay rights can cite global progress in the business world. Human Rights Campaign started a Corporate Equality Index 13 years ago, benchmarking corporate policies ''pertinent to L.G.B.T. employees.'' When it started, only 13 companies scored a perfect 100 percent. But in the most recent survey, despite more stringent criteria, 366 companies around the world had perfect scores.
That may be progress, but if the debate about how to address the issue in Davos is any indication, there is clearly a lot more to do.
Andrew Ross Sorkin is the editor at large of DealBook. Twitter: @andrewrsorkin
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.
The World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, which begins this week, has been a top venue for controversial conversations over the years. Israelis and Palestinians have debated, for example, and luminaries from the public and private sectors have faced off on big topics like climate change, inequality and gender diversity.
One issue, though, seems to have long been officially off limits: anything related to gay and lesbian rights.
But at a time when Timothy D. Cook, the chief executive of Apple, the world's largest company by market value, has disclosed that he is gay, and with the United States Supreme Court saying last week that it would rule on whether same-sex marriage is a constitutional right, the topic has reached a tipping point.
This year, for the first time, the World Economic Forum is addressing the issue of gay and lesbian rights on the formal agenda for Davos. It is a good first step.
Still, the topic looks buried on the Davos program. It seems to have been included mainly because of pressure applied by a pair of activist hedge fund managers who usually wage their wars against companies, but have made a cause of defending the rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
It is not too hard to decipher why the topic might have been forbidden at Davos in the past. After all, the guest list is filled with officials from countries like Russia, Nigeria and Uganda whose records on human rights for the gay and transgender community are repressive and sometimes even violent. In Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- countries with officials in attendance in Davos -- same-sex conduct is punishable by death.
But last year at Davos, Human Rights Campaign, along with representatives for Paul Singer, founder of the hedge fund Elliott Management, whose son is gay, and Daniel S. Loeb, the founder of Third Point, who with his wife is active in many philanthropic causes, approached the World Economic Forum about the need to publicly host a dialogue about gay rights. The forum organizers demurred.
So Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb decided last year to hold a breakfast off the premises and off the formal program -- known as an ''off-piste'' event in Davos-speak -- to address the issue.
That breakfast panel was moderated by the journalist Fareed Zakaria and included Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb as well as Masha Gessen, a Russian gay rights activist. Also participating were Alice Nkom, a lawyer from Cameroon who has fought to end the criminalization of homosexuality in her country, and Dane Lewis, who runs Jamaica's largest gay rights advocacy organization.
The breakfast became one of the most talked about events at Davos. The room was packed with an audience of boldface names, like Muhtar Kent, the chief executive of Coca-Cola; Richard Branson of Virgin; Navi Pillay, then the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights; and a United States senator, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont.
Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire investor, was so moved by the panel that he started making calls to friends in his home country that day to begin a dialogue before the following month's Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, which became a global lightning rod for human-rights criticism.
Human Rights Campaign takes credit for pushing the World Economic Forum to finally put the topic on the agenda this year.
''There's no doubt that it served as inspiration for inclusion in the formal program in 2015,'' said Fred Sainz, a vice president at Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy group.
But the World Economic Forum takes umbrage at the idea that it was bullied by its high-minded participants to address the issue.
''That impression might come from people who only observe the World Economic Forum through the prism of Davos, and who perhaps are not aware of what we do year-round,'' said Adrian Monck, the forum's head of communications. He said issues related to gay rights had been discussed at conferences held by the forum in Abuja, Nigeria, and Tianjin, China.
''The forum believes that societies need to use all their talent to be effective and inclusive, and that diversity brings with it further positive benefits beyond simply being morally the right thing to do,'' Mr. Monck said.
Still, not all participants are satisfied that the World Economic Forum is adequately addressing the issue. There is only one panel on the agenda -- buried late on Saturday after many participants will have left -- that mentions the term ''L.G.B.T.'' in the program. And none of the panels include the kind of outspoken, controversial advocates who were at last year's breakfast.
''In many countries, L.G.B.T. individuals face arrest, imprisonment, torture and even execution just for being who they are,'' Mr. Singer said. ''Some of the worst offenders are governments which are frequently invited to these meetings of world leaders. When these world leaders assemble, leaders from the L.G.B.T. activist community should be included, too.''
Forum organizers point out that there are two other panels on the agenda that touch on gay rights.
In addition to the formal program, this year Microsoft and the management consulting firms Accenture and EY are sponsoring off-piste events about gay rights issues, including work force inclusion.
Mr. Loeb, who with Mr. Singer helped finance a campaign to push through same-sex marriage in New York State, said he hoped the discussion of gay rights had finally found a home in Davos. ''I hope this notable first step begins an overdue conversation among prominent global leaders about the importance of advancing and protecting human rights for L.G.B.T. individuals,'' he said.
Proponents of gay rights can cite global progress in the business world. Human Rights Campaign started a Corporate Equality Index 13 years ago, benchmarking corporate policies ''pertinent to L.G.B.T. employees.'' When it started, only 13 companies scored a perfect 100 percent. But in the most recent survey, despite more stringent criteria, 366 companies around the world had perfect scores.
That may be progress, but if the debate about how to address the issue in Davos is any indication, there is clearly a lot more to do.
Andrew Ross Sorkin is the editor at large of DealBook. Twitter: @andrewrsorkin
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.
The World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, which begins this week, has been a top venue for controversial conversations over the years. Israelis and Palestinians have debated, for example, and luminaries from the public and private sectors have faced off on big topics like climate change, inequality and gender diversity.
One issue, though, seems to have long been officially off limits: anything related to gay and lesbian rights.
But at a time when Timothy D. Cook, the chief executive of Apple, the world's largest company by market value, has disclosed that he is gay, and with the United States Supreme Court saying last week that it would rule on whether same-sex marriage is a constitutional right, the topic has reached a tipping point.
This year, for the first time, the World Economic Forum is addressing the issue of gay and lesbian rights on the formal agenda for Davos. It is a good first step.
Still, the topic looks buried on the Davos program. It seems to have been included mainly because of pressure applied by a pair of activist hedge fund managers who usually wage their wars against companies, but have made a cause of defending the rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
It is not too hard to decipher why the topic might have been forbidden at Davos in the past. After all, the guest list is filled with officials from countries like Russia, Nigeria and Uganda whose records on human rights for the gay and transgender community are repressive and sometimes even violent. In Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- countries with officials in attendance in Davos -- same-sex conduct is punishable by death.
But last year at Davos, Human Rights Campaign, along with representatives for Paul Singer, founder of the hedge fund Elliott Management, whose son is gay, and Daniel S. Loeb, the founder of Third Point, who with his wife is active in many philanthropic causes, approached the World Economic Forum about the need to publicly host a dialogue about gay rights. The forum organizers demurred.
So Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb decided last year to hold a breakfast off the premises and off the formal program -- known as an ''off-piste'' event in Davos-speak -- to address the issue.
That breakfast panel was moderated by the journalist Fareed Zakaria and included Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb as well as Masha Gessen, a Russian gay rights activist. Also participating were Alice Nkom, a lawyer from Cameroon who has fought to end the criminalization of homosexuality in her country, and Dane Lewis, who runs Jamaica's largest gay rights advocacy organization.
The breakfast became one of the most talked about events at Davos. The room was packed with an audience of boldface names, like Muhtar Kent, the chief executive of Coca-Cola; Richard Branson of Virgin; Navi Pillay, then the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights; and a United States senator, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont.
Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire investor, was so moved by the panel that he started making calls to friends in his home country that day to begin a dialogue before the following month's Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, which became a global lightning rod for human-rights criticism.
Human Rights Campaign takes credit for pushing the World Economic Forum to finally put the topic on the agenda this year.
''There's no doubt that it served as inspiration for inclusion in the formal program in 2015,'' said Fred Sainz, a vice president at Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy group.
But the World Economic Forum takes umbrage at the idea that it was bullied by its high-minded participants to address the issue.
''That impression might come from people who only observe the World Economic Forum through the prism of Davos, and who perhaps are not aware of what we do year-round,'' said Adrian Monck, the forum's head of communications. He said issues related to gay rights had been discussed at conferences held by the forum in Abuja, Nigeria, and Tianjin, China.
''The forum believes that societies need to use all their talent to be effective and inclusive, and that diversity brings with it further positive benefits beyond simply being morally the right thing to do,'' Mr. Monck said.
Still, not all participants are satisfied that the World Economic Forum is adequately addressing the issue. There is only one panel on the agenda -- buried late on Saturday after many participants will have left -- that mentions the term ''L.G.B.T.'' in the program. And none of the panels include the kind of outspoken, controversial advocates who were at last year's breakfast.
''In many countries, L.G.B.T. individuals face arrest, imprisonment, torture and even execution just for being who they are,'' Mr. Singer said. ''Some of the worst offenders are governments which are frequently invited to these meetings of world leaders. When these world leaders assemble, leaders from the L.G.B.T. activist community should be included, too.''
Forum organizers point out that there are two other panels on the agenda that touch on gay rights.
In addition to the formal program, this year Microsoft and the management consulting firms Accenture and EY are sponsoring off-piste events about gay rights issues, including work force inclusion.
Mr. Loeb, who with Mr. Singer helped finance a campaign to push through same-sex marriage in New York State, said he hoped the discussion of gay rights had finally found a home in Davos. ''I hope this notable first step begins an overdue conversation among prominent global leaders about the importance of advancing and protecting human rights for L.G.B.T. individuals,'' he said.
Proponents of gay rights can cite global progress in the business world. Human Rights Campaign started a Corporate Equality Index 13 years ago, benchmarking corporate policies ''pertinent to L.G.B.T. employees.'' When it started, only 13 companies scored a perfect 100 percent. But in the most recent survey, despite more stringent criteria, 366 companies around the world had perfect scores.
That may be progress, but if the debate about how to address the issue in Davos is any indication, there is clearly a lot more to do.
Andrew Ross Sorkin is the editor at large of DealBook. Twitter: @andrewrsorkin
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.
The World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, which begins this week, has been a top venue for controversial conversations over the years. Israelis and Palestinians have debated, for example, and luminaries from the public and private sectors have faced off on big topics like climate change, inequality and gender diversity.
One issue, though, seems to have long been officially off limits: anything related to gay and lesbian rights.
But at a time when Timothy D. Cook, the chief executive of Apple, the world's largest company by market value, has disclosed that he is gay, and with the United States Supreme Court saying last week that it would rule on whether same-sex marriage is a constitutional right, the topic has reached a tipping point.
This year, for the first time, the World Economic Forum is addressing the issue of gay and lesbian rights on the formal agenda for Davos. It is a good first step.
Still, the topic looks buried on the Davos program. It seems to have been included mainly because of pressure applied by a pair of activist hedge fund managers who usually wage their wars against companies, but have made a cause of defending the rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
It is not too hard to decipher why the topic might have been forbidden at Davos in the past. After all, the guest list is filled with officials from countries like Russia, Nigeria and Uganda whose records on human rights for the gay and transgender community are repressive and sometimes even violent. In Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- countries with officials in attendance in Davos -- same-sex conduct is punishable by death.
But last year at Davos, Human Rights Campaign, along with representatives for Paul Singer, founder of the hedge fund Elliott Management, whose son is gay, and Daniel S. Loeb, the founder of Third Point, who with his wife is active in many philanthropic causes, approached the World Economic Forum about the need to publicly host a dialogue about gay rights. The forum organizers demurred.
So Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb decided last year to hold a breakfast off the premises and off the formal program -- known as an ''off-piste'' event in Davos-speak -- to address the issue.
That breakfast panel was moderated by the journalist Fareed Zakaria and included Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb as well as Masha Gessen, a Russian gay rights activist. Also participating were Alice Nkom, a lawyer from Cameroon who has fought to end the criminalization of homosexuality in her country, and Dane Lewis, who runs Jamaica's largest gay rights advocacy organization.
The breakfast became one of the most talked about events at Davos. The room was packed with an audience of boldface names, like Muhtar Kent, the chief executive of Coca-Cola; Richard Branson of Virgin; Navi Pillay, then the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights; and a United States senator, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont.
Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire investor, was so moved by the panel that he started making calls to friends in his home country that day to begin a dialogue before the following month's Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, which became a global lightning rod for human-rights criticism.
Human Rights Campaign takes credit for pushing the World Economic Forum to finally put the topic on the agenda this year.
''There's no doubt that it served as inspiration for inclusion in the formal program in 2015,'' said Fred Sainz, a vice president at Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy group.
But the World Economic Forum takes umbrage at the idea that it was bullied by its high-minded participants to address the issue.
''That impression might come from people who only observe the World Economic Forum through the prism of Davos, and who perhaps are not aware of what we do year-round,'' said Adrian Monck, the forum's head of communications. He said issues related to gay rights had been discussed at conferences held by the forum in Abuja, Nigeria, and Tianjin, China.
''The forum believes that societies need to use all their talent to be effective and inclusive, and that diversity brings with it further positive benefits beyond simply being morally the right thing to do,'' Mr. Monck said.
Still, not all participants are satisfied that the World Economic Forum is adequately addressing the issue. There is only one panel on the agenda -- buried late on Saturday after many participants will have left -- that mentions the term ''L.G.B.T.'' in the program. And none of the panels include the kind of outspoken, controversial advocates who were at last year's breakfast.
''In many countries, L.G.B.T. individuals face arrest, imprisonment, torture and even execution just for being who they are,'' Mr. Singer said. ''Some of the worst offenders are governments which are frequently invited to these meetings of world leaders. When these world leaders assemble, leaders from the L.G.B.T. activist community should be included, too.''
Forum organizers point out that there are two other panels on the agenda that touch on gay rights.
In addition to the formal program, this year Microsoft and the management consulting firms Accenture and EY are sponsoring off-piste events about gay rights issues, including work force inclusion.
Mr. Loeb, who with Mr. Singer helped finance a campaign to push through same-sex marriage in New York State, said he hoped the discussion of gay rights had finally found a home in Davos. ''I hope this notable first step begins an overdue conversation among prominent global leaders about the importance of advancing and protecting human rights for L.G.B.T. individuals,'' he said.
Proponents of gay rights can cite global progress in the business world. Human Rights Campaign started a Corporate Equality Index 13 years ago, benchmarking corporate policies ''pertinent to L.G.B.T. employees.'' When it started, only 13 companies scored a perfect 100 percent. But in the most recent survey, despite more stringent criteria, 366 companies around the world had perfect scores.
That may be progress, but if the debate about how to address the issue in Davos is any indication, there is clearly a lot more to do.
Andrew Ross Sorkin is the editor at large of DealBook. Twitter: @andrewrsorkin
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.
The World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, which begins this week, has been a top venue for controversial conversations over the years. Israelis and Palestinians have debated, for example, and luminaries from the public and private sectors have faced off on big topics like climate change, inequality and gender diversity.
One issue, though, seems to have long been officially off limits: anything related to gay and lesbian rights.
But at a time when Timothy D. Cook, the chief executive of Apple, the world's largest company by market value, has disclosed that he is gay, and with the United States Supreme Court saying last week that it would rule on whether same-sex marriage is a constitutional right, the topic has reached a tipping point.
This year, for the first time, the World Economic Forum is addressing the issue of gay and lesbian rights on the formal agenda for Davos. It is a good first step.
Still, the topic looks buried on the Davos program. It seems to have been included mainly because of pressure applied by a pair of activist hedge fund managers who usually wage their wars against companies, but have made a cause of defending the rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
It is not too hard to decipher why the topic might have been forbidden at Davos in the past. After all, the guest list is filled with officials from countries like Russia, Nigeria and Uganda whose records on human rights for the gay and transgender community are repressive and sometimes even violent. In Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- countries with officials in attendance in Davos -- same-sex conduct is punishable by death.
But last year at Davos, Human Rights Campaign, along with representatives for Paul Singer, founder of the hedge fund Elliott Management, whose son is gay, and Daniel S. Loeb, the founder of Third Point, who with his wife is active in many philanthropic causes, approached the World Economic Forum about the need to publicly host a dialogue about gay rights. The forum organizers demurred.
So Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb decided last year to hold a breakfast off the premises and off the formal program -- known as an ''off-piste'' event in Davos-speak -- to address the issue.
That breakfast panel was moderated by the journalist Fareed Zakaria and included Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb as well as Masha Gessen, a Russian gay rights activist. Also participating were Alice Nkom, a lawyer from Cameroon who has fought to end the criminalization of homosexuality in her country, and Dane Lewis, who runs Jamaica's largest gay rights advocacy organization.
The breakfast became one of the most talked about events at Davos. The room was packed with an audience of boldface names, like Muhtar Kent, the chief executive of Coca-Cola; Richard Branson of Virgin; Navi Pillay, then the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights; and a United States senator, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont.
Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire investor, was so moved by the panel that he started making calls to friends in his home country that day to begin a dialogue before the following month's Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, which became a global lightning rod for human-rights criticism.
Human Rights Campaign takes credit for pushing the World Economic Forum to finally put the topic on the agenda this year.
''There's no doubt that it served as inspiration for inclusion in the formal program in 2015,'' said Fred Sainz, a vice president at Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy group.
But the World Economic Forum takes umbrage at the idea that it was bullied by its high-minded participants to address the issue.
''That impression might come from people who only observe the World Economic Forum through the prism of Davos, and who perhaps are not aware of what we do year-round,'' said Adrian Monck, the forum's head of communications. He said issues related to gay rights had been discussed at conferences held by the forum in Abuja, Nigeria, and Tianjin, China.
''The forum believes that societies need to use all their talent to be effective and inclusive, and that diversity brings with it further positive benefits beyond simply being morally the right thing to do,'' Mr. Monck said.
Still, not all participants are satisfied that the World Economic Forum is adequately addressing the issue. There is only one panel on the agenda -- buried late on Saturday after many participants will have left -- that mentions the term ''L.G.B.T.'' in the program. And none of the panels include the kind of outspoken, controversial advocates who were at last year's breakfast.
''In many countries, L.G.B.T. individuals face arrest, imprisonment, torture and even execution just for being who they are,'' Mr. Singer said. ''Some of the worst offenders are governments which are frequently invited to these meetings of world leaders. When these world leaders assemble, leaders from the L.G.B.T. activist community should be included, too.''
Forum organizers point out that there are two other panels on the agenda that touch on gay rights.
In addition to the formal program, this year Microsoft and the management consulting firms Accenture and EY are sponsoring off-piste events about gay rights issues, including work force inclusion.
Mr. Loeb, who with Mr. Singer helped finance a campaign to push through same-sex marriage in New York State, said he hoped the discussion of gay rights had finally found a home in Davos. ''I hope this notable first step begins an overdue conversation among prominent global leaders about the importance of advancing and protecting human rights for L.G.B.T. individuals,'' he said.
Proponents of gay rights can cite global progress in the business world. Human Rights Campaign started a Corporate Equality Index 13 years ago, benchmarking corporate policies ''pertinent to L.G.B.T. employees.'' When it started, only 13 companies scored a perfect 100 percent. But in the most recent survey, despite more stringent criteria, 366 companies around the world had perfect scores.
That may be progress, but if the debate about how to address the issue in Davos is any indication, there is clearly a lot more to do.
Andrew Ross Sorkin is the editor at large of DealBook. Twitter: @andrewrsorkin
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.
The World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, which begins this week, has been a top venue for controversial conversations over the years. Israelis and Palestinians have debated, for example, and luminaries from the public and private sectors have faced off on big topics like climate change, inequality and gender diversity.
One issue, though, seems to have long been officially off limits: anything related to gay and lesbian rights.
But at a time when Timothy D. Cook, the chief executive of Apple, the world's largest company by market value, has disclosed that he is gay, and with the United States Supreme Court saying last week that it would rule on whether same-sex marriage is a constitutional right, the topic has reached a tipping point.
This year, for the first time, the World Economic Forum is addressing the issue of gay and lesbian rights on the formal agenda for Davos. It is a good first step.
Still, the topic looks buried on the Davos program. It seems to have been included mainly because of pressure applied by a pair of activist hedge fund managers who usually wage their wars against companies, but have made a cause of defending the rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
It is not too hard to decipher why the topic might have been forbidden at Davos in the past. After all, the guest list is filled with officials from countries like Russia, Nigeria and Uganda whose records on human rights for the gay and transgender community are repressive and sometimes even violent. In Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- countries with officials in attendance in Davos -- same-sex conduct is punishable by death.
But last year at Davos, Human Rights Campaign, along with representatives for Paul Singer, founder of the hedge fund Elliott Management, whose son is gay, and Daniel S. Loeb, the founder of Third Point, who with his wife is active in many philanthropic causes, approached the World Economic Forum about the need to publicly host a dialogue about gay rights. The forum organizers demurred.
So Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb decided last year to hold a breakfast off the premises and off the formal program -- known as an ''off-piste'' event in Davos-speak -- to address the issue.
That breakfast panel was moderated by the journalist Fareed Zakaria and included Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb as well as Masha Gessen, a Russian gay rights activist. Also participating were Alice Nkom, a lawyer from Cameroon who has fought to end the criminalization of homosexuality in her country, and Dane Lewis, who runs Jamaica's largest gay rights advocacy organization.
The breakfast became one of the most talked about events at Davos. The room was packed with an audience of boldface names, like Muhtar Kent, the chief executive of Coca-Cola; Richard Branson of Virgin; Navi Pillay, then the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights; and a United States senator, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont.
Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire investor, was so moved by the panel that he started making calls to friends in his home country that day to begin a dialogue before the following month's Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, which became a global lightning rod for human-rights criticism.
Human Rights Campaign takes credit for pushing the World Economic Forum to finally put the topic on the agenda this year.
''There's no doubt that it served as inspiration for inclusion in the formal program in 2015,'' said Fred Sainz, a vice president at Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy group.
But the World Economic Forum takes umbrage at the idea that it was bullied by its high-minded participants to address the issue.
''That impression might come from people who only observe the World Economic Forum through the prism of Davos, and who perhaps are not aware of what we do year-round,'' said Adrian Monck, the forum's head of communications. He said issues related to gay rights had been discussed at conferences held by the forum in Abuja, Nigeria, and Tianjin, China.
''The forum believes that societies need to use all their talent to be effective and inclusive, and that diversity brings with it further positive benefits beyond simply being morally the right thing to do,'' Mr. Monck said.
Still, not all participants are satisfied that the World Economic Forum is adequately addressing the issue. There is only one panel on the agenda -- buried late on Saturday after many participants will have left -- that mentions the term ''L.G.B.T.'' in the program. And none of the panels include the kind of outspoken, controversial advocates who were at last year's breakfast.
''In many countries, L.G.B.T. individuals face arrest, imprisonment, torture and even execution just for being who they are,'' Mr. Singer said. ''Some of the worst offenders are governments which are frequently invited to these meetings of world leaders. When these world leaders assemble, leaders from the L.G.B.T. activist community should be included, too.''
Forum organizers point out that there are two other panels on the agenda that touch on gay rights.
In addition to the formal program, this year Microsoft and the management consulting firms Accenture and EY are sponsoring off-piste events about gay rights issues, including work force inclusion.
Mr. Loeb, who with Mr. Singer helped finance a campaign to push through same-sex marriage in New York State, said he hoped the discussion of gay rights had finally found a home in Davos. ''I hope this notable first step begins an overdue conversation among prominent global leaders about the importance of advancing and protecting human rights for L.G.B.T. individuals,'' he said.
Proponents of gay rights can cite global progress in the business world. Human Rights Campaign started a Corporate Equality Index 13 years ago, benchmarking corporate policies ''pertinent to L.G.B.T. employees.'' When it started, only 13 companies scored a perfect 100 percent. But in the most recent survey, despite more stringent criteria, 366 companies around the world had perfect scores.
That may be progress, but if the debate about how to address the issue in Davos is any indication, there is clearly a lot more to do.
Andrew Ross Sorkin is the editor at large of DealBook. Twitter: @andrewrsorkin
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.
The World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, which begins this week, has been a top venue for controversial conversations over the years. Israelis and Palestinians have debated, for example, and luminaries from the public and private sectors have faced off on big topics like climate change, inequality and gender diversity.
One issue, though, seems to have long been officially off limits: anything related to gay and lesbian rights.
But at a time when Timothy D. Cook, the chief executive of Apple, the world's largest company by market value, has disclosed that he is gay, and with the United States Supreme Court saying last week that it would rule on whether same-sex marriage is a constitutional right, the topic has reached a tipping point.
This year, for the first time, the World Economic Forum is addressing the issue of gay and lesbian rights on the formal agenda for Davos. It is a good first step.
Still, the topic looks buried on the Davos program. It seems to have been included mainly because of pressure applied by a pair of activist hedge fund managers who usually wage their wars against companies, but have made a cause of defending the rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
It is not too hard to decipher why the topic might have been forbidden at Davos in the past. After all, the guest list is filled with officials from countries like Russia, Nigeria and Uganda whose records on human rights for the gay and transgender community are repressive and sometimes even violent. In Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- countries with officials in attendance in Davos -- same-sex conduct is punishable by death.
But last year at Davos, Human Rights Campaign, along with representatives for Paul Singer, founder of the hedge fund Elliott Management, whose son is gay, and Daniel S. Loeb, the founder of Third Point, who with his wife is active in many philanthropic causes, approached the World Economic Forum about the need to publicly host a dialogue about gay rights. The forum organizers demurred.
So Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb decided last year to hold a breakfast off the premises and off the formal program -- known as an ''off-piste'' event in Davos-speak -- to address the issue.
That breakfast panel was moderated by the journalist Fareed Zakaria and included Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb as well as Masha Gessen, a Russian gay rights activist. Also participating were Alice Nkom, a lawyer from Cameroon who has fought to end the criminalization of homosexuality in her country, and Dane Lewis, who runs Jamaica's largest gay rights advocacy organization.
The breakfast became one of the most talked about events at Davos. The room was packed with an audience of boldface names, like Muhtar Kent, the chief executive of Coca-Cola; Richard Branson of Virgin; Navi Pillay, then the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights; and a United States senator, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont.
Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire investor, was so moved by the panel that he started making calls to friends in his home country that day to begin a dialogue before the following month's Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, which became a global lightning rod for human-rights criticism.
Human Rights Campaign takes credit for pushing the World Economic Forum to finally put the topic on the agenda this year.
''There's no doubt that it served as inspiration for inclusion in the formal program in 2015,'' said Fred Sainz, a vice president at Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy group.
But the World Economic Forum takes umbrage at the idea that it was bullied by its high-minded participants to address the issue.
''That impression might come from people who only observe the World Economic Forum through the prism of Davos, and who perhaps are not aware of what we do year-round,'' said Adrian Monck, the forum's head of communications. He said issues related to gay rights had been discussed at conferences held by the forum in Abuja, Nigeria, and Tianjin, China.
''The forum believes that societies need to use all their talent to be effective and inclusive, and that diversity brings with it further positive benefits beyond simply being morally the right thing to do,'' Mr. Monck said.
Still, not all participants are satisfied that the World Economic Forum is adequately addressing the issue. There is only one panel on the agenda -- buried late on Saturday after many participants will have left -- that mentions the term ''L.G.B.T.'' in the program. And none of the panels include the kind of outspoken, controversial advocates who were at last year's breakfast.
''In many countries, L.G.B.T. individuals face arrest, imprisonment, torture and even execution just for being who they are,'' Mr. Singer said. ''Some of the worst offenders are governments which are frequently invited to these meetings of world leaders. When these world leaders assemble, leaders from the L.G.B.T. activist community should be included, too.''
Forum organizers point out that there are two other panels on the agenda that touch on gay rights.
In addition to the formal program, this year Microsoft and the management consulting firms Accenture and EY are sponsoring off-piste events about gay rights issues, including work force inclusion.
Mr. Loeb, who with Mr. Singer helped finance a campaign to push through same-sex marriage in New York State, said he hoped the discussion of gay rights had finally found a home in Davos. ''I hope this notable first step begins an overdue conversation among prominent global leaders about the importance of advancing and protecting human rights for L.G.B.T. individuals,'' he said.
Proponents of gay rights can cite global progress in the business world. Human Rights Campaign started a Corporate Equality Index 13 years ago, benchmarking corporate policies ''pertinent to L.G.B.T. employees.'' When it started, only 13 companies scored a perfect 100 percent. But in the most recent survey, despite more stringent criteria, 366 companies around the world had perfect scores.
That may be progress, but if the debate about how to address the issue in Davos is any indication, there is clearly a lot more to do.
Andrew Ross Sorkin is the editor at large of DealBook. Twitter: @andrewrsorkin
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.
The World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, which begins this week, has been a top venue for controversial conversations over the years. Israelis and Palestinians have debated, for example, and luminaries from the public and private sectors have faced off on big topics like climate change, inequality and gender diversity.
One issue, though, seems to have long been officially off limits: anything related to gay and lesbian rights.
But at a time when Timothy D. Cook, the chief executive of Apple, the world's largest company by market value, has disclosed that he is gay, and with the United States Supreme Court saying last week that it would rule on whether same-sex marriage is a constitutional right, the topic has reached a tipping point.
This year, for the first time, the World Economic Forum is addressing the issue of gay and lesbian rights on the formal agenda for Davos. It is a good first step.
Still, the topic looks buried on the Davos program. It seems to have been included mainly because of pressure applied by a pair of activist hedge fund managers who usually wage their wars against companies, but have made a cause of defending the rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
It is not too hard to decipher why the topic might have been forbidden at Davos in the past. After all, the guest list is filled with officials from countries like Russia, Nigeria and Uganda whose records on human rights for the gay and transgender community are repressive and sometimes even violent. In Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- countries with officials in attendance in Davos -- same-sex conduct is punishable by death.
But last year at Davos, Human Rights Campaign, along with representatives for Paul Singer, founder of the hedge fund Elliott Management, whose son is gay, and Daniel S. Loeb, the founder of Third Point, who with his wife is active in many philanthropic causes, approached the World Economic Forum about the need to publicly host a dialogue about gay rights. The forum organizers demurred.
So Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb decided last year to hold a breakfast off the premises and off the formal program -- known as an ''off-piste'' event in Davos-speak -- to address the issue.
That breakfast panel was moderated by the journalist Fareed Zakaria and included Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb as well as Masha Gessen, a Russian gay rights activist. Also participating were Alice Nkom, a lawyer from Cameroon who has fought to end the criminalization of homosexuality in her country, and Dane Lewis, who runs Jamaica's largest gay rights advocacy organization.
The breakfast became one of the most talked about events at Davos. The room was packed with an audience of boldface names, like Muhtar Kent, the chief executive of Coca-Cola; Richard Branson of Virgin; Navi Pillay, then the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights; and a United States senator, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont.
Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire investor, was so moved by the panel that he started making calls to friends in his home country that day to begin a dialogue before the following month's Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, which became a global lightning rod for human-rights criticism.
Human Rights Campaign takes credit for pushing the World Economic Forum to finally put the topic on the agenda this year.
''There's no doubt that it served as inspiration for inclusion in the formal program in 2015,'' said Fred Sainz, a vice president at Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy group.
But the World Economic Forum takes umbrage at the idea that it was bullied by its high-minded participants to address the issue.
''That impression might come from people who only observe the World Economic Forum through the prism of Davos, and who perhaps are not aware of what we do year-round,'' said Adrian Monck, the forum's head of communications. He said issues related to gay rights had been discussed at conferences held by the forum in Abuja, Nigeria, and Tianjin, China.
''The forum believes that societies need to use all their talent to be effective and inclusive, and that diversity brings with it further positive benefits beyond simply being morally the right thing to do,'' Mr. Monck said.
Still, not all participants are satisfied that the World Economic Forum is adequately addressing the issue. There is only one panel on the agenda -- buried late on Saturday after many participants will have left -- that mentions the term ''L.G.B.T.'' in the program. And none of the panels include the kind of outspoken, controversial advocates who were at last year's breakfast.
''In many countries, L.G.B.T. individuals face arrest, imprisonment, torture and even execution just for being who they are,'' Mr. Singer said. ''Some of the worst offenders are governments which are frequently invited to these meetings of world leaders. When these world leaders assemble, leaders from the L.G.B.T. activist community should be included, too.''
Forum organizers point out that there are two other panels on the agenda that touch on gay rights.
In addition to the formal program, this year Microsoft and the management consulting firms Accenture and EY are sponsoring off-piste events about gay rights issues, including work force inclusion.
Mr. Loeb, who with Mr. Singer helped finance a campaign to push through same-sex marriage in New York State, said he hoped the discussion of gay rights had finally found a home in Davos. ''I hope this notable first step begins an overdue conversation among prominent global leaders about the importance of advancing and protecting human rights for L.G.B.T. individuals,'' he said.
Proponents of gay rights can cite global progress in the business world. Human Rights Campaign started a Corporate Equality Index 13 years ago, benchmarking corporate policies ''pertinent to L.G.B.T. employees.'' When it started, only 13 companies scored a perfect 100 percent. But in the most recent survey, despite more stringent criteria, 366 companies around the world had perfect scores.
That may be progress, but if the debate about how to address the issue in Davos is any indication, there is clearly a lot more to do.
Andrew Ross Sorkin is the editor at large of DealBook. Twitter: @andrewrsorkin
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.
The World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, which begins this week, has been a top venue for controversial conversations over the years. Israelis and Palestinians have debated, for example, and luminaries from the public and private sectors have faced off on big topics like climate change, inequality and gender diversity.
One issue, though, seems to have long been officially off limits: anything related to gay and lesbian rights.
But at a time when Timothy D. Cook, the chief executive of Apple, the world's largest company by market value, has disclosed that he is gay, and with the United States Supreme Court saying last week that it would rule on whether same-sex marriage is a constitutional right, the topic has reached a tipping point.
This year, for the first time, the World Economic Forum is addressing the issue of gay and lesbian rights on the formal agenda for Davos. It is a good first step.
Still, the topic looks buried on the Davos program. It seems to have been included mainly because of pressure applied by a pair of activist hedge fund managers who usually wage their wars against companies, but have made a cause of defending the rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
It is not too hard to decipher why the topic might have been forbidden at Davos in the past. After all, the guest list is filled with officials from countries like Russia, Nigeria and Uganda whose records on human rights for the gay and transgender community are repressive and sometimes even violent. In Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- countries with officials in attendance in Davos -- same-sex conduct is punishable by death.
But last year at Davos, Human Rights Campaign, along with representatives for Paul Singer, founder of the hedge fund Elliott Management, whose son is gay, and Daniel S. Loeb, the founder of Third Point, who with his wife is active in many philanthropic causes, approached the World Economic Forum about the need to publicly host a dialogue about gay rights. The forum organizers demurred.
So Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb decided last year to hold a breakfast off the premises and off the formal program -- known as an ''off-piste'' event in Davos-speak -- to address the issue.
That breakfast panel was moderated by the journalist Fareed Zakaria and included Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb as well as Masha Gessen, a Russian gay rights activist. Also participating were Alice Nkom, a lawyer from Cameroon who has fought to end the criminalization of homosexuality in her country, and Dane Lewis, who runs Jamaica's largest gay rights advocacy organization.
The breakfast became one of the most talked about events at Davos. The room was packed with an audience of boldface names, like Muhtar Kent, the chief executive of Coca-Cola; Richard Branson of Virgin; Navi Pillay, then the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights; and a United States senator, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont.
Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire investor, was so moved by the panel that he started making calls to friends in his home country that day to begin a dialogue before the following month's Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, which became a global lightning rod for human-rights criticism.
Human Rights Campaign takes credit for pushing the World Economic Forum to finally put the topic on the agenda this year.
''There's no doubt that it served as inspiration for inclusion in the formal program in 2015,'' said Fred Sainz, a vice president at Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy group.
But the World Economic Forum takes umbrage at the idea that it was bullied by its high-minded participants to address the issue.
''That impression might come from people who only observe the World Economic Forum through the prism of Davos, and who perhaps are not aware of what we do year-round,'' said Adrian Monck, the forum's head of communications. He said issues related to gay rights had been discussed at conferences held by the forum in Abuja, Nigeria, and Tianjin, China.
''The forum believes that societies need to use all their talent to be effective and inclusive, and that diversity brings with it further positive benefits beyond simply being morally the right thing to do,'' Mr. Monck said.
Still, not all participants are satisfied that the World Economic Forum is adequately addressing the issue. There is only one panel on the agenda -- buried late on Saturday after many participants will have left -- that mentions the term ''L.G.B.T.'' in the program. And none of the panels include the kind of outspoken, controversial advocates who were at last year's breakfast.
''In many countries, L.G.B.T. individuals face arrest, imprisonment, torture and even execution just for being who they are,'' Mr. Singer said. ''Some of the worst offenders are governments which are frequently invited to these meetings of world leaders. When these world leaders assemble, leaders from the L.G.B.T. activist community should be included, too.''
Forum organizers point out that there are two other panels on the agenda that touch on gay rights.
In addition to the formal program, this year Microsoft and the management consulting firms Accenture and EY are sponsoring off-piste events about gay rights issues, including work force inclusion.
Mr. Loeb, who with Mr. Singer helped finance a campaign to push through same-sex marriage in New York State, said he hoped the discussion of gay rights had finally found a home in Davos. ''I hope this notable first step begins an overdue conversation among prominent global leaders about the importance of advancing and protecting human rights for L.G.B.T. individuals,'' he said.
Proponents of gay rights can cite global progress in the business world. Human Rights Campaign started a Corporate Equality Index 13 years ago, benchmarking corporate policies ''pertinent to L.G.B.T. employees.'' When it started, only 13 companies scored a perfect 100 percent. But in the most recent survey, despite more stringent criteria, 366 companies around the world had perfect scores.
That may be progress, but if the debate about how to address the issue in Davos is any indication, there is clearly a lot more to do.
Andrew Ross Sorkin is the editor at large of DealBook. Twitter: @andrewrsorkin
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.
The World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, which begins this week, has been a top venue for controversial conversations over the years. Israelis and Palestinians have debated, for example, and luminaries from the public and private sectors have faced off on big topics like climate change, inequality and gender diversity.
One issue, though, seems to have long been officially off limits: anything related to gay and lesbian rights.
But at a time when Timothy D. Cook, the chief executive of Apple, the world's largest company by market value, has disclosed that he is gay, and with the United States Supreme Court saying last week that it would rule on whether same-sex marriage is a constitutional right, the topic has reached a tipping point.
This year, for the first time, the World Economic Forum is addressing the issue of gay and lesbian rights on the formal agenda for Davos. It is a good first step.
Still, the topic looks buried on the Davos program. It seems to have been included mainly because of pressure applied by a pair of activist hedge fund managers who usually wage their wars against companies, but have made a cause of defending the rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
It is not too hard to decipher why the topic might have been forbidden at Davos in the past. After all, the guest list is filled with officials from countries like Russia, Nigeria and Uganda whose records on human rights for the gay and transgender community are repressive and sometimes even violent. In Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- countries with officials in attendance in Davos -- same-sex conduct is punishable by death.
But last year at Davos, Human Rights Campaign, along with representatives for Paul Singer, founder of the hedge fund Elliott Management, whose son is gay, and Daniel S. Loeb, the founder of Third Point, who with his wife is active in many philanthropic causes, approached the World Economic Forum about the need to publicly host a dialogue about gay rights. The forum organizers demurred.
So Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb decided last year to hold a breakfast off the premises and off the formal program -- known as an ''off-piste'' event in Davos-speak -- to address the issue.
That breakfast panel was moderated by the journalist Fareed Zakaria and included Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb as well as Masha Gessen, a Russian gay rights activist. Also participating were Alice Nkom, a lawyer from Cameroon who has fought to end the criminalization of homosexuality in her country, and Dane Lewis, who runs Jamaica's largest gay rights advocacy organization.
The breakfast became one of the most talked about events at Davos. The room was packed with an audience of boldface names, like Muhtar Kent, the chief executive of Coca-Cola; Richard Branson of Virgin; Navi Pillay, then the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights; and a United States senator, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont.
Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire investor, was so moved by the panel that he started making calls to friends in his home country that day to begin a dialogue before the following month's Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, which became a global lightning rod for human-rights criticism.
Human Rights Campaign takes credit for pushing the World Economic Forum to finally put the topic on the agenda this year.
''There's no doubt that it served as inspiration for inclusion in the formal program in 2015,'' said Fred Sainz, a vice president at Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy group.
But the World Economic Forum takes umbrage at the idea that it was bullied by its high-minded participants to address the issue.
''That impression might come from people who only observe the World Economic Forum through the prism of Davos, and who perhaps are not aware of what we do year-round,'' said Adrian Monck, the forum's head of communications. He said issues related to gay rights had been discussed at conferences held by the forum in Abuja, Nigeria, and Tianjin, China.
''The forum believes that societies need to use all their talent to be effective and inclusive, and that diversity brings with it further positive benefits beyond simply being morally the right thing to do,'' Mr. Monck said.
Still, not all participants are satisfied that the World Economic Forum is adequately addressing the issue. There is only one panel on the agenda -- buried late on Saturday after many participants will have left -- that mentions the term ''L.G.B.T.'' in the program. And none of the panels include the kind of outspoken, controversial advocates who were at last year's breakfast.
''In many countries, L.G.B.T. individuals face arrest, imprisonment, torture and even execution just for being who they are,'' Mr. Singer said. ''Some of the worst offenders are governments which are frequently invited to these meetings of world leaders. When these world leaders assemble, leaders from the L.G.B.T. activist community should be included, too.''
Forum organizers point out that there are two other panels on the agenda that touch on gay rights.
In addition to the formal program, this year Microsoft and the management consulting firms Accenture and EY are sponsoring off-piste events about gay rights issues, including work force inclusion.
Mr. Loeb, who with Mr. Singer helped finance a campaign to push through same-sex marriage in New York State, said he hoped the discussion of gay rights had finally found a home in Davos. ''I hope this notable first step begins an overdue conversation among prominent global leaders about the importance of advancing and protecting human rights for L.G.B.T. individuals,'' he said.
Proponents of gay rights can cite global progress in the business world. Human Rights Campaign started a Corporate Equality Index 13 years ago, benchmarking corporate policies ''pertinent to L.G.B.T. employees.'' When it started, only 13 companies scored a perfect 100 percent. But in the most recent survey, despite more stringent criteria, 366 companies around the world had perfect scores.
That may be progress, but if the debate about how to address the issue in Davos is any indication, there is clearly a lot more to do.
Andrew Ross Sorkin is the editor at large of DealBook. Twitter: @andrewrsorkin
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.
The World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, which begins this week, has been a top venue for controversial conversations over the years. Israelis and Palestinians have debated, for example, and luminaries from the public and private sectors have faced off on big topics like climate change, inequality and gender diversity.
One issue, though, seems to have long been officially off limits: anything related to gay and lesbian rights.
But at a time when Timothy D. Cook, the chief executive of Apple, the world's largest company by market value, has disclosed that he is gay, and with the United States Supreme Court saying last week that it would rule on whether same-sex marriage is a constitutional right, the topic has reached a tipping point.
This year, for the first time, the World Economic Forum is addressing the issue of gay and lesbian rights on the formal agenda for Davos. It is a good first step.
Still, the topic looks buried on the Davos program. It seems to have been included mainly because of pressure applied by a pair of activist hedge fund managers who usually wage their wars against companies, but have made a cause of defending the rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
It is not too hard to decipher why the topic might have been forbidden at Davos in the past. After all, the guest list is filled with officials from countries like Russia, Nigeria and Uganda whose records on human rights for the gay and transgender community are repressive and sometimes even violent. In Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- countries with officials in attendance in Davos -- same-sex conduct is punishable by death.
But last year at Davos, Human Rights Campaign, along with representatives for Paul Singer, founder of the hedge fund Elliott Management, whose son is gay, and Daniel S. Loeb, the founder of Third Point, who with his wife is active in many philanthropic causes, approached the World Economic Forum about the need to publicly host a dialogue about gay rights. The forum organizers demurred.
So Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb decided last year to hold a breakfast off the premises and off the formal program -- known as an ''off-piste'' event in Davos-speak -- to address the issue.
That breakfast panel was moderated by the journalist Fareed Zakaria and included Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb as well as Masha Gessen, a Russian gay rights activist. Also participating were Alice Nkom, a lawyer from Cameroon who has fought to end the criminalization of homosexuality in her country, and Dane Lewis, who runs Jamaica's largest gay rights advocacy organization.
The breakfast became one of the most talked about events at Davos. The room was packed with an audience of boldface names, like Muhtar Kent, the chief executive of Coca-Cola; Richard Branson of Virgin; Navi Pillay, then the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights; and a United States senator, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont.
Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire investor, was so moved by the panel that he started making calls to friends in his home country that day to begin a dialogue before the following month's Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, which became a global lightning rod for human-rights criticism.
Human Rights Campaign takes credit for pushing the World Economic Forum to finally put the topic on the agenda this year.
''There's no doubt that it served as inspiration for inclusion in the formal program in 2015,'' said Fred Sainz, a vice president at Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy group.
But the World Economic Forum takes umbrage at the idea that it was bullied by its high-minded participants to address the issue.
''That impression might come from people who only observe the World Economic Forum through the prism of Davos, and who perhaps are not aware of what we do year-round,'' said Adrian Monck, the forum's head of communications. He said issues related to gay rights had been discussed at conferences held by the forum in Abuja, Nigeria, and Tianjin, China.
''The forum believes that societies need to use all their talent to be effective and inclusive, and that diversity brings with it further positive benefits beyond simply being morally the right thing to do,'' Mr. Monck said.
Still, not all participants are satisfied that the World Economic Forum is adequately addressing the issue. There is only one panel on the agenda -- buried late on Saturday after many participants will have left -- that mentions the term ''L.G.B.T.'' in the program. And none of the panels include the kind of outspoken, controversial advocates who were at last year's breakfast.
''In many countries, L.G.B.T. individuals face arrest, imprisonment, torture and even execution just for being who they are,'' Mr. Singer said. ''Some of the worst offenders are governments which are frequently invited to these meetings of world leaders. When these world leaders assemble, leaders from the L.G.B.T. activist community should be included, too.''
Forum organizers point out that there are two other panels on the agenda that touch on gay rights.
In addition to the formal program, this year Microsoft and the management consulting firms Accenture and EY are sponsoring off-piste events about gay rights issues, including work force inclusion.
Mr. Loeb, who with Mr. Singer helped finance a campaign to push through same-sex marriage in New York State, said he hoped the discussion of gay rights had finally found a home in Davos. ''I hope this notable first step begins an overdue conversation among prominent global leaders about the importance of advancing and protecting human rights for L.G.B.T. individuals,'' he said.
Proponents of gay rights can cite global progress in the business world. Human Rights Campaign started a Corporate Equality Index 13 years ago, benchmarking corporate policies ''pertinent to L.G.B.T. employees.'' When it started, only 13 companies scored a perfect 100 percent. But in the most recent survey, despite more stringent criteria, 366 companies around the world had perfect scores.
That may be progress, but if the debate about how to address the issue in Davos is any indication, there is clearly a lot more to do.
Andrew Ross Sorkin is the editor at large of DealBook. Twitter: @andrewrsorkin
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.
The World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, which begins this week, has been a top venue for controversial conversations over the years. Israelis and Palestinians have debated, for example, and luminaries from the public and private sectors have faced off on big topics like climate change, inequality and gender diversity.
One issue, though, seems to have long been officially off limits: anything related to gay and lesbian rights.
But at a time when Timothy D. Cook, the chief executive of Apple, the world's largest company by market value, has disclosed that he is gay, and with the United States Supreme Court saying last week that it would rule on whether same-sex marriage is a constitutional right, the topic has reached a tipping point.
This year, for the first time, the World Economic Forum is addressing the issue of gay and lesbian rights on the formal agenda for Davos. It is a good first step.
Still, the topic looks buried on the Davos program. It seems to have been included mainly because of pressure applied by a pair of activist hedge fund managers who usually wage their wars against companies, but have made a cause of defending the rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
It is not too hard to decipher why the topic might have been forbidden at Davos in the past. After all, the guest list is filled with officials from countries like Russia, Nigeria and Uganda whose records on human rights for the gay and transgender community are repressive and sometimes even violent. In Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- countries with officials in attendance in Davos -- same-sex conduct is punishable by death.
But last year at Davos, Human Rights Campaign, along with representatives for Paul Singer, founder of the hedge fund Elliott Management, whose son is gay, and Daniel S. Loeb, the founder of Third Point, who with his wife is active in many philanthropic causes, approached the World Economic Forum about the need to publicly host a dialogue about gay rights. The forum organizers demurred.
So Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb decided last year to hold a breakfast off the premises and off the formal program -- known as an ''off-piste'' event in Davos-speak -- to address the issue.
That breakfast panel was moderated by the journalist Fareed Zakaria and included Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb as well as Masha Gessen, a Russian gay rights activist. Also participating were Alice Nkom, a lawyer from Cameroon who has fought to end the criminalization of homosexuality in her country, and Dane Lewis, who runs Jamaica's largest gay rights advocacy organization.
The breakfast became one of the most talked about events at Davos. The room was packed with an audience of boldface names, like Muhtar Kent, the chief executive of Coca-Cola; Richard Branson of Virgin; Navi Pillay, then the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights; and a United States senator, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont.
Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire investor, was so moved by the panel that he started making calls to friends in his home country that day to begin a dialogue before the following month's Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, which became a global lightning rod for human-rights criticism.
Human Rights Campaign takes credit for pushing the World Economic Forum to finally put the topic on the agenda this year.
''There's no doubt that it served as inspiration for inclusion in the formal program in 2015,'' said Fred Sainz, a vice president at Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy group.
But the World Economic Forum takes umbrage at the idea that it was bullied by its high-minded participants to address the issue.
''That impression might come from people who only observe the World Economic Forum through the prism of Davos, and who perhaps are not aware of what we do year-round,'' said Adrian Monck, the forum's head of communications. He said issues related to gay rights had been discussed at conferences held by the forum in Abuja, Nigeria, and Tianjin, China.
''The forum believes that societies need to use all their talent to be effective and inclusive, and that diversity brings with it further positive benefits beyond simply being morally the right thing to do,'' Mr. Monck said.
Still, not all participants are satisfied that the World Economic Forum is adequately addressing the issue. There is only one panel on the agenda -- buried late on Saturday after many participants will have left -- that mentions the term ''L.G.B.T.'' in the program. And none of the panels include the kind of outspoken, controversial advocates who were at last year's breakfast.
''In many countries, L.G.B.T. individuals face arrest, imprisonment, torture and even execution just for being who they are,'' Mr. Singer said. ''Some of the worst offenders are governments which are frequently invited to these meetings of world leaders. When these world leaders assemble, leaders from the L.G.B.T. activist community should be included, too.''
Forum organizers point out that there are two other panels on the agenda that touch on gay rights.
In addition to the formal program, this year Microsoft and the management consulting firms Accenture and EY are sponsoring off-piste events about gay rights issues, including work force inclusion.
Mr. Loeb, who with Mr. Singer helped finance a campaign to push through same-sex marriage in New York State, said he hoped the discussion of gay rights had finally found a home in Davos. ''I hope this notable first step begins an overdue conversation among prominent global leaders about the importance of advancing and protecting human rights for L.G.B.T. individuals,'' he said.
Proponents of gay rights can cite global progress in the business world. Human Rights Campaign started a Corporate Equality Index 13 years ago, benchmarking corporate policies ''pertinent to L.G.B.T. employees.'' When it started, only 13 companies scored a perfect 100 percent. But in the most recent survey, despite more stringent criteria, 366 companies around the world had perfect scores.
That may be progress, but if the debate about how to address the issue in Davos is any indication, there is clearly a lot more to do.
Andrew Ross Sorkin is the editor at large of DealBook. Twitter: @andrewrsorkin
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.
The World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, which begins this week, has been a top venue for controversial conversations over the years. Israelis and Palestinians have debated, for example, and luminaries from the public and private sectors have faced off on big topics like climate change, inequality and gender diversity.
One issue, though, seems to have long been officially off limits: anything related to gay and lesbian rights.
But at a time when Timothy D. Cook, the chief executive of Apple, the world's largest company by market value, has disclosed that he is gay, and with the United States Supreme Court saying last week that it would rule on whether same-sex marriage is a constitutional right, the topic has reached a tipping point.
This year, for the first time, the World Economic Forum is addressing the issue of gay and lesbian rights on the formal agenda for Davos. It is a good first step.
Still, the topic looks buried on the Davos program. It seems to have been included mainly because of pressure applied by a pair of activist hedge fund managers who usually wage their wars against companies, but have made a cause of defending the rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
It is not too hard to decipher why the topic might have been forbidden at Davos in the past. After all, the guest list is filled with officials from countries like Russia, Nigeria and Uganda whose records on human rights for the gay and transgender community are repressive and sometimes even violent. In Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- countries with officials in attendance in Davos -- same-sex conduct is punishable by death.
But last year at Davos, Human Rights Campaign, along with representatives for Paul Singer, founder of the hedge fund Elliott Management, whose son is gay, and Daniel S. Loeb, the founder of Third Point, who with his wife is active in many philanthropic causes, approached the World Economic Forum about the need to publicly host a dialogue about gay rights. The forum organizers demurred.
So Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb decided last year to hold a breakfast off the premises and off the formal program -- known as an ''off-piste'' event in Davos-speak -- to address the issue.
That breakfast panel was moderated by the journalist Fareed Zakaria and included Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb as well as Masha Gessen, a Russian gay rights activist. Also participating were Alice Nkom, a lawyer from Cameroon who has fought to end the criminalization of homosexuality in her country, and Dane Lewis, who runs Jamaica's largest gay rights advocacy organization.
The breakfast became one of the most talked about events at Davos. The room was packed with an audience of boldface names, like Muhtar Kent, the chief executive of Coca-Cola; Richard Branson of Virgin; Navi Pillay, then the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights; and a United States senator, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont.
Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire investor, was so moved by the panel that he started making calls to friends in his home country that day to begin a dialogue before the following month's Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, which became a global lightning rod for human-rights criticism.
Human Rights Campaign takes credit for pushing the World Economic Forum to finally put the topic on the agenda this year.
''There's no doubt that it served as inspiration for inclusion in the formal program in 2015,'' said Fred Sainz, a vice president at Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy group.
But the World Economic Forum takes umbrage at the idea that it was bullied by its high-minded participants to address the issue.
''That impression might come from people who only observe the World Economic Forum through the prism of Davos, and who perhaps are not aware of what we do year-round,'' said Adrian Monck, the forum's head of communications. He said issues related to gay rights had been discussed at conferences held by the forum in Abuja, Nigeria, and Tianjin, China.
''The forum believes that societies need to use all their talent to be effective and inclusive, and that diversity brings with it further positive benefits beyond simply being morally the right thing to do,'' Mr. Monck said.
Still, not all participants are satisfied that the World Economic Forum is adequately addressing the issue. There is only one panel on the agenda -- buried late on Saturday after many participants will have left -- that mentions the term ''L.G.B.T.'' in the program. And none of the panels include the kind of outspoken, controversial advocates who were at last year's breakfast.
''In many countries, L.G.B.T. individuals face arrest, imprisonment, torture and even execution just for being who they are,'' Mr. Singer said. ''Some of the worst offenders are governments which are frequently invited to these meetings of world leaders. When these world leaders assemble, leaders from the L.G.B.T. activist community should be included, too.''
Forum organizers point out that there are two other panels on the agenda that touch on gay rights.
In addition to the formal program, this year Microsoft and the management consulting firms Accenture and EY are sponsoring off-piste events about gay rights issues, including work force inclusion.
Mr. Loeb, who with Mr. Singer helped finance a campaign to push through same-sex marriage in New York State, said he hoped the discussion of gay rights had finally found a home in Davos. ''I hope this notable first step begins an overdue conversation among prominent global leaders about the importance of advancing and protecting human rights for L.G.B.T. individuals,'' he said.
Proponents of gay rights can cite global progress in the business world. Human Rights Campaign started a Corporate Equality Index 13 years ago, benchmarking corporate policies ''pertinent to L.G.B.T. employees.'' When it started, only 13 companies scored a perfect 100 percent. But in the most recent survey, despite more stringent criteria, 366 companies around the world had perfect scores.
That may be progress, but if the debate about how to address the issue in Davos is any indication, there is clearly a lot more to do.
Andrew Ross Sorkin is the editor at large of DealBook. Twitter: @andrewrsorkin
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.
The World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, which begins this week, has been a top venue for controversial conversations over the years. Israelis and Palestinians have debated, for example, and luminaries from the public and private sectors have faced off on big topics like climate change, inequality and gender diversity.
One issue, though, seems to have long been officially off limits: anything related to gay and lesbian rights.
But at a time when Timothy D. Cook, the chief executive of Apple, the world's largest company by market value, has disclosed that he is gay, and with the United States Supreme Court saying last week that it would rule on whether same-sex marriage is a constitutional right, the topic has reached a tipping point.
This year, for the first time, the World Economic Forum is addressing the issue of gay and lesbian rights on the formal agenda for Davos. It is a good first step.
Still, the topic looks buried on the Davos program. It seems to have been included mainly because of pressure applied by a pair of activist hedge fund managers who usually wage their wars against companies, but have made a cause of defending the rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
It is not too hard to decipher why the topic might have been forbidden at Davos in the past. After all, the guest list is filled with officials from countries like Russia, Nigeria and Uganda whose records on human rights for the gay and transgender community are repressive and sometimes even violent. In Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- countries with officials in attendance in Davos -- same-sex conduct is punishable by death.
But last year at Davos, Human Rights Campaign, along with representatives for Paul Singer, founder of the hedge fund Elliott Management, whose son is gay, and Daniel S. Loeb, the founder of Third Point, who with his wife is active in many philanthropic causes, approached the World Economic Forum about the need to publicly host a dialogue about gay rights. The forum organizers demurred.
So Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb decided last year to hold a breakfast off the premises and off the formal program -- known as an ''off-piste'' event in Davos-speak -- to address the issue.
That breakfast panel was moderated by the journalist Fareed Zakaria and included Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb as well as Masha Gessen, a Russian gay rights activist. Also participating were Alice Nkom, a lawyer from Cameroon who has fought to end the criminalization of homosexuality in her country, and Dane Lewis, who runs Jamaica's largest gay rights advocacy organization.
The breakfast became one of the most talked about events at Davos. The room was packed with an audience of boldface names, like Muhtar Kent, the chief executive of Coca-Cola; Richard Branson of Virgin; Navi Pillay, then the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights; and a United States senator, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont.
Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire investor, was so moved by the panel that he started making calls to friends in his home country that day to begin a dialogue before the following month's Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, which became a global lightning rod for human-rights criticism.
Human Rights Campaign takes credit for pushing the World Economic Forum to finally put the topic on the agenda this year.
''There's no doubt that it served as inspiration for inclusion in the formal program in 2015,'' said Fred Sainz, a vice president at Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy group.
But the World Economic Forum takes umbrage at the idea that it was bullied by its high-minded participants to address the issue.
''That impression might come from people who only observe the World Economic Forum through the prism of Davos, and who perhaps are not aware of what we do year-round,'' said Adrian Monck, the forum's head of communications. He said issues related to gay rights had been discussed at conferences held by the forum in Abuja, Nigeria, and Tianjin, China.
''The forum believes that societies need to use all their talent to be effective and inclusive, and that diversity brings with it further positive benefits beyond simply being morally the right thing to do,'' Mr. Monck said.
Still, not all participants are satisfied that the World Economic Forum is adequately addressing the issue. There is only one panel on the agenda -- buried late on Saturday after many participants will have left -- that mentions the term ''L.G.B.T.'' in the program. And none of the panels include the kind of outspoken, controversial advocates who were at last year's breakfast.
''In many countries, L.G.B.T. individuals face arrest, imprisonment, torture and even execution just for being who they are,'' Mr. Singer said. ''Some of the worst offenders are governments which are frequently invited to these meetings of world leaders. When these world leaders assemble, leaders from the L.G.B.T. activist community should be included, too.''
Forum organizers point out that there are two other panels on the agenda that touch on gay rights.
In addition to the formal program, this year Microsoft and the management consulting firms Accenture and EY are sponsoring off-piste events about gay rights issues, including work force inclusion.
Mr. Loeb, who with Mr. Singer helped finance a campaign to push through same-sex marriage in New York State, said he hoped the discussion of gay rights had finally found a home in Davos. ''I hope this notable first step begins an overdue conversation among prominent global leaders about the importance of advancing and protecting human rights for L.G.B.T. individuals,'' he said.
Proponents of gay rights can cite global progress in the business world. Human Rights Campaign started a Corporate Equality Index 13 years ago, benchmarking corporate policies ''pertinent to L.G.B.T. employees.'' When it started, only 13 companies scored a perfect 100 percent. But in the most recent survey, despite more stringent criteria, 366 companies around the world had perfect scores.
That may be progress, but if the debate about how to address the issue in Davos is any indication, there is clearly a lot more to do.
Andrew Ross Sorkin is the editor at large of DealBook. Twitter: @andrewrsorkin
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.
The World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, which begins this week, has been a top venue for controversial conversations over the years. Israelis and Palestinians have debated, for example, and luminaries from the public and private sectors have faced off on big topics like climate change, inequality and gender diversity.
One issue, though, seems to have long been officially off limits: anything related to gay and lesbian rights.
But at a time when Timothy D. Cook, the chief executive of Apple, the world's largest company by market value, has disclosed that he is gay, and with the United States Supreme Court saying last week that it would rule on whether same-sex marriage is a constitutional right, the topic has reached a tipping point.
This year, for the first time, the World Economic Forum is addressing the issue of gay and lesbian rights on the formal agenda for Davos. It is a good first step.
Still, the topic looks buried on the Davos program. It seems to have been included mainly because of pressure applied by a pair of activist hedge fund managers who usually wage their wars against companies, but have made a cause of defending the rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
It is not too hard to decipher why the topic might have been forbidden at Davos in the past. After all, the guest list is filled with officials from countries like Russia, Nigeria and Uganda whose records on human rights for the gay and transgender community are repressive and sometimes even violent. In Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- countries with officials in attendance in Davos -- same-sex conduct is punishable by death.
But last year at Davos, Human Rights Campaign, along with representatives for Paul Singer, founder of the hedge fund Elliott Management, whose son is gay, and Daniel S. Loeb, the founder of Third Point, who with his wife is active in many philanthropic causes, approached the World Economic Forum about the need to publicly host a dialogue about gay rights. The forum organizers demurred.
So Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb decided last year to hold a breakfast off the premises and off the formal program -- known as an ''off-piste'' event in Davos-speak -- to address the issue.
That breakfast panel was moderated by the journalist Fareed Zakaria and included Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb as well as Masha Gessen, a Russian gay rights activist. Also participating were Alice Nkom, a lawyer from Cameroon who has fought to end the criminalization of homosexuality in her country, and Dane Lewis, who runs Jamaica's largest gay rights advocacy organization.
The breakfast became one of the most talked about events at Davos. The room was packed with an audience of boldface names, like Muhtar Kent, the chief executive of Coca-Cola; Richard Branson of Virgin; Navi Pillay, then the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights; and a United States senator, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont.
Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire investor, was so moved by the panel that he started making calls to friends in his home country that day to begin a dialogue before the following month's Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, which became a global lightning rod for human-rights criticism.
Human Rights Campaign takes credit for pushing the World Economic Forum to finally put the topic on the agenda this year.
''There's no doubt that it served as inspiration for inclusion in the formal program in 2015,'' said Fred Sainz, a vice president at Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy group.
But the World Economic Forum takes umbrage at the idea that it was bullied by its high-minded participants to address the issue.
''That impression might come from people who only observe the World Economic Forum through the prism of Davos, and who perhaps are not aware of what we do year-round,'' said Adrian Monck, the forum's head of communications. He said issues related to gay rights had been discussed at conferences held by the forum in Abuja, Nigeria, and Tianjin, China.
''The forum believes that societies need to use all their talent to be effective and inclusive, and that diversity brings with it further positive benefits beyond simply being morally the right thing to do,'' Mr. Monck said.
Still, not all participants are satisfied that the World Economic Forum is adequately addressing the issue. There is only one panel on the agenda -- buried late on Saturday after many participants will have left -- that mentions the term ''L.G.B.T.'' in the program. And none of the panels include the kind of outspoken, controversial advocates who were at last year's breakfast.
''In many countries, L.G.B.T. individuals face arrest, imprisonment, torture and even execution just for being who they are,'' Mr. Singer said. ''Some of the worst offenders are governments which are frequently invited to these meetings of world leaders. When these world leaders assemble, leaders from the L.G.B.T. activist community should be included, too.''
Forum organizers point out that there are two other panels on the agenda that touch on gay rights.
In addition to the formal program, this year Microsoft and the management consulting firms Accenture and EY are sponsoring off-piste events about gay rights issues, including work force inclusion.
Mr. Loeb, who with Mr. Singer helped finance a campaign to push through same-sex marriage in New York State, said he hoped the discussion of gay rights had finally found a home in Davos. ''I hope this notable first step begins an overdue conversation among prominent global leaders about the importance of advancing and protecting human rights for L.G.B.T. individuals,'' he said.
Proponents of gay rights can cite global progress in the business world. Human Rights Campaign started a Corporate Equality Index 13 years ago, benchmarking corporate policies ''pertinent to L.G.B.T. employees.'' When it started, only 13 companies scored a perfect 100 percent. But in the most recent survey, despite more stringent criteria, 366 companies around the world had perfect scores.
That may be progress, but if the debate about how to address the issue in Davos is any indication, there is clearly a lot more to do.
Andrew Ross Sorkin is the editor at large of DealBook. Twitter: @andrewrsorkin
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.
The World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, which begins this week, has been a top venue for controversial conversations over the years. Israelis and Palestinians have debated, for example, and luminaries from the public and private sectors have faced off on big topics like climate change, inequality and gender diversity.
One issue, though, seems to have long been officially off limits: anything related to gay and lesbian rights.
But at a time when Timothy D. Cook, the chief executive of Apple, the world's largest company by market value, has disclosed that he is gay, and with the United States Supreme Court saying last week that it would rule on whether same-sex marriage is a constitutional right, the topic has reached a tipping point.
This year, for the first time, the World Economic Forum is addressing the issue of gay and lesbian rights on the formal agenda for Davos. It is a good first step.
Still, the topic looks buried on the Davos program. It seems to have been included mainly because of pressure applied by a pair of activist hedge fund managers who usually wage their wars against companies, but have made a cause of defending the rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
It is not too hard to decipher why the topic might have been forbidden at Davos in the past. After all, the guest list is filled with officials from countries like Russia, Nigeria and Uganda whose records on human rights for the gay and transgender community are repressive and sometimes even violent. In Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- countries with officials in attendance in Davos -- same-sex conduct is punishable by death.
But last year at Davos, Human Rights Campaign, along with representatives for Paul Singer, founder of the hedge fund Elliott Management, whose son is gay, and Daniel S. Loeb, the founder of Third Point, who with his wife is active in many philanthropic causes, approached the World Economic Forum about the need to publicly host a dialogue about gay rights. The forum organizers demurred.
So Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb decided last year to hold a breakfast off the premises and off the formal program -- known as an ''off-piste'' event in Davos-speak -- to address the issue.
That breakfast panel was moderated by the journalist Fareed Zakaria and included Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb as well as Masha Gessen, a Russian gay rights activist. Also participating were Alice Nkom, a lawyer from Cameroon who has fought to end the criminalization of homosexuality in her country, and Dane Lewis, who runs Jamaica's largest gay rights advocacy organization.
The breakfast became one of the most talked about events at Davos. The room was packed with an audience of boldface names, like Muhtar Kent, the chief executive of Coca-Cola; Richard Branson of Virgin; Navi Pillay, then the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights; and a United States senator, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont.
Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire investor, was so moved by the panel that he started making calls to friends in his home country that day to begin a dialogue before the following month's Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, which became a global lightning rod for human-rights criticism.
Human Rights Campaign takes credit for pushing the World Economic Forum to finally put the topic on the agenda this year.
''There's no doubt that it served as inspiration for inclusion in the formal program in 2015,'' said Fred Sainz, a vice president at Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy group.
But the World Economic Forum takes umbrage at the idea that it was bullied by its high-minded participants to address the issue.
''That impression might come from people who only observe the World Economic Forum through the prism of Davos, and who perhaps are not aware of what we do year-round,'' said Adrian Monck, the forum's head of communications. He said issues related to gay rights had been discussed at conferences held by the forum in Abuja, Nigeria, and Tianjin, China.
''The forum believes that societies need to use all their talent to be effective and inclusive, and that diversity brings with it further positive benefits beyond simply being morally the right thing to do,'' Mr. Monck said.
Still, not all participants are satisfied that the World Economic Forum is adequately addressing the issue. There is only one panel on the agenda -- buried late on Saturday after many participants will have left -- that mentions the term ''L.G.B.T.'' in the program. And none of the panels include the kind of outspoken, controversial advocates who were at last year's breakfast.
''In many countries, L.G.B.T. individuals face arrest, imprisonment, torture and even execution just for being who they are,'' Mr. Singer said. ''Some of the worst offenders are governments which are frequently invited to these meetings of world leaders. When these world leaders assemble, leaders from the L.G.B.T. activist community should be included, too.''
Forum organizers point out that there are two other panels on the agenda that touch on gay rights.
In addition to the formal program, this year Microsoft and the management consulting firms Accenture and EY are sponsoring off-piste events about gay rights issues, including work force inclusion.
Mr. Loeb, who with Mr. Singer helped finance a campaign to push through same-sex marriage in New York State, said he hoped the discussion of gay rights had finally found a home in Davos. ''I hope this notable first step begins an overdue conversation among prominent global leaders about the importance of advancing and protecting human rights for L.G.B.T. individuals,'' he said.
Proponents of gay rights can cite global progress in the business world. Human Rights Campaign started a Corporate Equality Index 13 years ago, benchmarking corporate policies ''pertinent to L.G.B.T. employees.'' When it started, only 13 companies scored a perfect 100 percent. But in the most recent survey, despite more stringent criteria, 366 companies around the world had perfect scores.
That may be progress, but if the debate about how to address the issue in Davos is any indication, there is clearly a lot more to do.
Andrew Ross Sorkin is the editor at large of DealBook. Twitter: @andrewrsorkin
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.
The World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, which begins this week, has been a top venue for controversial conversations over the years. Israelis and Palestinians have debated, for example, and luminaries from the public and private sectors have faced off on big topics like climate change, inequality and gender diversity.
One issue, though, seems to have long been officially off limits: anything related to gay and lesbian rights.
But at a time when Timothy D. Cook, the chief executive of Apple, the world's largest company by market value, has disclosed that he is gay, and with the United States Supreme Court saying last week that it would rule on whether same-sex marriage is a constitutional right, the topic has reached a tipping point.
This year, for the first time, the World Economic Forum is addressing the issue of gay and lesbian rights on the formal agenda for Davos. It is a good first step.
Still, the topic looks buried on the Davos program. It seems to have been included mainly because of pressure applied by a pair of activist hedge fund managers who usually wage their wars against companies, but have made a cause of defending the rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
It is not too hard to decipher why the topic might have been forbidden at Davos in the past. After all, the guest list is filled with officials from countries like Russia, Nigeria and Uganda whose records on human rights for the gay and transgender community are repressive and sometimes even violent. In Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- countries with officials in attendance in Davos -- same-sex conduct is punishable by death.
But last year at Davos, Human Rights Campaign, along with representatives for Paul Singer, founder of the hedge fund Elliott Management, whose son is gay, and Daniel S. Loeb, the founder of Third Point, who with his wife is active in many philanthropic causes, approached the World Economic Forum about the need to publicly host a dialogue about gay rights. The forum organizers demurred.
So Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb decided last year to hold a breakfast off the premises and off the formal program -- known as an ''off-piste'' event in Davos-speak -- to address the issue.
That breakfast panel was moderated by the journalist Fareed Zakaria and included Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb as well as Masha Gessen, a Russian gay rights activist. Also participating were Alice Nkom, a lawyer from Cameroon who has fought to end the criminalization of homosexuality in her country, and Dane Lewis, who runs Jamaica's largest gay rights advocacy organization.
The breakfast became one of the most talked about events at Davos. The room was packed with an audience of boldface names, like Muhtar Kent, the chief executive of Coca-Cola; Richard Branson of Virgin; Navi Pillay, then the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights; and a United States senator, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont.
Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire investor, was so moved by the panel that he started making calls to friends in his home country that day to begin a dialogue before the following month's Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, which became a global lightning rod for human-rights criticism.
Human Rights Campaign takes credit for pushing the World Economic Forum to finally put the topic on the agenda this year.
''There's no doubt that it served as inspiration for inclusion in the formal program in 2015,'' said Fred Sainz, a vice president at Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy group.
But the World Economic Forum takes umbrage at the idea that it was bullied by its high-minded participants to address the issue.
''That impression might come from people who only observe the World Economic Forum through the prism of Davos, and who perhaps are not aware of what we do year-round,'' said Adrian Monck, the forum's head of communications. He said issues related to gay rights had been discussed at conferences held by the forum in Abuja, Nigeria, and Tianjin, China.
''The forum believes that societies need to use all their talent to be effective and inclusive, and that diversity brings with it further positive benefits beyond simply being morally the right thing to do,'' Mr. Monck said.
Still, not all participants are satisfied that the World Economic Forum is adequately addressing the issue. There is only one panel on the agenda -- buried late on Saturday after many participants will have left -- that mentions the term ''L.G.B.T.'' in the program. And none of the panels include the kind of outspoken, controversial advocates who were at last year's breakfast.
''In many countries, L.G.B.T. individuals face arrest, imprisonment, torture and even execution just for being who they are,'' Mr. Singer said. ''Some of the worst offenders are governments which are frequently invited to these meetings of world leaders. When these world leaders assemble, leaders from the L.G.B.T. activist community should be included, too.''
Forum organizers point out that there are two other panels on the agenda that touch on gay rights.
In addition to the formal program, this year Microsoft and the management consulting firms Accenture and EY are sponsoring off-piste events about gay rights issues, including work force inclusion.
Mr. Loeb, who with Mr. Singer helped finance a campaign to push through same-sex marriage in New York State, said he hoped the discussion of gay rights had finally found a home in Davos. ''I hope this notable first step begins an overdue conversation among prominent global leaders about the importance of advancing and protecting human rights for L.G.B.T. individuals,'' he said.
Proponents of gay rights can cite global progress in the business world. Human Rights Campaign started a Corporate Equality Index 13 years ago, benchmarking corporate policies ''pertinent to L.G.B.T. employees.'' When it started, only 13 companies scored a perfect 100 percent. But in the most recent survey, despite more stringent criteria, 366 companies around the world had perfect scores.
That may be progress, but if the debate about how to address the issue in Davos is any indication, there is clearly a lot more to do.
Andrew Ross Sorkin is the editor at large of DealBook. Twitter: @andrewrsorkin
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.
The World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, which begins this week, has been a top venue for controversial conversations over the years. Israelis and Palestinians have debated, for example, and luminaries from the public and private sectors have faced off on big topics like climate change, inequality and gender diversity.
One issue, though, seems to have long been officially off limits: anything related to gay and lesbian rights.
But at a time when Timothy D. Cook, the chief executive of Apple, the world's largest company by market value, has disclosed that he is gay, and with the United States Supreme Court saying last week that it would rule on whether same-sex marriage is a constitutional right, the topic has reached a tipping point.
This year, for the first time, the World Economic Forum is addressing the issue of gay and lesbian rights on the formal agenda for Davos. It is a good first step.
Still, the topic looks buried on the Davos program. It seems to have been included mainly because of pressure applied by a pair of activist hedge fund managers who usually wage their wars against companies, but have made a cause of defending the rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
It is not too hard to decipher why the topic might have been forbidden at Davos in the past. After all, the guest list is filled with officials from countries like Russia, Nigeria and Uganda whose records on human rights for the gay and transgender community are repressive and sometimes even violent. In Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- countries with officials in attendance in Davos -- same-sex conduct is punishable by death.
But last year at Davos, Human Rights Campaign, along with representatives for Paul Singer, founder of the hedge fund Elliott Management, whose son is gay, and Daniel S. Loeb, the founder of Third Point, who with his wife is active in many philanthropic causes, approached the World Economic Forum about the need to publicly host a dialogue about gay rights. The forum organizers demurred.
So Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb decided last year to hold a breakfast off the premises and off the formal program -- known as an ''off-piste'' event in Davos-speak -- to address the issue.
That breakfast panel was moderated by the journalist Fareed Zakaria and included Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb as well as Masha Gessen, a Russian gay rights activist. Also participating were Alice Nkom, a lawyer from Cameroon who has fought to end the criminalization of homosexuality in her country, and Dane Lewis, who runs Jamaica's largest gay rights advocacy organization.
The breakfast became one of the most talked about events at Davos. The room was packed with an audience of boldface names, like Muhtar Kent, the chief executive of Coca-Cola; Richard Branson of Virgin; Navi Pillay, then the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights; and a United States senator, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont.
Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire investor, was so moved by the panel that he started making calls to friends in his home country that day to begin a dialogue before the following month's Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, which became a global lightning rod for human-rights criticism.
Human Rights Campaign takes credit for pushing the World Economic Forum to finally put the topic on the agenda this year.
''There's no doubt that it served as inspiration for inclusion in the formal program in 2015,'' said Fred Sainz, a vice president at Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy group.
But the World Economic Forum takes umbrage at the idea that it was bullied by its high-minded participants to address the issue.
''That impression might come from people who only observe the World Economic Forum through the prism of Davos, and who perhaps are not aware of what we do year-round,'' said Adrian Monck, the forum's head of communications. He said issues related to gay rights had been discussed at conferences held by the forum in Abuja, Nigeria, and Tianjin, China.
''The forum believes that societies need to use all their talent to be effective and inclusive, and that diversity brings with it further positive benefits beyond simply being morally the right thing to do,'' Mr. Monck said.
Still, not all participants are satisfied that the World Economic Forum is adequately addressing the issue. There is only one panel on the agenda -- buried late on Saturday after many participants will have left -- that mentions the term ''L.G.B.T.'' in the program. And none of the panels include the kind of outspoken, controversial advocates who were at last year's breakfast.
''In many countries, L.G.B.T. individuals face arrest, imprisonment, torture and even execution just for being who they are,'' Mr. Singer said. ''Some of the worst offenders are governments which are frequently invited to these meetings of world leaders. When these world leaders assemble, leaders from the L.G.B.T. activist community should be included, too.''
Forum organizers point out that there are two other panels on the agenda that touch on gay rights.
In addition to the formal program, this year Microsoft and the management consulting firms Accenture and EY are sponsoring off-piste events about gay rights issues, including work force inclusion.
Mr. Loeb, who with Mr. Singer helped finance a campaign to push through same-sex marriage in New York State, said he hoped the discussion of gay rights had finally found a home in Davos. ''I hope this notable first step begins an overdue conversation among prominent global leaders about the importance of advancing and protecting human rights for L.G.B.T. individuals,'' he said.
Proponents of gay rights can cite global progress in the business world. Human Rights Campaign started a Corporate Equality Index 13 years ago, benchmarking corporate policies ''pertinent to L.G.B.T. employees.'' When it started, only 13 companies scored a perfect 100 percent. But in the most recent survey, despite more stringent criteria, 366 companies around the world had perfect scores.
That may be progress, but if the debate about how to address the issue in Davos is any indication, there is clearly a lot more to do.
Andrew Ross Sorkin is the editor at large of DealBook. Twitter: @andrewrsorkin
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.
The World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, which begins this week, has been a top venue for controversial conversations over the years. Israelis and Palestinians have debated, for example, and luminaries from the public and private sectors have faced off on big topics like climate change, inequality and gender diversity.
One issue, though, seems to have long been officially off limits: anything related to gay and lesbian rights.
But at a time when Timothy D. Cook, the chief executive of Apple, the world's largest company by market value, has disclosed that he is gay, and with the United States Supreme Court saying last week that it would rule on whether same-sex marriage is a constitutional right, the topic has reached a tipping point.
This year, for the first time, the World Economic Forum is addressing the issue of gay and lesbian rights on the formal agenda for Davos. It is a good first step.
Still, the topic looks buried on the Davos program. It seems to have been included mainly because of pressure applied by a pair of activist hedge fund managers who usually wage their wars against companies, but have made a cause of defending the rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
It is not too hard to decipher why the topic might have been forbidden at Davos in the past. After all, the guest list is filled with officials from countries like Russia, Nigeria and Uganda whose records on human rights for the gay and transgender community are repressive and sometimes even violent. In Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- countries with officials in attendance in Davos -- same-sex conduct is punishable by death.
But last year at Davos, Human Rights Campaign, along with representatives for Paul Singer, founder of the hedge fund Elliott Management, whose son is gay, and Daniel S. Loeb, the founder of Third Point, who with his wife is active in many philanthropic causes, approached the World Economic Forum about the need to publicly host a dialogue about gay rights. The forum organizers demurred.
So Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb decided last year to hold a breakfast off the premises and off the formal program -- known as an ''off-piste'' event in Davos-speak -- to address the issue.
That breakfast panel was moderated by the journalist Fareed Zakaria and included Mr. Singer and Mr. Loeb as well as Masha Gessen, a Russian gay rights activist. Also participating were Alice Nkom, a lawyer from Cameroon who has fought to end the criminalization of homosexuality in her country, and Dane Lewis, who runs Jamaica's largest gay rights advocacy organization.
The breakfast became one of the most talked about events at Davos. The room was packed with an audience of boldface names, like Muhtar Kent, the chief executive of Coca-Cola; Richard Branson of Virgin; Navi Pillay, then the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights; and a United States senator, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont.
Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire investor, was so moved by the panel that he started making calls to friends in his home country that day to begin a dialogue before the following month's Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia, which became a global lightning rod for human-rights criticism.
Human Rights Campaign takes credit for pushing the World Economic Forum to finally put the topic on the agenda this year.
''There's no doubt that it served as inspiration for inclusion in the formal program in 2015,'' said Fred Sainz, a vice president at Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy group.
But the World Economic Forum takes umbrage at the idea that it was bullied by its high-minded participants to address the issue.
''That impression might come from people who only observe the World Economic Forum through the prism of Davos, and who perhaps are not aware of what we do year-round,'' said Adrian Monck, the forum's head of communications. He said issues related to gay rights had been discussed at conferences held by the forum in Abuja, Nigeria, and Tianjin, China.
''The forum believes that societies need to use all their talent to be effective and inclusive, and that diversity brings with it further positive benefits beyond simply being morally the right thing to do,'' Mr. Monck said.
Still, not all participants are satisfied that the World Economic Forum is adequately addressing the issue. There is only one panel on the agenda -- buried late on Saturday after many participants will have left -- that mentions the term ''L.G.B.T.'' in the program. And none of the panels include the kind of outspoken, controversial advocates who were at last year's breakfast.
''In many countries, L.G.B.T. individuals face arrest, imprisonment, torture and even execution just for being who they are,'' Mr. Singer said. ''Some of the worst offenders are governments which are frequently invited to these meetings of world leaders. When these world leaders assemble, leaders from the L.G.B.T. activist community should be included, too.''
Forum organizers point out that there are two other panels on the agenda that touch on gay rights.
In addition to the formal program, this year Microsoft and the management consulting firms Accenture and EY are sponsoring off-piste events about gay rights issues, including work force inclusion.
Mr. Loeb, who with Mr. Singer helped finance a campaign to push through same-sex marriage in New York State, said he hoped the discussion of gay rights had finally found a home in Davos. ''I hope this notable first step begins an overdue conversation among prominent global leaders about the importance of advancing and protecting human rights for L.G.B.T. individuals,'' he said.
Proponents of gay rights can cite global progress in the business world. Human Rights Campaign started a Corporate Equality Index 13 years ago, benchmarking corporate policies ''pertinent to L.G.B.T. employees.'' When it started, only 13 companies scored a perfect 100 percent. But in the most recent survey, despite more stringent criteria, 366 companies around the world had perfect scores.
That may be progress, but if the debate about how to address the issue in Davos is any indication, there is clearly a lot more to do.
Andrew Ross Sorkin is the editor at large of DealBook. Twitter: @andrewrsorkin
This is a more complete version of the story than the one that appeared in print.
URL: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2015/01/19/debates-at-davos-finally-will-include-gay-rights/
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GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: A topic that once seemed off limits is on the official agenda this year at Davos. (PHOTOGRAPH BY RUBEN SPRICH/REUTERS) (B1)
Daniel Loeb, the founder of Third Point, pushed for discussion. (PHOTOGRAPH BY STEVE MARCUS/REUTERS) (B6)
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The Guardian
January 19, 2015 Monday 10:09 PM GMT
The Guardian view on the State of the Union address: talk big;
In spite of gridlock in Washington, Barack Obama can still shape America's debate about the big issues
BYLINE: Editorial
SECTION: COMMENT IS FREE
LENGTH: 704 words
Politicians always like to think that their speeches make the political weather. This belief explains why, in most modern democracies, politicians conventionally devote so much time and sweat to their big set-piece orations. Nevertheless, many observers these days are more sceptical. True, big speeches need to be made, and they need to be competent. But the evidence of the opinion polls often suggests that big speeches are more important for party morale - and for the morale of their opponents - than in changing the wider mood. More often than not, big speeches actually have a very limited impact on the voters.
An American president traditionally has no bigger platform than the annual State of the Union address, which Barack Obama will deliver on Tuesday night in Washington. In time-honoured fashion, Mr Obama's speechwriters will have been honing the draft for many weeks. As usual, the speech will be carried on all the TV networks and will be intensively parsed and analysed afterwards. The occasion will involve all the usual Capitol Hill choreography and razzmatazz.
But a watershed seems to have been crossed since the midterm elections two months ago. Mr Obama seems not to be banking on Tuesday's speech to transform his standing in the way he might have wanted to do in the past. Instead he looks to have his eyes on the 2016 election and the post-Obama political battle. If this is indeed his approach, it is both realistic and right.
When he was first elected in 2008, Mr Obama took relations with Congress very seriously. He tried to forge consensus with Republicans, notably on healthcare. He was repeatedly rebuffed on a range of issues. Last November Americans elected a wholly Republican Congress for the first time in Mr Obama's presidency. Facing two years of gridlock, he has even less hope now of crafting the big legislative deals that eluded him in apparently more favourable times.
So in recent weeks the administration has started to do politics rather differently from in the past. The president has taken executive action on issues including relations with Cuba, an overhaul of US immigration and deportation practice, and a climate-change deal with China. Last week, the White House even went public with several of the key economic ideas in Tuesday's speech. We now know that Mr Obama will on Tuesday urge Congress to put inequality at the centre of the stage, raising taxes on the richest in order to finance tax cuts for middle-income Americans whose wages have stagnated since the financial crisis of 2008.
In one sense, Mr Obama is simply making the best of a bad job. His chances of getting significant legislation through Congress in the next two years are close to zero. If he wants to avoid premature lame-duck status, he must therefore use the powers that a president possesses, including executive action and the power to persuade. It is inconceivable, in its current mood, that the new Congress will actually embrace his tax proposals. But Tuesday's speech at least gives Mr Obama the platform to outflank the many senior Republicans who have begun to talk, albeit with very vague prescriptions, about long-term US wage stagnation. By doing this he helps to frame more sharply one of the largest issues that will dominate the 2016 presidential contest.
It would be wrong, morally as well as politically, to pretend that this State of the Union speech is without any importance at all. America needs to hear its president talk in primetime about issues such as immigration, race and climate change, even though Congress has no intention of supporting the president on any of them. Mr Obama also has a good story to tell in the shape of the economic growth rate, which rose to 5% at the end of 2014, and the fall in the unemployment rate, now at 5.8% after hitting 10% in 2009. Yet the big debate in America in 2016, as in Britain's election this year, will be about tough measures to reverse rising levels of inequality. This time next year, Mr Obama's political leverage will be diminishing fast in the manner so familiar from recent two-term presidencies. Tuesday night is therefore Mr Obama's last big chance to use a major address to shape the new American political conversation.
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The Guardian
January 19, 2015 Monday 12:39 PM GMT
Should tackling climate change trump protecting nature?;
Planners have given the green light for a solar farm at Rampisham Down, a SSSI in West Dorset. But stopping biodiversity loss is as important as stopping global warming
BYLINE: Miles King
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 762 words
Does the need to mitigate the effects of man-made climate change override the need to protect nature?
Climate change is with us, and is one of nine reasons why scientists are now concerned that the rate of environmental degradation is a threat to the future of human life on Earth. The loss of biodiversity, dubbed the Sixth Green Extinction by some, is another threat to humanity, with nearly half of the world's amphibians and a fifth of its plants at risk of extinction.
We do not have the luxury of choosing which of these nine challenges to tackle; they are all critical to our survival.
Yet last week, here in West Dorset, the council unanimously approved the development of a 25MW solar farm on a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). Rampisham Down was designated as a SSSI because it is nationally important for wildlife. There are 70ha of heathland and nature-rich grassland, known as lowland acid grassland at Rampisham.
Natural England estimate that there is only 5000ha of this lowland acid grassland type left in England. Rampisham is in the top ten largest surviving fragments in England. It is especially rich in grassland fungi, for which Britain has an international responsibility. It is also highly unusual in that the underlying chalk influences the plant communities, creating areas of the extremely rare habitat known as "chalk heath".
Rampisham Down escaped the "green revolution" that wiped away most other nature in England, because it was a wartime and cold-war radio transmitting station, a piece of strategic infrastructure. West Dorset residents have lived with the "Rampisham Masts" for 70 years, and these radio masts have dominated the West Dorset landscape, with many feeling they are an eyesore and wishing them away.
After the radio station closed in 2011 it was acquired by a solar farm developer.
British Solar Renewables (BSR) and its supporters have continually claimed that the grassland at Rampisham is of little or no value and by building a solar farm they will actually enhance the environment. To counter the concerns that erecting over 100,000 solar panels across over half of the area of Rampisham Down would damage the grasslands, BSR instituted an experiment, involving a few solar panels, some with "windows" in them, to let more light through.
The results of their own experiment has showed that under the panels, even with windows, the grass was darker, damper and cooler. Natural England's view is that this would be enough to change the plant community from the valuable one for which the site was protected, to a more common community akin to what might be found growing along a hedgerow.
The West Dorset planning committee met last weeky to decide whether to give the Solar Farm planning permission. They listened to the evidence against it from Natural England and Dorset Wildlife Trust, and for it, from the developers, their witnesses and local councillors. They discounted the nature value of the Down, viewed it as brownfield land which would benefit from being developed, and decided that the production of renewable energy and the small number of jobs the development would bring were of greater benefit to society than protecting the wildlife.
The National Planning Policy Framework is clear that SSSIs should not be destroyed, unless the benefit outweighs the harm. This is a classic cost-benefit analysis approach, which wilfully ignores all the intangible benefits nature provides us. Even so, as the Planning Officer laid out in his analysis, the costs of developing Rampisham Down far outweigh the benefits. And in any case, there is a perfectly good location for a slightly smaller solar farm on arable land adjacent to the SSSI, where BSR has already applied for planning permission.
Another large SSSI is also under threat from development - Lodge Hill, in Kent. There are many parallels between the two sites: they are both ex-strategic infrastructure, publicly-owned land that has been sold off for development; they were both notified as SSSI on account of their nationally important wildlife; and in both cases local authority planning committee have unanimously approved their development.
Both Lodge Hill and Rampisham Down are tests of the National Planning Policy Framework and whether it is capable of protecting nature from development. But there is a bigger challenge, to society. Protecting nature is no more an option, than tackling climate change - both are necessary and one cannot outweigh the other.
· Miles King is a conservationist and writes at A New Nature Blog
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The New York Times
January 19, 2015 Monday
Late Edition - Final
Hating Good Government
BYLINE: By PAUL KRUGMAN
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Editorial Desk; OP-ED COLUMNIST; Pg. 19
LENGTH: 800 words
It's now official: 2014 was the warmest year on record. You might expect this to be a politically important milestone. After all, climate change deniers have long used the blip of 1998 -- an unusually hot year, mainly due to an upwelling of warm water in the Pacific -- to claim that the planet has stopped warming. This claim involves a complete misunderstanding of how one goes about identifying underlying trends. (Hint: Don't cherry-pick your observations.) But now even that bogus argument has collapsed. So will the deniers now concede that climate change is real?
Of course not. Evidence doesn't matter for the ''debate'' over climate policy, where I put scare quotes around ''debate'' because, given the obvious irrelevance of logic and evidence, it's not really a debate in any normal sense. And this situation is by no means unique. Indeed, at this point it's hard to think of a major policy dispute where facts actually do matter; it's unshakable dogma, across the board. And the real question is why.
Before I get into that, let me remind you of some other news that won't matter.
First, consider the Kansas experiment. Back in 2012 Sam Brownback, the state's right-wing governor, went all in on supply-side economics: He drastically cut taxes, assuring everyone that the resulting boom would make up for the initial loss in revenues. Unfortunately for his constituents, his experiment has been a resounding failure. The economy of Kansas, far from booming, has lagged the economies of neighboring states, and Kansas is now in fiscal crisis.
So will we see conservatives scaling back their claims about the magical efficacy of tax cuts as a form of economic stimulus? Of course not. If evidence mattered, supply-side economics would have faded into obscurity decades ago. Instead, it has only strengthened its grip on the Republican Party.
Meanwhile, the news on health reform keeps coming in, and it keeps being more favorable than even the supporters expected. We already knew that the number of Americans without insurance is dropping fast, even as the growth in health care costs moderates. Now we have evidence that the number of Americans experiencing financial distress due to medical expenses is also dropping fast.
All this is utterly at odds with dire predictions that reform would lead to declining coverage and soaring costs. So will we see any of the people claiming that Obamacare is doomed to utter failure revising their position? You know the answer.
And the list goes on. On issues that range from monetary policy to the control of infectious disease, a big chunk of America's body politic holds views that are completely at odds with, and completely unmovable by, actual experience. And no matter the issue, it's the same chunk. If you've gotten involved in any of these debates, you know that these people aren't happy warriors; they're red-faced angry, with special rage directed at know-it-alls who snootily point out that the facts don't support their position.
The question, as I said at the beginning, is why. Why the dogmatism? Why the rage? And why do these issues go together, with the set of people insisting that climate change is a hoax pretty much the same as the set of people insisting that any attempt at providing universal health insurance must lead to disaster and tyranny?
Well, it strikes me that the immovable position in each of these cases is bound up with rejecting any role for government that serves the public interest. If you don't want the government to impose controls or fees on polluters, you want to deny that there is any reason to limit emissions. If you don't want the combination of regulation, mandates and subsidies that is needed to extend coverage to the uninsured, you want to deny that expanding coverage is even possible. And claims about the magical powers of tax cuts are often little more than a mask for the real agenda of crippling government by starving it of revenue.
And why this hatred of government in the public interest? Well, the political scientist Corey Robin argues that most self-proclaimed conservatives are actually reactionaries. That is, they're defenders of traditional hierarchy -- the kind of hierarchy that is threatened by any expansion of government, even (or perhaps especially) when that expansion makes the lives of ordinary citizens better and more secure. I'm partial to that story, partly because it helps explain why climate science and health economics inspire so much rage.
Whether this is the right explanation or not, the fact is that we're living in a political era in which facts don't matter. This doesn't mean that those of us who care about evidence should stop seeking it out. But we should be realistic in our expectations, and not expect even the most decisive evidence to make much difference.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/19/opinion/paul-krugman-hating-good-government.html
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The Guardian
January 18, 2015 Sunday 6:23 PM GMT
Obama's State of the Union could ramp up climate fight with Republicans;
GOP response from freshman senator Joni Ernst may also take aim at president's agenda on emission cuts and Keystone XL pipeline
BYLINE: Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
SECTION: US NEWS
LENGTH: 963 words
Despite the new Republican majority and the oil industry gunning for the president's agenda on emissions cuts and the Keystone XL pipeline, Barack Obama will show he's no lame duck on climate change, White House officials insisted ahead of his second-to-last State of the Union Address.
After using his executive authority over the last 18 months to propose new carbon pollution rules for power plants, an historic emissions deal with China and - just last week - the roll-out of measures aimed at methane, Obama will also likely tout new smog rules on Tuesday. He may even tip his hand on the contentious pipeline currently being debated in the Senate.
But a year after stating the increasingly obvious yet again - "Climate change is a fact," Obama said in his 2014 address before Congress - it appears the president may have to use the high visibility of the speech to re-affirm science before he can double down on his action plan.
And then, a few minutes later in what could make for a fiery political night on the environment in between talk of taxes and housing, Joni Ernst will take the national stage to deliver the official Republican response to Obama's address.
Related: White House pushes Obama tax plan as Republicans line up to voice opposition
Ernst, the freshman ?senator from Iowa elected on a promise to "make 'em squeal", does not accept that climate change is real. Neither do a large number of Republicans in power in Congress, despite new research released last week showing that majorities of moderate and liberal Republican voters do, in fact, accept the existence of climate change.
"I don't know the science behind climate change," Ernst, who wants to abolish the Environmental Protection Agency and scrap the Clean Water Act, said at a campaign debate last September. "I can't say one way or another what is the direct impact, whether it's man-made or not. I've heard arguments from both sides."
The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, is already arguingto overturn Obama's use of executive action to fight climate change. "I'll let scientists debate sources and their opinion of that change," House speaker John Boehner said at a GOP retreat last week, insisting that the "real question" was whether "every proposal we see out of the administration with regard to climate change means killing American jobs."
The main oil industry lobby, the American Petroleum Industry, was also bracing for a fight, unleashing a new ad campaign, after spending more than $327m on public relations over five years.
"I do think that the president will sketch out his vision of climate on a global scale and that is why we believe it will focus on the methane issue," the API chief executive, Jack Gerrard, told a conference call with reporters.
But the Obama administration's strategy to cut methane emissions by 40% to 45% over the next decade is just one part of a multi-pronged plan, even though, as one White House official said on Friday, "there will be attempts to impede or scale back our actions."
Obama has consistently promoted an "all of the above" energy strategy, including the use of fracked natural gas. So he was expected to run the gamut on Tuesday - and not just talk about low gas prices at the pump.
But judging on past performance, Obama could take time to re-affirm, once again, that climate change is real, caused by human activity, and already poses a danger to the US and the world.
"When our children's children look us in the eye and ask if we did all we could to leave them a safer, more stable world, with new sources of energy, I want us to be able to say yes, we did," Obama said last year.
"Yes, it's true that no single event makes a trend, but the fact is, the 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15," Obama said in 2013, before a wave of data continued that trend. The president promised then "to come up with executive actions we can take, now and in the future" - and increasingly in the months following the last major election before he leaves office, those actions have arrived.
In its run-up to Tuesday's speech, White House officials insisted Obama will keep pushing on his climate action plan, in addition to what senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer called on NBC Sunday an emphasis on "middle class economics". The White House official on Friday pointed to a new report from scientific agencies on Friday confirming 2014 as the hottest year on record as "another reminder that climate change is not a problem for the future".
"It's happening here and now, and we can't wait to take action," the official said. "We will continue to move forward on this vital issue."
Perhaps the most closely watched moment in Washington for a potential surprise on Tuesday night - other than the rebuttal from the sometimes unpredictable Ernst - will be the degree to which Obama invokes the Keystone XL pipeline.
The White House has said repeatedly over the past several weeks that Obama would veto current legislation to force approval of the project, though the president has never gone so far as to issue a public veto threat himself. A state department review is expected early next month, after a holdup on the project's proposed route recently cleared a Nebraska court.
Republicans have pushed ahead, and could vote on the bill as early as this week, after the State of the Union address, despite the president and other Democratic leaders dismissing Republican claims on the project's economic benefits.
"It's taken us a while to get going on this bill," McConnell said.
Republicans do not currently have the votes to override an Obama veto, but it was thought there was still an outside chance Obama could leave open the door to work with Congress on energy efficiency. The question is whether Keystone - and the facts - will get in the way.
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The Guardian
January 18, 2015 Sunday 4:05 PM GMT
Seven themes that will dominate Davos 2015;
World leaders, top business people and campaigners will be debating issues from climate change to political instability at the World Economic Forum this week
BYLINE: Graeme Wearden and Jill Treanor
SECTION: BUSINESS
LENGTH: 1026 words
Climate change
Last year was the warmest on record, and climate change will be high on the agenda during the first full day of events in Davos.
Al Gore, the former vice-president of the US, who has described climate change as "the biggest challenge our civilisation faces", is taking centre stage alongside Pharrell Williams, the pop star who sang "Happy" but who is appearing as creative director of Bionic Yarn, a company that turns fibres from recycled plastic into durable textiles.
Gore is participating in other events looking at how business should respond to climate change, alongside Lord Stern, president of the British Academy, and speakers from the insurance company Axa.
Other events covering this topic include "Building for the Storm", asking how governments should respond to climate change. Another session will look at how a comprehensive global climate deal can be achieved.
Political instability
Conflict is the number-one issue for the political and business elite this year. The rise of Islamic State has awoken fears over failures of national governance and the collapse of nation states.
Several Middle Eastern leaders are in attendance, including Egypt's president Abdel Fatah al-Sisi;KingAbdullah of Jordan ;Haidar al-Abadi, prime minister of Iraq; and Massoud Barzani, president of the autonomous Kurdistan region.
The Ukraine crisis is a reminder that "long-forgotten" disputes can flare back into life, the World Economic Foundation says, with widespread consequences for a whole region. Petro Poroshenko, president of Ukraine, will be looking for support as his country risks defaulting on its debts.
Poroshenko should get support from George Soros, the billionaire investor and philanthropist, who is pushing European governments to offer Kiev more help. He will be lobbying the likes of Germany's Angela Merkel, France's François Hollande and Italy's Matteo Renzi.
The terror attacks in France this month will also be debated, just days after many heads of government marched in Paris. On Wednesday, the former UK prime minister Tony Blair will take part in a session examining whether religion is a pretext for conflict.
Pandemics
Global authorities were slow, at least initially, to respond to the Ebola outbreak and provide resources to the countries affected, according to the organisers at Davos. So what lessons can we learn?
Panellists discussing the subject include Kofi Annan, former secretary general of the UN, as well as Margaret Chan, director general of the World Health Organisation. Alpha Condé, the president of Guinea, who has faced accusations of being initially slow to respond to Ebola, is also speaking.
The New York Times quoted him recently saying: "While shaving I think of Ebola, while eating I think of Ebola, while sleeping I think of Ebola."
Technology
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, is among those speaking on the topic of "In Tech We Trust". Eric Schmidt, the boss of Google, is one of this year's co-chairs while Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook and Satya Nadella of Microsoft will also be involved in a debate on the future of the digital economy.
Cyber-security should be high on the agenda too, following David Cameron's controversial suggestion that governments should be given access to encrypted data.
Jack Ma, founder of China's search engine Alibaba, is also a key speaker.
Quantitative easing
Central banks will be a major topic of conversation in the meeting rooms, coffee shops and bars of Davos this week, as monetary policy in Europe and the US continues to diverge and inflation falls across the global economy.
The shock abolition of Switzerland's currency gap last week has left many financial firms nursing losses, and reminded us all that 2015 could be a turbulent year in the markets. Thomas Jordan, the Swiss central bank chief who sparked the turmoil, can expect a lively reception. At least seven other central bank chiefs are also attending, including the Bank of England governor, Mark Carney.
The European Central Bank (ECB) president Mario Draghi isn't attending this year. He will be stuck in Frankfurt handling the ECB's meeting on Thursday, where a big quantitative easing (QE)programmecould be announced.
Earlier that day a debate will take place on the prospect of higher interest rates in the US. Delegates from emerging markets will be pushing American officials to handle the ending of the QE programme responsibly, after seeing "hot money" pour into their economies. They don't want a repeat of the currency crisis that struck Argentina during last year's meeting.
Inequality
Income inequality has featured highly on Davos's agenda for several years, but progress remains disappointingly slow.
The World Economic Foundation sees rising socioeconomic inequality as driving "social fragility". It reminded delegates that the average income of the richest 10% of nations in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is now nine times larger than that of the poorest 10%. The global unemployment rate is expected to remain at current levels until 2018, showing the failure to tackle the challenges thrown up by the financial crisis.
Bill and Marissa Gates, and the Oxfam International executive director Winnie Byanyima will be putting the case for more support for developing nations; Byanyima has extra clout as a co-chair of this year's meeting.
The OECD chief Angel Gurría and Guy Ryder of the International Labour Organisation will be lobbying for workers to get a better deal.
Oil
The tumble in the oil price to five-year lows means different things for Davos attendees. It's a bitter blow to exporters, raising political risk in the Middle East and hitting growth in emerging markets.
Once he arrives in Switzerland, Abdalla Salem El-Badri, Opec's secretary general, will face criticism from producers over the cartel's refusal to cut supplies.
Western leaders are more sanguine, welcoming the boost to consumers' spending power. Environmental groups, though, will be urging oil producers not to drag their feet over green technologies.
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The New York Times
January 18, 2015 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
Is a Climate Disaster Inevitable?
BYLINE: By ADAM FRANK.
An astrophysics professor at the University of Rochester, a co-founder of NPR's 13.7 Cosmos and Culture blog and the author of ''About Time: Cosmology and Culture at the Twilight of the Big Bang.''
SECTION: Section SR; Column 0; Sunday Review Desk; OPINION; Pg. 6
LENGTH: 1123 words
OUR galaxy, the Milky Way, is home to almost 300 billion stars, and over the last decade, astronomers have made a startling discovery -- almost all those stars have planets. The fact that nearly every pinprick of light you see in the night sky hosts a family of worlds raises a powerful but simple question: ''Where is everybody?'' Hundreds of billions of planets translate into a lot of chances for evolving intelligent, technologically sophisticated species. So why don't we see evidence for E.T.s everywhere?
The physicist Enrico Fermi first formulated this question, now called the Fermi paradox, in 1950. But in the intervening decades, humanity has recognized that our own climb up the ladder of technological sophistication comes with a heavy price. From climate change to resource depletion, our evolution into a globe-spanning industrial culture is forcing us through the narrow bottleneck of a sustainability crisis. In the wake of this realization, new and sobering answers to Fermi's question now seem possible.
Maybe we're not the only ones to hit a sustainability bottleneck. Maybe not everyone -- maybe no one -- makes it to the other side.
Since Fermi's day, scientists have gained a new perspective on life in its planetary context. From the vantage point of this relatively new field, astrobiology, our current sustainability crisis may be neither politically contingent nor unique, but a natural consequence of laws governing how planets and life of any kind, anywhere, must interact.
The defining feature of a technological civilization is the capacity to intensively ''harvest'' energy. But the basic physics of energy, heat and work known as thermodynamics tell us that waste, or what we physicists call entropy, must be generated and dumped back into the environment in the process. Human civilization currently harvests around 100 billion megawatt hours of energy each year and dumps 36 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the planetary system, which is why the atmosphere is holding more heat and the oceans are acidifying. As hard as it is for some to believe, we humans are now steering the planet, however poorly.
Can we generalize this kind of planetary hijacking to other worlds? The long history of Earth provides a clue. The oxygen you are breathing right now was not part of our original atmosphere. It was the so-called Great Oxidation Event, two billion years after the formation of the planet, that drove Earth's atmospheric content of oxygen up by a factor of 10,000. What cosmic force could so drastically change an entire planet's atmosphere? Nothing more than the respiratory excretions of anaerobic bacteria then dominating our world. The one gas we most need to survive originated as deadly pollution to our planet's then-leading species: a simple bacterium.
The Great Oxidation Event alone shows that when life (intelligent or otherwise) becomes highly successful, it can dramatically change its host planet. And what is true here is likely to be true on other planets as well.
But can we predict how an alien industrial civilization might alter its world? From a half-century of exploring our own solar system we've learned a lot about planets and how they work. We know that Mars was once a habitable world with water rushing across its surface. And Venus, a planet that might have been much like Earth, was instead transformed by a runaway greenhouse effect into a hellish world of 800-degree days.
By studying these nearby planets, we've discovered general rules for both climate and climate change. These rules, based in physics and chemistry, must apply to any species, anywhere, taking up energy-harvesting and civilization-building in a big way. For example, any species climbing up the technological ladder by harvesting energy through combustion must alter the chemical makeup of its atmosphere to some degree. Combustion always produces chemical byproducts, and those byproducts can't just disappear. As astronomers at Penn State recently discovered, if planetary conditions are right (like the size of a planet's orbit), even relatively small changes in atmospheric chemistry can have significant climate effects. That means that for some civilization-building species, the sustainability crises can hit earlier rather than later.
Even if an intelligent species didn't rely on combustion early in its development, sustainability issues could still arise. All forms of intensive energy-harvesting will have feedbacks, even if some are more powerful than others. A study by scientists at the Max Planck Institute in Jena, Germany, found that extracting energy from wind power on a huge scale can cause its own global climate consequences. When it comes to building world-girdling civilizations, there are no planetary free lunches.
This realization motivated me, along with Woodruff Sullivan of the University of Washington, to look at sustainability in its astrobiological context. As we describe in a recent paper, using what's already known about planets and life, it is now possible to create a broad program for modeling co-evolving ''trajectories'' for technological species and their planets. Depending on initial conditions and choices made by the species (such as the mode of energy harvesting), some trajectories will lead to an unrecoverable sustainability crisis and eventual population collapse. Others, however, may lead to long-lived, sustainable civilizations.
Such research is, however, more than prospecting for scientific curiosities.
One answer to the Fermi paradox is that nobody makes it through -- that climate change is fate, that nothing we do today matters because civilization inevitably leads to catastrophic planetary changes. But our models may show that isn't the case.
By studying sustainability as a generic astrobiological problem, we can understand if the challenge we face will be like threading a needle or crossing a wide valley. Answering this question demands a far deeper understanding of how planets respond to the kind of stresses energy-intensive species (like ours) place on them. It's an approach no different from that of doctors using different kinds of animals, and their molecular biology, to discover cures for human disease.
With this perspective, we also gain an essential truth. We are one form of life, on one planet, in a universe of countless planets. Through hard-won scientific gains, we've begun discovering the patterns and laws governing planets together with the life they host. Ten thousand years from now the Democrats and the Republicans and their squabbles over climate change will be long gone. But the laws of planets and life we're now revealing won't have changed. Not on this world or any other.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/18/opinion/sunday/is-a-climate-disaster-inevitable.html
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The New York Times
January 17, 2015 Saturday
Late Edition - Final
2014 Breaks Heat Record, Challenging Global Warming Skeptics
BYLINE: By JUSTIN GILLIS
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Foreign Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1238 words
Last year was the hottest on earth since record-keeping began in 1880, scientists reported on Friday, underscoring warnings about the risks of runaway greenhouse gas emissions and undermining claims by climate change contrarians that global warming had somehow stopped.
Extreme heat blanketed Alaska and much of the western United States last year. Records were set across large areas of every inhabited continent. And the ocean surface was unusually warm virtually everywhere except near Antarctica, the scientists said, providing the energy that fueled damaging Pacific storms.
In the annals of climatology, 2014 surpassed 2010 as the warmest year. The 10 warmest years have all occurred since 1997, a reflection of the relentless planetary warming that scientists say is a consequence of human activity and poses profound long-term risks to civilization and nature.
''Climate change is perhaps the major challenge of our generation,'' said Michael H. Freilich, director of earth sciences at NASA, one of the agencies that track global temperatures.
Of the large land areas where many people live, only the eastern portion of the United States recorded below-average temperatures in 2014, in sharp contrast to the unusual heat in the West. Some experts think the weather pattern that produced those American extremes is an indirect consequence of the release of greenhouse gases, though that is not proven.
Several scientists said the most remarkable thing about the 2014 record was that it had occurred in a year that did not feature a strong El Niño, a large-scale weather pattern in which the Pacific Ocean pumps an enormous amount of heat into the atmosphere.
Skeptics of climate change have long argued that global warming stopped around 1998, when an unusually powerful El Niño produced the hottest year of the 20th century. Some politicians in Washington have seized on that claim to justify inaction on emissions.
But the temperature of 1998 is now being surpassed every four or five years, and 2014 was the first time that happened without a significant El Niño. Gavin A. Schmidt, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan, said the next strong El Niño would probably rout all temperature records.
''Obviously, a single year, even if it is a record, cannot tell us much about climate trends,'' said Stefan Rahmstorf, head of earth system analysis at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. ''However, the fact that the warmest years on record are 2014, 2010 and 2005 clearly indicates that global warming has not 'stopped in 1998,' as some like to falsely claim.''
Such claims are unlikely to go away, though. John R. Christy, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville who is known for his skepticism about the seriousness of global warming, pointed out in an interview that 2014 had surpassed the other record-warm years by only a few hundredths of a degree, well within the error margin of global temperature measurements. ''Since the end of the 20th century, the temperature hasn't done much,'' Dr. Christy said. ''It's on this kind of warmish plateau.''
Despite such arguments from a handful of scientists, the vast majority of those who study the climate say the earth is in a long-term warming trend that is profoundly threatening and caused almost entirely by human activity.
They expect the heat to get much worse over coming decades, but already it is killing forests around the world, driving plants and animals to extinction, melting land ice and causing the seas to rise at an accelerating pace.
''It is exceptionally unlikely that we would be witnessing a record year of warmth, during a record-warm decade, during a several decades-long period of warmth that appears to be unrivaled for more than a thousand years, were it not for the rising levels of planet-warming gases produced by the burning of fossil fuels,'' Michael E. Mann, a climate scientist at the Pennsylvania State University, said in an email.
NASA and the other American agency that maintains long-term temperature records, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, issued separate data compilations on Friday that confirmed the 2014 record. A Japanese agency had released preliminary information in early January showing 2014 as the warmest year.
One more scientific group, in Britain, that curates the world's temperature record is scheduled to report in the coming weeks.
Separate temperature measurements taken from satellites do not show 2014 as a record year, although it is close. Several scientists said the satellite readings reflected temperatures in the atmosphere, not at the earth's surface, so it was not surprising that they would differ slightly from the ground and ocean-surface measurements that showed record warmth.
''Why do we keep getting so many record-warm years?'' Dr. Schmidt asked in an interview. ''It's because the planet is warming. The basic issue is the long-term trend, and it is not going away.''
February 1985 was the last time global surface temperatures fell below the 20th-century average for a given month, meaning that no one younger than 30 has ever lived through a below-average month. The last full year that was colder than the 20th-century average was 1976.
The contiguous United States set a temperature record in 2012, a year of scorching heat waves and drought. But, mostly because of the unusual chill in the East, 2014 was only the 34th warmest year on record for the lower 48 states.
That cold was drawn into the interior of the country by a loop in a current called the jet stream that allowed Arctic air to spill southward. But an offsetting kink allowed unusually warm tropical air to settle over the West, large parts of Alaska and much of the Arctic.
A few recent scientific papers say that such long-lasting kinks in the jet stream have become more likely because global warming is rapidly melting the sea ice in the Arctic, but many leading scientists are not convinced on that point.
Whatever the underlying cause, last year's extreme warmth in the West meant that Alaska, Arizona, California and Nevada all set temperature records. Some parts of California essentially had no winter last year, with temperatures sometimes running 10 to 15 degrees above normal for the season. The temperature in Anchorage, Alaska's largest city, never fell below zero in 2014, the first time that has happened in 101 years of record-keeping for the city.
Twenty years of global negotiations aimed at slowing the growth of heat-trapping emissions have yielded little progress. However, 2014 saw signs of large-scale political mobilization on the issue, as more than 300,000 people marched in New York City in September, and tens of thousands more took to the streets in other cities around the world.
The next big attempt at a global climate agreement will come when negotiators from around the world gather in Paris in December. Political activists on climate change wasted no time Friday in citing the 2014 heat record as proof that strong action was needed.
''The steady and now record-breaking rise in average global temperatures is not an issue for another day,'' Michael R. Bloomberg, the former New York mayor who is spending tens of millions of dollars of his personal fortune to battle climate change, said in a statement. ''It's a clear and present danger that poses major economic, health, environmental and geopolitical risks.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/17/science/earth/2014-was-hottest-year-on-record-surpassing-2010.html
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GRAPHIC: PHOTO: A competitor mushed across an oddly snowless section of tundra in Alaska during the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in March. (PHOTOGRAPH BY BOB HALLINEN/THE ANCHORAGE DAILY NEWS, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS) (A6) GRAPHICS: How far above or below average temperatures were in 2014 (Sources: NASA
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Map shows departures from the 1951-80 average
chart shows departures from 1901-2000 average.)
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The Guardian
January 16, 2015 Friday 1:06 PM GMT
Green news roundup: hottest year, Lima climate talks and chameleons;
The week's top environment news stories and green events · Sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox
BYLINE: Environment editor
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 295 words
Environment news
· 2014 set to be world's hottest year ever· Lima climate change talks best chance for a generation, say upbeat diplomats· Israel nature reserve oil spill 'one of country's worst environmental disasters'· World's largest cave in Vietnam threatened by cable car· Eating less meat essential to curb climate change, says report· Keystone XL opponent Bill McKibben steps down as head of 350.org· E.On's switch to renewables is a sign of things to come, say experts· Toiletry chemicals linked to testicular cancer and male infertility cost EU millions, report says
On the blogs
· Locals fearful of suspected killer tiger released near their village in India· Want a green energy future? Nationalise Canada's oil industry· Volcanoes may be responsible for most of the global surface warming slowdown· Will Australia be the great coal defender at Lima climate talks?· The £2.3bn for flood defences in England is good news but still not enough· Brazil's Javari valley threatened by Peruvian oil, warn tribes· Coral Triangle could be last bastion for planet's beleaguered reefs
Multimedia
· International Cheetah Day - in pictures· The hottest year ever around the world - in pictures· The week in wildlife - in pictures· GuardianWitness assignments
Features and comment
· How a ruby-red Texas town turned against fracking· Carbon emissions: past, present and future - interactive· Scientists plan to go in search of the world's rarest chameleon· 'They say that in 30 years maybe Kiribati will disappear'· Maria Eagle: Communities at risk of flooding won't buy this spin from David Cameron
...And finally
· Soil Association has disowned 'O word', say resigning trusteesOrganisation accused of losing its focus on organic food and farming and adopting a corporate mindset
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The Guardian
January 16, 2015 Friday 1:03 PM GMT
Green news roundup: Fossil fuels divestment, Keystone XL and fracking;
The week's top environment news stories and green events · Sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox
BYLINE: Environment editor
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 335 words
Environment news
· Rate of environmental degradation puts life on Earth at risk, say scientists· Axa warns that companies linked to fossil fuels risk their reputations· Pope Francis says climate change is mostly man's fault· Harvard defies divestment campaigners and invests tens of millions of dollars in fossil fuels· Companies will be legally required to reveal chemicals used for fracking· High gold prices causing increased deforestation in South America, study finds· 'Green' biomass boilers may waste billions in public money· Ten Democratic senators vote with Republicans for Keystone XL pipeline· Barack Obama moves to cut US methane emissions by almost half· GM crops to be fast-tracked in UK following EU vote
On the blogs
· Bike blog: Is it OK to get off your bike and walk up a hill?· Indonesia's new marine laws threaten sustainable fisheries· 'If First Milk goes, that will finish my business overnight'· The Antarctic ice sheet is a sleeping giant, beginning to stir· Climate denier Ted Cruz will oversee Nasa - what could possibly go wrong?· Does Europe's coke habit mean massacring 'uncontacted' indigenous people?
Multimedia
· 15 of the hottest spots around the world in 2014 - interactive· Hebei's steel cities and China's pollution crisis - in pictures· Blind orangutan released into the wild in Indonesia after sight restored - video· The week in wildlife - in pictures
Features and comment
· Jonathon Porritt: It is 'impossible' for today's big oil companies to adapt to climate change· Will Gadd: 'We were climbing ice that isn't going to be there next week'· The mystery of the missing hen harriers· Poland's shale gas revolution evaporates in face of environmental protests· Pollutionwatch: Please don't keep the home fires burning
...And finally
· Iceland brewery makes beer using smoked whale testiclesConservationists hit out at the whaling industry's attempt to create a market for its products and criticised the use of an endangered creature's intimate body parts as a marketing tool.
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The Guardian
January 16, 2015 Friday 12:31 PM GMT
Engaging with oil companies on climate change is futile, admits leading UK environmentalist;
After years working on sustainability projects with BP and Shell, Jonathon Porritt says he came to the conclusion it was 'impossible' for today's oil and gas companies to adapt to the need to exit fossil fuelsJonathon Porritt: It is 'impossible' for today's big oil companies to adapt to climate change
BYLINE: Damian Carrington
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 771 words
Engaging with major fossil fuel companies on climate change has become futile, according to one of the UK's most esteemed environmentalists who spent years working on sustainability projects with BP and Shell.
Jonathon Porritt said "hydrocarbon supremacists" at the companies had successfully ousted reformers wanting to diversify into green energy.
The founder director of non-profit consultancy Forum for the Future (FFF), said: "We came to the conclusion that it was impossible for today's oil and gas majors to adapt in a timely and intelligent way to the imperative of radical decarbonisation. We felt we had no option but to end our long-standing partnerships with both Shell and BP."
Porritt brought the Ecology Party - now the Green Party - to prominence in the 1970s and was later director of Friends of the Earth. He has advised the Prince of Wales, Marks & Spencers and many others.
Writing in the Guardian, Porritt said: "These are companies whose senior managers know, as an irrefutable fact, that their current business model threatens both the stability of the global economy and the longer-term prospects of humankind as a whole. It got harder and harder for me to look them in the face knowing what they knew, and witnessing at first hand the intricate patterns of denial and self-deception that they were forced to adopt."
Oil, gas and coal companies are being targeted by a fast-growing campaign that aims to stigmatise them by persuading investors to dump their fossil fuel shares, a call backed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and others. In parallel, a series of authoritative analyses have shown that only a quarter of existing, exploitable fossil fuels reserves are burnable if global warming is not to exceed the dangerous 2C level agreed as the limit by the world's nations.
One counter-argument to divestment has been that holding on to shares and engaging with the companies is more effective in driving change. The Church of England has resisted calls to divest its endowment completely for this reason. "Our approach is to get stuck in on ethical issues and try and have a positive influence," said Church Commissioner Edward Mason in December.
But Porritt said this time has now passed and that the unburnable carbon analysis has left the fossil fuel companies "entirely unmoved".
"There was a time when I seriously persuaded myself that it was still just about possible for companies like Shell and BP to find some way of transitioning into 'fully-integrated energy companies', investing as much in renewables, storage and efficiency as in hydrocarbons, instead of reverting to what they are today: pure-play hydrocarbon dinosaurs," he wrote in a recent blog. "It didn't happen. Worse yet, the lengths they went to to justify their continuing investments in new hydrocarbons have become more and more extreme."
Over $670bn (£442bn) was spent in 2013 exploring for new fossil fuels reserves. Shell is spending billions on Arctic exploration and Canadian tar sands projects, both of which were deemed incompatible with preventing dangerous climate change according to a recent analysis in the journal Nature.
"With BP the moment [for transition] came and went under the leadership of John Browne and with Shell, it pretty much died after Mark Moody-Stuart moved on," Porritt wrote in the Guardian. "In both companies, the hydrocarbon supremacists rapidly regained the ground they'd lost: doing renewables as Corporate Social Responsibility was fine, but anything that threatened to go seriously 'beyond petroleum' was deemed to be deviant heresy."
Shell, Exxonmobil and Statoil have all been forced to respond recently to concerns about a " carbon bubble ". This is the suggestion that promised international action to curb climate change by drastically cutting fossil fuel burning will make many fossil fuels reserves worthless in the future, an idea being taken seriously by the Bank of England, Goldman Sachs, Citibank and other financial institutions.
Porritt said fossil fuel companies are ultimately doomed, if not in the short term. "It has been quite a painful journey for me personally. I so badly wanted to believe that the combination of reason, rigorous science and good people would enable elegant transition strategies to emerge in those companies," he said. "But we learn as we go. And go those companies surely will, if not in the near future."
Note: The Rockefeller Brothers Fund have divested from fossil fuels, not the Rockefeller Foundation as the original version of this article wrongly stated.
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The Guardian
January 16, 2015 Friday 12:14 PM GMT
UN secretary general says no plans to reduce sustainable development goals;
In his report, Ban Ki-moon backs the 17 goals and 169 targets proposed by the UN working group, despite the difficulty member states may have in communicating them
BYLINE: Liz Ford
SECTION: GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT
LENGTH: 867 words
The UN secretary general has ruled out any immediate cut in the number of proposed sustainable development goals with the launch on Thursday of his synthesis report, The Road to Dignity by 2030 (pdf).
In the report, Ban Ki-moon reaffirmed the 17 goals and 169 targets proposed by the UN open working group that will come into force after the millennium development goals expire next year.
Some member states, including the UK and Japan, have expressed concern that the large number of goals and targets would prove a challenge to implement, particularly in poorer countries, and sell to the public. Many people would be unable to recite the contents of the eight MDGs, which have been in place for almost 15 years.
In September, David Cameron told the audience of an event at the UN general assembly that he wanted a maximum of 12 goals, saying there was "a real danger they will end up sitting on a bookshelf, gathering dust" if there were 17.
Ban told reporters that the final decision on the number was up to the member states but gave no hint that he expected the number to change. "The possibility of maintaining the 17 goals, with some rearrangement, is up to member states," he said. "I am encouraged that my report received very positive and favourable responses."
When asked if the name of the goals could be changed to something more snappy, Ban said there were no plans to adopt something new, but added there was "still a nine-months negotiation process awaiting".
Ban did acknowledge the difficulty governments could have in effectively communicating the content of the goals. In an attempt to help governments, the secretary general has banded the goals into six "essential elements", which he hoped would help guide member states in their negotiations on the final targets.
Ban said the elements - dignity, people, planet, prosperity, justice and partnership - "were not an attempt to cluster or replace the SDGs, rather they are meant to offer conceptual guidance for the work ahead".
The report highlighted the importance of the internatioal conference on financing for development, taking place in Addis Ababa in July next year, for agreeing commitments for paying for the implementation of the goals.
Other key moments next year will be the special summit on sustainable development at the UN general assembly in September, where the goals are expected to be adopted, and the UNFCCC meeting in Paris in Decembe r, where member states have pledged to adopt an agreement to tackle climate change.
Ban said adequate resources, the technical know-how and the political will were crucial to create a transformative vision for the future. "I continue to urge member states to continue to keep ambitions high. We must do all it takes to provide hope for people and the planet," he said at the report's launch in New York.
Helen Dennis, senior adviser on poverty and inequality at Christian Aid, called the report a "rallying call to governments to aim high with the new global development goals. It rightly makes it clear that business as usual is not an option, and puts proper emphasis on the importance of equitable and sustainable development. The secretary general emphasises the shared nature of challenges like inequality and climate change and underlines the need for universal goals which will apply in all countries, including the UK."
Michael Elliott, president the advocacy group ONE, said: "The UN secretary general's report is a welcome drive to kickstart the global effort to end extreme poverty by 2030, and we echo his calls for an ambitious plan to finance the next chapter for development."
Margaret Batty, director of global policy and campaigns at WaterAid said: "Today's report takes us one step closer to a landmark agreement for a world where extreme poverty has been eliminated and safe water and sanitation are available to all.
"We welcome the inclusion of water, sanitation and hygiene within the six elements identified by the secretary general and emphasise how important it will be to achieve universal access to these essential needs."
However, Stephen Hale, Oxfam's deputy advocacy and campaigns director, criticised the report for not presenting a stronger message about climate change and inequality.
"Oxfam is disappointed that the UN has not made far stronger proposals to address extreme economic inequality and climate change in its new report. The under-emphasis of both issues is a grave missed opportunity," he said. "These are two major injustices that are guaranteed to undermine the efforts of millions of people seeking to escape poverty and hunger over the next 15 years."
Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah, head of Civicus: World Alliance for Citizen Participation, said the report captured many of the key issues raised by his members. "The central place given to tackling inequality is a great step forward, there's an admirable attempt to bring climate change concerns into the development agenda and the need to protect civic space is underlined," he said. "The key challenge now will be to get governments to agree to ambitious, game-changing targets for the new goals and, importantly, to put in place robust accountability mechanisms."
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The Guardian
January 16, 2015 Friday 12:09 AM GMT
Seven ways climate change could kill you (really);
From roasting sidewalks to apocalyptic allergy seasons, here are the ways researchers predict a changing climate will affect your healthl0 riskiest places to buy your seaside dream homeWhere the wildfires are: if there's smoke, there are costly health problems
BYLINE: Kristina Johnson
SECTION: VITAL SIGNS
LENGTH: 1400 words
What do allergies, heart attacks, salmonella outbreaks, and depression have in common? Give up? Well, most Americans don't know either, according to an October report from the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication.
The answer is that they're all symptoms of a warming planet - just some of the health problems that experts say we can expect as temperatures rise.
But when the Yale Project asked Americans what climate change has to do with their health, the nation basically flunked. Only one in four respondents could name a health problem related to global warming. Of those, only 5% could identify a consequence other than respiratory conditions, like asthma, or harm from extreme weather conditions, like heat stroke.
Unfortunately, the list of potential ailments is much longer.
The World Health Organization predicts that climate change will cause 250,000 additional deaths per year around the globe between 2030 and 2050, primarily from malaria, diarrhea, heat exposure and malnutrition.
The health threat will be worse in developing nations, where people are generally more exposed to the elements and advanced medical care and sanitation are less available. But studies show that Americans won't be exempt, especially those who live in the nation's low-income communities, children and the elderly.
John Balbus, senior advisor for public health at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, says that even the American medical community isn't as familiar with climate change as it should be. "The health sector doesn't normally focus on environmental issues," Balbus says. "There's more focus on the issues that come in the door that we can treat immediately, and climate change has been perceived as a future problem, not an imminent one."
But imminent it is, especially after 2014 took the prize as the hottest year on record.
Last year, more than 300 of the country's leading climate experts, including Balbus, signed their names to the National Climate Assessment (NCA), a comprehensive look at global warming in the US. Unless we dramatically curb our emissions. Here's what the research says we can look forward to:
1. Bug bites that kill
Disease-carrying insects will see their North American habitats widen with climate change, putting more people at risk for Lyme disease, Rocky Mountain spotted fever and West Nile virus, to name just a few.
The US will be better positioned than poorer countries to control pest vectors, but that doesn't leave the country entirely protected. Some diseases that are almost never encountered here, like Dengue fever, will also expand their reach with warmer weather. An additional 2 billion people could be exposed to Dengue by 2080, making it more likely that it will cross US borders, or that Americans traveling abroad will come in contact with it. "If Ebola taught us anything," Balbus says, "it's that even if diseases don't start here, they can come here."
2. Cough, wheeze, hack
The number of Americans with asthma has been on the uptick for years, rising from 7.3% in 2001 to 8.3% in 2010, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Across the country, 25.7 million adults have the condition, and that number is expected to keep growing.
Kim Knowlton, senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and a lead NCA author, explains that there is a direct correlation between compromised breathing and spiking temperatures. In the decades to come, "it will be harder to get a lungful of air", Knowlton says.
Hotter weather will increase ground-level ozone and particulate air pollution, while the smoke from drought-driven wildfires (which burned an average of 5.7 million acres each year between 2005 and 2014) will contain toxic levels of nitrogen and carbon monoxide. All this increased air pollution will result in as many as 1,000 to 4,300 additional premature deaths in the US each year by 2050.
3. Empty calories and pesticide soup
As growing seasons become more precarious, lower yields and higher prices could become the norm in American agriculture. Consumers in a country already first in the world for obesity will feel even more pressure to buy cheap, unhealthy meals.
Because carbon dioxide alters the nitrogen balance in soil, robbing plants of protein and micronutrients, even once healthy foods won't be as nutritious.
Food safety could become more difficult to control, too. Additional heat and moisture encourage bacteria growth, from salmonella in meat to aflatoxin in corn.
Many agronomists believe that climate change is already triggering more pernicious weed growth and more virulent pest varieties. "Most of modern agriculture is geared to planting one variety of a crop over hundreds or thousands of acres," says Dr. Lewis Ziska, plant physiologist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and a contributor to the NCA.
Ziska worries that farmers will turn to heavier doses of pesticides and herbicides to ward against crop losses, exposing farmworkers to toxic chemicals. The best way to ensure American harvests, he says, is to move away from the one-crop model: "Diversity in how and what we farm will be key to adaptation in agriculture."
4. An allergy season that goes on forever
Everybody loves a warm day, but it's the cold ones that keep pollen in check. With more frost-free days and higher average air temperatures, plants are flowering longer and earlier. More C02 in the air actually spurs plants to produce allergens.
But don't bank on finding relief indoors. Hotter weather and an increase in rainfall will contribute to household mold and fungi growth.
5. Summer in the city
As heat waves become more severe, NRDC's Knowlton says that cities will bear the brunt of the damage. With so many metal buildings and asphalt streets, urban centers tend to trap heat. City hospitals could see more cardiovascular, kidney and respiratory disorders, along with heat strokes.
6. Too much or too little water
Droughts, floods, monster storms - exactly how you'll be affected by all these elements depends on where you live. Climatologists predict that deluges like Hurricane Sandy will increasingly threaten the US east coast. But heavier rains will fall on parts of the West Coast too.
Meanwhile, in the middle of the country, inland rivers are expected to flood with greater frequency. To make matters worse, all that water often brings with it infectious diseases and the possibility of sewage contamination.
In more arid regions, drought could not only set off more wildfires but harm water resources and undermine agriculture. In the southwest, drought has also spurred the spread of sometimes-fatal Valley Fever, a fungal pathogen inhaled through airborne dust and soil.
7. Sunny days that make you dreary
Researchers have found a link between high temperatures and a rise in suicide rates and dementia. Certain medications for extreme mental disorders like schizophrenia interrupt the body's ability to regulate temperature, making patients more vulnerable to heat stroke and hypothermia. Of course, nothing is more stressful than watching your home be consumed by wildfire or flooded by storm surge.
'A matter of life and death'
All this may sound apocalyptic, but scientists hope that by educating people about the health impact of climate change they can do more than stoke fear.
"Talking about health helps to personalize climate change, to make it less a matter of just polar bears," says Balbus, pointing out that the first step to protecting the health of Americans - and billions of others all over the world - is to immediately curb greenhouse gas emissions.
"If we don't demand dramatic action now, this won't just be a matter of academic interest," Knowlton says. "It will increasingly be a matter of life and death."
This story was produced by the Food and Environment Reporting Network , an independent, non-profit news organization focusing on food, agriculture, and environmental health.
The Vital Signs platform is funded by Avery Dennison, Domtar and Chiquita. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled 'brought to you by' . Find out more here.
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January 16, 2015 Friday
Late Edition - Final
Ocean Life Faces Mass Extinction, Broad Study Says
BYLINE: By CARL ZIMMER
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; MATTER; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1105 words
A team of scientists, in a groundbreaking analysis of data from hundreds of sources, has concluded that humans are on the verge of causing unprecedented damage to the oceans and the animals living in them.
''We may be sitting on a precipice of a major extinction event,'' said Douglas J. McCauley, an ecologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an author of the new research, which was published on Thursday in the journal Science.
But there is still time to avert catastrophe, Dr. McCauley and his colleagues also found. Compared with the continents, the oceans are mostly intact, still wild enough to bounce back to ecological health.
''We're lucky in many ways,'' said Malin L. Pinsky, a marine biologist at Rutgers University and another author of the new report. ''The impacts are accelerating, but they're not so bad we can't reverse them.''
Scientific assessments of the oceans' health are dogged by uncertainty: It's much harder for researchers to judge the well-being of a species living underwater, over thousands of miles, than to track the health of a species on land. And changes that scientists observe in particular ocean ecosystems may not reflect trends across the planet.
Dr. Pinsky, Dr. McCauley and their colleagues sought a clearer picture of the oceans' health by pulling together data from an enormous range of sources, from discoveries in the fossil record to statistics on modern container shipping, fish catches and seabed mining. While many of the findings already existed, they had never been juxtaposed in such a way.
A number of experts said the result was a remarkable synthesis, along with a nuanced and encouraging prognosis.
''I see this as a call for action to close the gap between conservation on land and in the sea,'' said Loren McClenachan of Colby College, who was not involved in the study.
There are clear signs already that humans are harming the oceans to a remarkable degree, the scientists found. Some ocean species are certainly overharvested, but even greater damage results from large-scale habitat loss, which is likely to accelerate as technology advances the human footprint, the scientists reported.
Coral reefs, for example, have declined by 40 percent worldwide, partly as a result of climate-change-driven warming.
Some fish are migrating to cooler waters already. Black sea bass, once most common off the coast of Virginia, have moved up to New Jersey. Less fortunate species may not be able to find new ranges. At the same time, carbon emissions are altering the chemistry of seawater, making it more acidic.
''If you cranked up the aquarium heater and dumped some acid in the water, your fish would not be very happy,'' Dr. Pinsky said. ''In effect, that's what we're doing to the oceans.''
Fragile ecosystems like mangroves are being replaced by fish farms, which are projected to provide most of the fish we consume within 20 years. Bottom trawlers scraping large nets across the sea floor have already affected 20 million square miles of ocean, turning parts of the continental shelf to rubble. Whales may no longer be widely hunted, the analysis noted, but they are now colliding more often as the number of container ships rises.
Mining operations, too, are poised to transform the ocean. Contracts for seabed mining now cover 460,000 square miles underwater, the researchers found, up from zero in 2000. Seabed mining has the potential to tear up unique ecosystems and introduce pollution into the deep sea.
The oceans are so vast that their ecosystems may seem impervious to change. But Dr. McClenachan warned that the fossil record shows that global disasters have wrecked the seas before. ''Marine species are not immune to extinction on a large scale,'' she said.
Until now, the seas largely have been spared the carnage visited on terrestrial species, the new analysis also found.
The fossil record indicates that a number of large animal species became extinct as humans arrived on continents and islands. For example, the moa, a giant bird that once lived on New Zealand, was wiped out by arriving Polynesians in the 1300s, probably within a century.
But it was only after 1800, with the Industrial Revolution, that extinctions on land really accelerated.
Humans began to alter the habitat that wildlife depended on, wiping out forests for timber, plowing under prairie for farmland, and laying down roads and railroads across continents.
Species began going extinct at a much faster pace. Over the past five centuries, researchers have recorded 514 animal extinctions on land. But the authors of the new study found that documented extinctions are far rarer in the ocean.
Before 1500, a few species of seabirds are known to have vanished. Since then, scientists have documented only 15 ocean extinctions, including animals such as the Caribbean monk seal and the Steller's sea cow.
While these figures are likely underestimates, Dr. McCauley said that the difference was nonetheless revealing.
''Fundamentally, we're a terrestrial predator,'' he said. ''It's hard for an ape to drive something in the ocean extinct.''
Many marine species that have become extinct or are endangered depend on land -- seabirds that nest on cliffs, for example, or sea turtles that lay eggs on beaches.
Still, there is time for humans to halt the damage, Dr. McCauley said, with effective programs limiting the exploitation of the oceans. The tiger may not be salvageable in the wild -- but the tiger shark may well be, he said.
''There are a lot of tools we can use,'' he said. ''We better pick them up and use them seriously.''
Dr. McCauley and his colleagues argue that limiting the industrialization of the oceans to some regions could allow threatened species to recover in other ones. ''I fervently believe that our best partner in saving the ocean is the ocean itself,'' said Stephen R. Palumbi of Stanford University, an author of the new study.
The scientists also argued that these reserves had to be designed with climate change in mind, so that species escaping high temperatures or low pH would be able to find refuge.
''It's creating a hopscotch pattern up and down the coasts to help these species adapt,'' Dr. Pinsky said.
Ultimately, Dr. Palumbi warned, slowing extinctions in the oceans will mean cutting back on carbon emissions, not just adapting to them.
''If by the end of the century we're not off the business-as-usual curve we are now, I honestly feel there's not much hope for normal ecosystems in the ocean,'' he said. ''But in the meantime, we do have a chance to do what we can. We have a couple decades more than we thought we had, so let's please not waste it.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/16/science/earth/study-raises-alarm-for-health-of-ocean-life.html
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GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: A dead whale in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in 2011. As container ships multiply, more whales are being harmed, a study said. (PHOTOGRAPH BY MARCO DE SWART/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE -- GETTY IMAGES)
Transplanted coral off Java Island, Indonesia. Great damage results from the loss of habitats like coral reefs, an analysis found. (PHOTOGRAPH BY AMAN ROCHMAN/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE -- GETTY IMAGES) (A3)
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January 16, 2015 Friday
Reading The Times With Naomi Klein
BYLINE: SUSAN LEHMAN
LENGTH: 1454 words
HIGHLIGHT: Naomi Klein discusses how she read Thursday’s Times.
Naomi Klein is a best-selling author whose most recent book is "This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate."
Q.
What story best exemplifies the clash between capitalism and climate change that you describe in your new book?
A.
The article by Hiroko Tabuchi, "Americans Pocketing What They Save on Gas, Retail Data Suggests."
The article reports grimly that Americans didn't shop as much as projected in December as if this is unequivocally negative, since we have an economic system that treats all market expansion as good and all contraction as bad.
But a dip in December shopping (which tends to be the most frantic and useless kind) is actually good news from a climate perspective. The article then says that more "upbeat" times are on the way because lower gas prices will free up cash for more shopping, including more car buying.
Once again, from a climate perspective, up is down.
We have a fundamental conflict between what the market demands and what the planet needs to remain stable, which is why the subtitle of my book is "Capitalism vs. the Climate."
Q.
Cuban travel restrictions eased. What do you think about the president's recent policy change on Cuba?
A.
I'm Canadian and went on a completely uneventful family holiday to Cuba when I was 15. So it's stunning to me that this has taken so long. But, hey, I like it. Let's hear it for second terms with term limits.
Q.
There's a big story about the economic crisis in France and how it contributes to failed integration policy. Thoughts on this?
A.
My main response to this excellent story was "finally."
So much of the analysis purporting to understand the roots of the rage felt by some young Muslims in Europe, extreme economic exclusion is barely mentioned.
When the banlieues exploded in riots in 2009, we heard all about these shocking unemployment levels, about how hard it was for people with certain kinds of names to get job interviews, and also how prevalent police profiling had become. These aren't the only factors, but they are key ingredients in the rage cocktail. When austerity is prescribed so recklessly - and so unequally - politicians are playing with fire.
This story brings in a diversity of voices from parts of France rarely visited by reporters. We desperately need this kind of context instead of the easy pathologizing of a whole religion. It's a great piece of reporting, The Times at its best. The calls for respect and equality at the end of the piece strongly echo the #BlackLivesMatter movement in the U.S. - a parallel that will surely not be lost on many readers.
Q.
A Business story reports that JPMorgan Chase's chief executive, Jamie Dimon, says banks are unfairly under assault. Sounds like material for The Onion.
A.
I fear today's bankers are beyond satire.
Mr. Dimon explained that this "assault" consisted of having "five or six" regulators asking questions, instead of just one, like "the old days." The old days, of course, produced the collapse of global financial markets in 2008.
The same article quotes Mr. Dimon saying that JPMorgan's "diversification is the reason why it's had less volatility of earnings and was able to go through the crisis and never lost money ever, not one quarter."
The real reason JPMorgan didn't lose money in the midst of the crisis is because it was bailed out to the tune of $25 billion, more by some estimates. When someone lends you $25 billion and you fail to even mention it as a reason for your success, well, that's just bad manners.
Q.
O.K., back to your expertise: climate change. In the good-news, bad-news department, The Times reports today that the ocean did not rise as much as previously thought in the 20th century. But it may rise faster now. By your lights what big questions does the report raise?
A.
We may have overestimated 20th century sea level rise a bit, but as this report makes clear, the rate of rise has recently shot up and it may now be accelerating disastrously.
It's a good encapsulation of a crucial but underappreciated principle: Of course we are still resolving areas of uncertainty in climate science, but we have more than enough evidence to justify a focus on the worst-case scenarios guided by an ethic of radical precaution.
As the historian Naomi Oreskes pointed out in The Times recently, "the evidence is mounting that scientists have underpredicted the threat."
Q.
"West Virginia Withdraws Altered Climate Curriculum," retreating from material that doubts climate change. Good news?
A.
It would have been better news if the story had been dated "Jan. 14, 1992" - the year the U.S. signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. It's awfully bad news that we are still debating this in 2015, though of course we should be grateful to the local activists who waded into this fight and won.
Q.
General thoughts on Times climate coverage?
A.
When the environment desk was dismantled two years ago, there was real concern about what this would mean for climate coverage. An assessment from your public editor later that year was quite concerning: Despite continued excellent reporting, particularly from Justin Gillis (a superb journalist, in my view), coverage was down by almost a third. Levels of climate coverage have recovered since then, with 2014 a big year for climate stories. [The Times public editor took note last October of the addition of more staff members to cover climate change.]
I was actually excited when The Times explained that dismantling the dedicated desk was a way to break climate out of its "silo" because climate has become an economics and politics story as well as an environmental one. That integration needs to happen. In fact, we badly need to stop thinking of climate change as a discrete "issue" or "beat." We are talking about our planet's life-support system, it's woven into every issue you can name.
It's possible for this to be genuinely reflected in the paper as a whole, but unfortunately it isn't happening yet.
Imagine if it was. Imagine if every foreign correspondent was told that covering the impact that climate change was having on conflict and economics was part of the job. And not just after a major disaster. Or if every business writer was attuned to how their beat intersected with the need to radically lower emissions this decade.
A huge effort needs to be made to keep these thoughts front of mind - for both writers and readers. It doesn't happen by itself. And I think we see that most clearly in the fact that climate is so frequently unmentioned in analysis of low oil prices.
On a more nitpicky note, more could be done to explain the stakes involved in the mess of numbers that accompanies any discussion of carbon emissions.
When reporting on administration pledges about emission reductions, for instance, the key question is not what fossil fuel lobbyists think. Rather it's whether or not those reductions are in line with what science demands to give us a good shot at a stable climate. At the very least, all emission pledges should be measured against the commitments the administration made in Copenhagen in 2009 to keep temperature increases below 2 degrees Celsius.
Because those targets are almost never mentioned, the proposed cuts sound high. But in fact they are nowhere near what's needed to avoid what governments around the world have characterized as "dangerous warming."
Not only do we need The Times to constantly remind of us of that fact, but we also need to be reminded of what "dangerous warming" actually means.
Q.
Are there stories about some subjects that you skip entirely?
A.
Oh yeah. It's one of the reasons I hate to see climate news hived away under "science." Before I started work on "This Changes Everything," I was one of those people who would never have read the Science section. I skip sports. Now I am being a way too predictable girl. So I should probably say that I skip fashion too, but that's not entirely true.
Q.
Any features that are a source of regular interest?
A.
One of the things I find most entertaining in The Times online is the "Most emailed" feature.
These kinds of lists are the surrogate water cooler for so many of us who work at home - but it's a water cooler for a workplace where I would never work.
That's what makes it different from Twitter or other social media: We curate those news feeds based on our likes and dislikes; this list is just what Times readers think is worth sharing, and that interests me.
For a while, there always seemed to be a yoga controversy at the top of the list. Or something about a sleep disorder. From which I deduced many Times readers were obsessed either with not sleeping with their yoga instructors or not sleeping, period.
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January 16, 2015 Friday
A Closer Look at the Global Warming Trend, Record Hot 2014 and What's Ahead
BYLINE: ANDREW C. REVKIN
SECTION: OPINION
LENGTH: 1069 words
HIGHLIGHT: Computer models range widely in assessing whether the record warmth of 2014 will be topped in 2015.
There's plenty of news coverage, including in The Times, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announcement that 2014 was the warmest year since careful record keeping began in 1880.
But it's worth taking a closer look, and a look ahead, via a helpful analysis posted today by the climate team at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University's Earth Institute. The authors include both Gavin Schmidt, the current director of the institute, and James E. Hansen, the longtime former director, now affiliated with Columbia. Here are a couple of highlights:
Not that it matters, really, but 2010 and 2014 are basically tied for warmest year.
The two agencies use slightly different methods, so they have different readings for the difference between 2014 and the previous warmest year, 2010, with N.O.A.A. putting it at 0.07 degrees Fahrenheit (0.04 degrees Celsius), while NASA got 0.036 degrees (0.02 Celsius) - which this analysis says is well "within uncertainty of measurement."
Of course changes in global temperature year to year, even decade to decade, have little meaning in tracking a long-term trend like the impact on temperature of rising concentrations of greenhouse gases. Remember, as this great animation put it, when figuring out a dog walker's likely path, pay attention to the man, not the dog:
The media capital of the world was cooler than normal.
The NASA team notes that, from beginning to end, the part of the world that - whether you like it or not - sets much of the public conversation, was an outlier:
The eastern two-thirds of the contiguous United States was persistently cool in 2014, cooler than the 1951-1980 average in all seasons.... Residents of the eastern two-thirds of the United States and Canada might be surprised that 2014 was the warmest year, as they happened to reside in an area with the largest negative temperature anomaly on the planet, except for a region in Antarctica.
Global arming has slowed, but not stopped.
The report contains a helpful section on the temperature hiatus/pause/plateau that has provided persistent fodder for those questioning the significance of climate change, and has also generated a heap of focused research:
Record warmth at a time of only marginal El Niño conditions confirms that there is no "hiatus" of global warming, only a moderate slowdown since 2000....
The rate of global warming has been less since 2000 than in the prior 30 years (Fig. 6). Whether there has been a significant change in the long-term warming rate must await additional data, but the apparent slowdown has led to numerous assertions that "global warming has stopped." Fig. 6 confirms that there has been little increase of the 60-month (5-year) and 132-month (11-year) running means in the past decade, although it is not obvious that such a slowdown is outside the norm of unforced decadal variability.
Here's Figure 6:
Although there have been many suggestions for possible contributions to the slowdown of the recent warming rate, a reduced warming rate of the Pacific sea surface temperature seems to be a significant factor. Kosaka and Xie made global climate simulations in which they inserted specified observed Pacific Ocean temperatures; they found that the model simulated well the observed global warming slowdown or "hiatus," although this experiment does not identify the cause of Pacific Ocean temperature trends. England et al. suggest that the recent Pacific Ocean surface temperature anomalies are related to a strengthening of Pacific trade winds in the past two decades, and that warming is likely to accelerate as the trade wind anomaly abates. In any event, we can anticipate that global warming will continue on decadal time scales, because Earth is out of energy balance - more energy coming in than going out - as a result of increased atmospheric greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide.
As always, in other words, this is a long-term trend - the same as scientists have portrayed it since the late 1980s.
What about 2015? Most models foresee an El Niño fadeout, but...
On short time scales, as happened in 1998, widespread warm temperatures in the tropical Pacific in El Niño years can pump up the heat. Forecasts early in 2014 of an impending intense El Niño evaporated later in the year. So what's brewing now?
It is of interest to know whether global warming will become more apparent in the near term. It is notable that the record global warmth of 2014 was achieved in a year in which the tropical Pacific Ocean surface temperatures were in a nearly ENSO (El Niño Southern Oscillation) neutral or very weak El Niño state. There is a high correlation of global temperature with the Niño index, global temperature lagging the Niño index by a few months. Thus it is expected, as a consequence of the slightly elevated Niño index, that the 12-month running mean global temperature will continue to rise in the next few months to its highest level in the record, even if the recent weak El Niño continues to fade away.
Furthermore, it is possible that the ENSO warming trend that has occurred since the 2011 La Niña may not have run its course. There could be a surge this coming Northern Hemisphere Spring, the season in which Nature tends to roll the El Niño dice, to a strong El Niño. Sea surface temperatures in the Western Pacific are well above climatology, and it has been argued that the warmth in the Western Pacific along with the lack of an equivalent long-term warming trend in the Eastern Pacific, increase the chances of a "super El Niño," comparable to the two strongest El Niños of the past century, which occurred in 1998 and 1983.
If 2015 is significantly warmer than 2014, there is clearly no hiatus. So, what do dynamical ENSO models predict? Two models, LDEO (Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory) and NCEP (National Center for Environmental Prediction), indeed predict a strong swing next spring to a strong El Niño.... All the other models have the El Niño petering out.
Their bottom line:
Record global temperature in 2014, achieved with little assistance from the tropical ENSO cycle, confirms continuing global warming. More warming is expected in coming years and decades as a result of Earth's large energy imbalance, more energy coming in than going out, and with the help of even a mild El Niño 2015 may be significantly warmer than 2014.
Read the full analysis as a pdf here.
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January 16, 2015 Friday
Storm Warnings for Pope's Planned Climate Stop in the Philippines
BYLINE: ANDREW C. REVKIN
SECTION: OPINION
LENGTH: 1176 words
HIGHLIGHT: Pope Francis is using his Philippines visit to kick off a yearlong push for global action on global warming.
On Saturday, nearing the end of his visit to the Philippines, Pope Francis is scheduled to hold mass for residents of Tacloban City, which was devastated in late 2013 by Typhoon Haiyan (known as Yolanda in the Philippines). The Vatican has signaled that he will also talk about global warming.
If the stop comes off as planned, he'll have a suitable backdrop in the form of high winds and downpours from Tropical Storm Makkhala (some are spelling it Mekkhala), which is swirling in the Pacific nearby. The website Western Pacific Weather has the meteorological details.
The pope has been speaking out more about climate change of late, most recently in an exchange with reporters during his flight from Sri Lanka to the Philippines. Here's the relevant moment, thanks to a transcript from the Catholic News Agency:
Gerard O'Connell , America Magazine: ...We have seen in Sri Lanka the beauty of nature, but even in the end the vulnerability of that island to climate change, etc. We are going to the Philippines, you are going to visit the stricken area. It is more than one year that you are studying the issue of ecology, of the cure of creation, etcetera. My question has three aspects. First, is climate change an outcome of the work of man, of man's lack of care of nature? Second, when will your encyclical be released? Third, you insist - as we have seen in Sri Lanka - very much on cooperation among religions. Are you going to invite other religions to gather together to discuss this issue? Thank you.
Pope Francis: The first question, you had said a word that requires a clarification. Mostly. I don't know if it's all, but mostly, for a large part, man 'slaps' nature, continually, but we have taken hold of nature, of mother Earth. I remember - you already heard this - what an old peasant once told me: God always forgives, we men sometimes forgive, nature never forgives. If you slap it, it will always slap you back. Then, we exploited nature too much, with deforestations, for example. I remember [the 2007 meeting of Latin American bishops at] Aparecida; at that time, I did not understand this issue so much; when I listened to Brazilian bishops speaking about the deforestation of the Amazon, I never understood it in depth. The Amazon is the lung of world. Five years ago, with a human rights commission, I appealed to the Supreme Court of Argentina to stop, at least temporarily, a terrible deforestation in Northern Argentina, in the Norte de Salta area. This is one issue.
Then - I will say another one - the one-crop system - I will give two or three [examples]: Farmers know that if you make a cultivation of corn for three years, you have to stop, and then cultivate a different crop for one or two years, in order - I don't know how to say it, nitrogenizar is the Spanish word for it - to regenerate the soil. Nowadays, for instance, there is the exclusive cultivation of soy; you take everything, you make soy until the soil is exhausted; not everyone does it, it is an example; many others don't.
I think that man has gone overboard. Thank God, today there are voices and many people speaking out about this. But I would like in this moment to remember my beloved brother [Patriarch] Bartholomew, who has been speaking out about this for years. I read many things of his to prepare this encyclical.... The first draft was sketched by Cardinal Turkson with his staff.
[ACR: Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana has dealt with other contentious scientific issues - including weighing the role of genetic engineering in agriculture. In 2013, he threaded a path between industry and critics of genetically modified organisms, or G.M.O.s., saying they need to be used, but only with " the guidance of a deeply responsible ethic."]
Then I took over the draft with the help of some people and worked on it, then I made a third draft with some theologians and I sent this draft to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, to the Second Section of the State Secretariat, and to the Theologian of the Pontifical Household, so that they could study it, and find if I had said some foolishness. Three weeks ago I received the responses, some of them this big, but all of them constructive. Now I will take a whole week in March to complete it, so at the end of March it should be completed, and will then be translated. I think that, if the work of translation goes well..., in June or July it will be released.
It is just important that there is some time between the release of the encyclical and the [climate treaty] meeting in Paris so that it may be brought there. Because the [treaty] meeting in Peru was not that much; it disappointed me, the lack of courage. They stopped at one point. Let's hope that in Paris representatives will be more courageous.
The third [question]. I believe that dialogue among religions is important; this issue is felt by other religions as well, on this issue there is a common feeling. I have spoken with some representatives of other religions on the issue, and I know that Cardinal Turkson has, as well, and two theologians also; this was the path: it will not be a common declaration, meetings will come after.
If he gets to speak in Tacloban, I hope Francis recognizes how the scope of the social calamity in that coastal city was far more the result of deep poverty and poorly governed urban growth than any shift in typhoon patterns - which really haven't changed at all in that region in recent decades. This graph shows the frequency of tropical cyclone landfalls:
There, as in so many places around the world, the prime driver of losses in severe weather calamities is poverty or settlement in danger zones.
Global warming, through sea-level rise, will raise odds of bad outcomes in such storms down the line even if warming has little impact on the storms themselves.
But for the time being, better governance and paths out of poverty are the prime priority in such places.
Family planning would help, too, and it was encouraging to see the Philippine Supreme Court approve a pioneering Reproductive Health Law last year.
As The Wall Street Journal reported just before the pope's arrival, that decision has made it possible for the government to start providing thousands of families with access to contraception.
The Journal noted:
The Roman Catholic Church fought the measure, but many rank-and-file Catholics supported it as a way to reduce the country's high birthrate and reduce poverty.
On his stop in Manila on Friday, while meeting with a thousand Catholic families, Francis made it clear that he was not shifting from longstanding Vatican policies against contraception.
The Catholic publication Crux reported:
The pope also issued a strong defense of Pope Paul VI's controversial 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae , which upheld the Church's traditional ban on birth control.
"He had the strength to defend openness to life at a time when many people were worried about population growth," Francis said.
Take a strong stance on climate change is one thing. Changing a stance on population is another.
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January 16, 2015 Friday
After the Warmest Year on Record, West Virginia Feels the Heat
BYLINE: FRANCIS X. CLINES
SECTION: OPINION
LENGTH: 324 words
HIGHLIGHT: A member of the Board of Education tried (and at first succeeded in) altering new teaching standards to reflect his doubts about climate change.
Friday's news that 2014 was the Earth's hottest year on record could not have been timelier for West Virginia, where a dissident member of the Board of Education recently altered new teaching standards to reflect his personal doubts about climate change.
The board member, L. Wade Linger Jr., didn't like the sound of a sixth-grade study plan mentioning "the rise in global temperatures over the past century." So he had the language changed to: "rise and fall.""The temperature rises and falls all the time," he explained, as if settling the issue. That wasn't his only edit of a proposed national curriculum developed with 25 other states. Another change instructed students to question the "creditability" (sic) of global climate models.
There was no immediate reaction by Mr. Linger to the news from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that last year was the hottest since records were first kept in 1880. To underline that this is a grave and growing trend , the report noted that the 10 warmest years on record have all occurred since 1997, reflecting the effect of human emissions on the world.
The research-based consensus holds that humans are steadily contributing to what is a proven state of global warming. After Mr. Linger unilaterally prescribed that the state's students doubt this fact, there were widespread complaints from teachers and parents who wondered why his standards should trump science.
With his opinions threatening West Virginia with an embarrassing variation on the Snopes saga, the board doubled back on its original approval. On Wednesday it voted 6 to 2 to delete Mr. Linger's alterations from the proposed curriculum.
"We listened, we learned and, well, I think, grew in our knowledge and understanding," explained board president Gayle Manchin.
Voting "no" were Mr. Linger and Tom Campbell, a member who'd previously noted the coal industry's role in contributing funds to the state's schools.
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The Guardian
January 15, 2015 Thursday 8:16 PM GMT
Scientists reveal which coral reefs can survive global warming;
Study shows for the first time which parts of the Great Barrier Reef and other reefs can be expected to bounce back from mass bleaching events
BYLINE: Adam Vaughan
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 702 words
Scientists have identified which parts of the Great Barrier Reef and other reefs are most capable of recovering from mass bleaching events which will become more frequent due to global warming.
The information should help conservationists to target their efforts to protect the portions of reefs that are most capable of survival, they say.
Previous studies have shown coral reefs as they exist today will be largely wiped out by climate change in the long term, but the new work by an Australian team shows for the first time which reefs in the short term can be expected to bounce back from bleaching events.
A major bleaching event is currently under way in large parts of the North Pacific, including the Marshall Islands and Hawaii, which experts have warned could be on a 'historic' scale akin to the record bleaching of 1998 that saw mass coral die-off around the world.
Nicholas Graham, lead author of the study published in Nature on Wednesday, looked at the 1998 bleaching's impacts on reefs in the Seychelles, and found 12 of 21 sites had recovered afterwards.
Looking at just two of 11 factors - water depth and the physical complexity of the coral - the team were able to use modelling to 98% of the time correctly predict whether a reef would recover or not. Deeper water and a more complex structure made a recovery more likely.
Graham, who works on coral at James Cook University in Australia, told the Guardian that the results bought time for authorities to better manage climate-resilient reefs while bigger picture problems such as greenhouse gas cuts were addressed.
"If emissions continue as they are, the longer term future is likely to still be bleak, even for those recovering at the moment [from bleaching], because the projections are coral bleaching will become more and more frequent. In a way it's [the study's findings] buying us time to keep as many reefs in good shape as we can, while we tackle some of these global, bigger issues."
The study's findings suggest the parts of the Great Barrier Reef that are still relatively pristine, in the north and further offshore, are also those best placed to recover from bleaching events brought about by global warming.
Graham said the findings also raised concerns about the logic of dumping sediment from planned major port projects to expand coal exports along the Queensland coast, a local impact which could harm coral otherwise capable of surviving the global impacts of climate change.
"If you have these big dredging projects, such as at Abbot Point, if we're dumping a lot of spoil and sediment into the Great Barrier Reef lagoon, a lot of that will settle in deep water, a lot of which might be coral and a lot of which will do better under climate change. If we're not actually doing enough to reduce local impacts, we're doing ourselves a disservice under climate change."
The research could help organisations such as the reef's marine park authority to better pinpoint which areas should avoid anchor damage from boats, which reduces physical complexity and thus the ability to recover from bleaching, Graham added. It could also help other coral nations, such as Kenya, to pinpoint where to limit damage by fishing gear.
The research looked at a 17-year data set covering surveys undertaken in 1994, 2005, 2008 and 2011, and looked at eleven factors that influenced their recovery or die-off. The coral's physical complexity and water depth were the two most important factors - sites deeper than 6.3 metres were found to be highly likely to recover - while whether a reef was in a marine protected area made no difference.
Dr Aaron MacNeil, a co-author on the study from the Australian Institute of Marine Science, said: "This gives reef management a major boost in the face of the threats posed by climate change and, encouragingly, suggests people can take tangible steps to improve the outlook for reefs.
"By carefully managing reefs with conditions that are more likely to recover from climate-induced bleaching, we give them the best possible chance of surviving over the long term, while reduction of local pressures that damage corals and diminish water quality will help to increase the proportion of reefs that can bounce back."
LOAD-DATE: January 15, 2015
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The Guardian
January 15, 2015 Thursday 7:24 PM GMT
block-time published-time 5.40pm GMT TTIP;
Rolling coverage of all the day's political developments as they happen, including Nick Clegg hosting his Call Clegg phone-in and speeches from Andy Burnham and Ed MilibandNick Clegg's Call Clegg phone-in - SummaryLunchtime summaryTTIP debate summary
SECTION: POLITICS
LENGTH: 8738 words
block-time published-time 5.40pm GMT
TTIP debate summary
Matthew Hancock, the business minister, has said that campaigners who claim that the proposed EU/US free trade deal (the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP) poses a threat to the NHS are misleading voters. They have already won that battle, he says, because the NHS is not being included.
We are quite clear that there is no threat to the NHS from TTIP. Public services, and publicly funded health services, are not included in any of the EU trade commitments...
I would say this: anyone who remains campaigning against the inclusion of the NHS in TTIP, you have already achieved your aim, and continuing to campaign is continuing to actively mislead, because public services, publicly funded health services, are not included in this negotiation.
Hancock was speaking at the end of a two-and-a-half hour debate that saw many MPs express concerns on this issue. But mostly there was support for the principle of a trade deal. Caroline Lucas, the Green MP, was one of the very few MPs who said TTIP should be completely abandoned. She said that although the government claimed it would benefit a family of four by £400 a year, a research paper from Tufts University in the US (pdf) shows that the average Briton will be £3,000 worse off after 10 years under TTIP because it will depress wages.
That's all from me for today.
Thanks for the comments.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 5.42pm GMT
block-time published-time 5.22pm GMT
The Institute of Directors has just issued a press notice criticising "the poor quality of the debate in parliament" on TTIP. It says "poorly-informed MPs risk jeopardising a trade deal which could bring huge benefits to Britain's small and medium sized companies."
And this is from Allie Renison, its head of EU and trade policy.
MPs need to engage properly in the discussions around TTIP rather than jumping on the misinformation bandwagon that is currently rolling across Europe. IoD members are clear that we need the deal, with 9 out of 10 backing it to create jobs and growth.
Many of TTIP's loudest opponents claim to be in favour of free trade, while hiding their protectionist agenda behind misleading scaremongering about the NHS and investor-state dispute settlement.
Trade unions, meanwhile, have mistakenly tried to paint TTIP as the plaything of multinationals, despite the fact that small and medium sized enterprises actually stand to benefit the most. Politicians who are close to trade unions have a particular duty to stand up and make the case for increasing exports and boosting inward investment.
block-time published-time 5.12pm GMT
Matthew Hancock's speech is getting some criticism on Twitter.
From the Ukip MP Mark Reckless
@matthancockmp thinks he has put issue of NHS and TTIP to bed - surely wishful thinking
- Mark Reckless (@MarkReckless) January 15, 2015
From the SDLP MP Mark Durkan
HoC #TTIP debate need for due scrutiny >implics 4 NHS, food,enviro, health/safety standards etc. Govt quote dismissive assurances again.
- Mark Durkan MP (@markdurkan) January 15, 2015
From Global Justice Now
This speech by @matthancockmp is determined to say TTIP can do no harm - in the face of studies and research which say the opposite.
- Global Justice Now (@GlobalJusticeUK) January 15, 2015
From Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice UK
Incredible response from @matthancockmp for the Govt to #TTIP debate - utterly dismissive and total contempt for public concern. #noTTIP
- Nick Dearden (@nickdearden75) January 15, 2015
The debate is now over.
I'll post a summary shortly.
block-time published-time 4.58pm GMT
Hancock says the ISDS provisions won't affect the ability of governments to regulate.
Britain has 90 such agreements in place, but there has never been a successful claim against it, he says.
The SDLP's Mark Durkan asks what would happen if another member state lost an ISDS case.
Hancock says, if it were about their own regulations, it would have no impact on the UK.
On the health service, he quotes what the EU's former trade commissioner, Karel de Gucht, said about the NHS being covered by TTIP. She said that "the argument is abused in [the UK] for political reasons but it has no grounds".
He says Sarah Wollaston, the chair of the health committee, also made it clear the NHS was not covered. (See 3.35pm and 4.13pm.)
He says those who want the NHS excluded have already won. They should stop raising this issue, because, in doing so, they are actively misleading people, he says.
There is already massive engagement with the public on this, he says. That will continue.
He says he wants to to ahead so Britain can carry on its historic role as a champion of free trade.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 5.26pm GMT
block-time published-time 4.50pm GMT
Matthew Hancock, the Conservative business minister, is winding up.
He starts by saying Britain has a great history of trade, going back to the wool trade in the middle ages.
Mark Reckless, the Ukip MP, intervenes. Is TTIP about setting business free? Or is it just about having a singe regulatory regime for the US and the EU.
Hancock says it is about promoting trade.
Millions of people have been lifted out of grinding poverty by the extension of free trade, he says.
Caroline Lucas intervenes. The government says TTIP could save the average family £400 a year through cheaper prices. But what does Hancock say about a peer-reviewed academic paper saying after 10 years TTIP would make the average worker £3,000 worse off, through lower wages.
Hancock says in his lifetime extending free trade has made people better off.
Matthew Hancock Photograph: BBC Parliament
block-time published-time 4.45pm GMT
Ian Murray concludes with some questions for the minister.
What plans does the government have to ensure the Commons is kept fully informed about the negotiations?
What will the government do to keep the public informed?
How will the government keep business engaged?
And how will the government respond to the Commons passing today's motion. (See 2.15pm.)
block-time published-time 4.42pm GMT
Ian Murray, the shadow business minister, is winding up for Labour.
He says he is sorry that Robin Walker attacked 38 Degrees. He says he is glad that organisations like 38 Degrees have raised concerns about this, and brought it to the attention of MPs.
He says Labour governments going back to Attlee have supported regulated trade agreements.
Labour supports TTIP in principle. But it will not support a deal that does not protect public services and the NHS, or a deal that does not safeguard standards on issues like the environment.
He says he has never received so much correspondence on an issue. It shows how much public concern there is.
This cannot be a backroom deal between Brussels and Washington. Like justice, trade deals must not just be done, but must be seen to be done too.
The biggest threat to the NHS and public services is not this trade agreement, or any trade agreement, but the re-election of a Conservative government.
He challenges the minister replying, Matthew Hancock, to say that the government will not support any TTIP that includes the NHS and public services. And, if they are not going to be included, why not have a "belt and braces" approach, and spell that out explicitly.
On ISDS provisions, he says there is a case for saying they are inappropriate where trade partners have unequal legal jurisdictions. But that is not the case with the the US and the EU.
Zac Goldsmith asks if removing ISDS is a red line for Labour.
Murray says Labour does not think ISDS, as proposed in TTIP in its current form, is neither necessary nor desirable.
Ian Murray Photograph: Parliament TV
block-time published-time 4.34pm GMT
Caroline Lucas, the Green MP, has been tweeting this Twitter poster about TTIP.
Debating #TTIP today. My amendment seeks to bin it altogether: http://t.co/SmYwk5YAfB#stopTTIPpic.twitter.com/Giru1AZ4Wj
- Caroline Lucas (@CarolineLucas) January 15, 2015
block-time published-time 4.30pm GMT
Labour's John McDonnell says if there was a vote on TTIP itself, he would be voting against.
As a trade deal, it is even bigger than joining the single market, he says.
And the ISDS provisions amount to a transfer of power from sovereign governments to corporations. This country may not have lost a ISDS case. But other countries have, and it has cost them billions, he says.
block-time published-time 4.22pm GMT
Caroline Lucas, the Green MP, is speaking now. She tabled an amendment saying the TTIP talks should be "frozen in their entirety", but it is not being put to a vote.
She says people are increasingly opposed to an agreement that could undermine democratic law-making.
The purpose of ISDS provisions are to give new rights to companies, she says. She quotes from a pro-TTIP briefing circulated in the City. It says TTIP would "set a precedent" and it addresses the question of why firms who lose out from a trade deal need ISDS provisions, and why they can't just use national courts. It's because ISDS provisions "depoliticise" the issue, the briefing says, and provides a "neutral panel". But, Lucas says, most of us would assume that this is what the courts provide anyway. So why do we need this corporate-only dispute settlement mechanism? It is not depoliticising the issue; it is trying to take these issues out of public scrutiny. And it implies the current judicial system is not good enough for private companies. That attitude is "incredibly worrying".
block-time published-time 4.13pm GMT
Sarah Wollaston has posted a link to a letter the health committee received from the European Commission in December about the impact of TTIP on the NHS.
. @Chr1sR0berts@sallyhbrooks the letter to @CommonsHealth from EU director gen for trade clarifying issues re NHS http://t.co/OfoMtXJFDc
- Sarah Wollaston MP (@drwollastonmp) January 15, 2015
It's a four-page letter, giving the commission's answer to 10 questions. Here's the first one.
1. Is it the EU's negotiating position that publicly-funded health services should be excluded from TTI´P?
This is the effect of the EU's approach to public services in all trade negotiations since the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) in 1995. In the case of TTIP, it is clear in the negotiating directives given to the Commission by the Member States. This says that the EU must preserve the quality of its public utilities and that services supplied in the exercise of governmental authority should be excluded from the agreement. At the same time all bilateral agreements take GATS as a starting point. This means as follows:
· We explicitly exclude services supplied in the exercise of governmental authority: this exception is valid and is significant for a number of public services (e.g. justice, policing).
* Beyond this, in all its trade agreements the EU then takes a broad horizontal reservation which reserves the right to have monopolies and exclusive rights for public utilities in EU Member States at all levels of government.
* In addition, the EU retains very broad sectoral reservations in its trade agreements for public services (public education, public health and social services, and water). This means that public authorities at all levels do not have to treat foreign companies or individuals the same way as EU ones and do not have to provide access to their markets.
It is also worth explaining that even without the above reservations and exceptions, the EU trade agreements leave EU governments at all levels free to regulate all services sectors in a non-discriminatory manner. For example, they are free to deciding on (i) the licencing requirements necessary to be allowed to provide a particular service or (ii) the quality standards that suppliers have to meet.
Therefore, in effect all publicly funded public health services are protected in EU trade agreements, and this approach will not change for TTIP.
block-time published-time 4.08pm GMT
Phil Wilson, the Labour MP, says it would be counter-productive to reject TTIP before knowing the possible advantages.
block-time published-time 4.03pm GMT
Zac Goldsmith, a Conservative, says ISDS provisions have a role in countries where the judiciary is unreliable. But that is not the case here, he says. He says he has repeatedly asked the government to cite examples of where firms have been disadvantaged here by not having access to courts. The government always says it does not have the information. But, if it does not have that information, why does it think ISDS provisions are necessary?
(In his column on Tuesday George Monbiot said he had repeatedly asked much the same question. He said he did not get a satisfactory reply either.)
Goldsmith says these trade deals do not achieve as much as people thing. Nafta (the North American Free Trade Agreement) was supposed to create jobs, but there is now a consensus that it cost 870,000 jobs, he says.
MPs should insist on the right to approve or reject this treaty before the government commits itself too it.
block-time published-time 3.57pm GMT
Labour's Sheila Gilmore says she is glad campaigners have forced this issue onto the agenda.
block-time published-time 3.52pm GMT
Sarah Wollaston is now tweeting about her speech, in response to challenges from critics.
Here's here response to Sally Brooks and Chris Roberts, who are both academics, according to their Twitter profiles.
.. @sallyhbrooks No Sarah, it does matter how Public services are delivered @drwollastonmp Outsourcing = asset stripping & rent-seeking...
- Chris Roberts (@Chr1sR0berts) January 15, 2015
. @sallyhbrooks It appropriates existing infrastructure, intellectual property, publicly funded accumulated knowledge 4 profit @drwollastonmp
- Chris Roberts (@Chr1sR0berts) January 15, 2015
@Chr1sR0berts@sallyhbrooks I was clearly referring to the fact that all are health services exempt from TTIP if publicly funded
- Sarah Wollaston MP (@drwollastonmp) January 15, 2015
And here's here reply to Unison's Ciaran Naidoo
Tory @drwollastonmp and chair of health committee admits US firms should be able to sue using #ttip to protect investments.TTIP inludes #NHS
- CiaranNaidoo (@CiaranNaidoo) January 15, 2015
@CiaranNaidoo I said companies can already do so under domestic contract law
- Sarah Wollaston MP (@drwollastonmp) January 15, 2015
block-time published-time 3.45pm GMT
Here's the Guardian's Politics Weekly podcast. It features Tom Clark, James Ball, Natalie Nougayrède and Michael White discussing the aftermath of the Paris attacks, and the row about election debates.
Related: Paris, surveillance and TV debates - Politics Weekly podcast
block-time published-time 3.42pm GMT
Labour's Liz McInnes says there is a real fear that the TTIP is about giving businesses huge new powers to intimidate policy makers.
The European Commission has made the TTIP more transparent. And it has temporarily suspended talks on the ISDS provision. She says she urges the government to use this opportunity to negotiate exemptions for the public sector.
The government has said it will not push for an NHS exemption because the NHS will not be affected. These mixed messages are very concerning, she says. The government should push to exempt the NHS.
block-time published-time 3.35pm GMT
Sarah Wollaston, the Conservative MP and chair of the Commons health committee, says trade is the cornerstone of our national wealth. Ed Miliband wants to "weaponise" health. That is shameful. And claims about TTIP's impact on the NHS have been used as part of that weapon. She says she would not support TTIP if it would damage the health service.
A Labour MP asks what would happen if an incoming government cancelled a contract with a private health supplier. Wouldn't they be able to sue the government for compensation?
Wollaston says, in those circumstances, a firm would be able to get compensate already, under existing laws. TTIP would protect British firms doing business in the US.
She says Labour MPs should withdraw the claim that this is a conspiracy.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 4.30pm GMT
block-time published-time 3.29pm GMT
Eilidh Whiteford, the SNP MP, says the public concerns about TTIP are very genuine. TTIP offers some potential benefits for Scottish agriculture. But there are dangers too. Aberdeen beef is produced to a very high standards; but in the US animal welfare standards are lower, allowing producers to sell beef at a cheaper price.
The government should spell out more details about how TTIP would affect different parts of the economy.
block-time published-time 3.26pm GMT
Ciaran Naidoo from Unite says Julian Smith missed the point when he was talking about TTIP and the NHS earlier. (See 3.21pm.)
@JulianSmithMP misleading. #TTIP not abt opening up NHS it means companies can sue UK if gov takes #NHS contracts back into public hands
- CiaranNaidoo (@CiaranNaidoo) January 15, 2015
block-time published-time 3.21pm GMT
Julian Smith, a Conservative, say he wants to challenge the premise of the motion. It is not the case that there has been no parliamentary scrutiny. This is the third debate on TTIP. And ministers have answered many questions about it on other occasions.
He says the the European Commission has said explicitly than any ISDS provisions in TTIP would have no effect on the government's ability to make changes to the NHS.
TTIP will save consumers hundreds of pounds when they buy jeans and trainers and other items. And it will bring benefits, particularly to small businesses.
block-time published-time 3.17pm GMT
Back in the debate Labour's David Anderson says David Cameron used to lecture Labour on transparency when he was in opposition. But the TTIP deal is far from transparent, he says.
There is considerable concern about private firms taking over public services, he says. That's why people do not trust these negotiations.
block-time published-time 3.12pm GMT
In a blog for Coffee House, the Labour MP John Healey says today's debate highlights how inadequate parliamentary scrutiny of EU treaty-making is. Here's an extract.
Despite the fierce extra-parliamentary debate the planned deal has provoked, this will be only the third time in the 18 months since negotiations started when there will be any debate at all in the House of Commons chamber. In total, the three debates will amount to less than one day's full business on a binding treaty that could have wide-ranging effects on our national economy from aerospace to agriculture, metals to motor vehicles and public services to pharmaceuticals. Each debate has been instigated by backbench MPs, not ministers, and with no prospect of a binding vote.
The truth is that Westminster lacks any proper ways to hold ministers to account for what they do or decide in Europe. Voters often worry decisions on Europe are taken by people beyond their reach or influence, and this fuels anti-European sentiment
TTIP is the biggest-ever bilateral trade agreement. The public have an important stake in it, and so deserve a say through their own UK Parliament. There is an overwhelming case for all Party leaders to guarantee a Commons vote on TTIP, whether or not the content of the EU-US agreement formally requires member state approval.
block-time published-time 3.07pm GMT
Robert Walter, a Conservative, is speaking now. He says he also supports the motion and its call for more parliamentary scrutiny of TTIP. He whole-heartedly believes in free trade, he says.
block-time published-time 3.04pm GMT
John Spellar, the Labour MP, is speaking now. He says he is glad that Geraint Davies said he was in favour of free trade. Yet Davies is in strange company. Many of those opposed to TTIP are opposed to free trade. And some of them don't like America.
He says he endorses what Robin Walker said about 38 Degrees. He is not criticising the membership, he says, but he does criticise their "nihilistic, hysterical leadership".
The biggest threat to the NHS is the possible re-election of the government, he says.
He says letters from the European Commission have addressed the threat to the NHS from TTIP. (The EU trade commissioner Karel de Gucht explicitly said last year that TTIP did not pose a threat to the NHS.)
block-time published-time 2.57pm GMT
Robin Walker, a Conservative, is speaking now. He says no MP could object to the motion, which talks about parliament giving TTIP more scrutiny. (See 2.15pm.) But he makes it clear he does not share Geraint Davies's concerns. As Robert Walter alluded to earlier, the UK never lost an ISDS case, he says. (See 2.46pm.)
But Walker says Conservatives have some reservations about TTIP. He says he thinks it is "not sufficiently transparent".
Walker goes on to criticise David Babbs, the chief executive of 38 Degrees, which has campaigned against TTIP. Walker says Babbs told a Commons committee that he had told 38 Degrees members about a letter from the European Commission saying that concerns about TTIP opening the NHS up to privatisation were unfounded. But that turned out to be wrong, he says. He says Babbs also misled the committee about 38 Degrees being responsible for an article about this on BuzzFeed.
This sort of campaigning does not help public scrutiny, he says.
block-time published-time 2.48pm GMT
Labour's Chi Onwurah says the TTIP could open up the NHS to take-over by American companies.
Geraint Davies says the government has given assurances that this would not happen. But there is doubt about how robust those assurances are.
He suggests that ISDS provisions could also stop a future Labour government freezing energy prices. Or, if a future government wanted to renationalise rail services, these laws could stop that happening too, he says.
block-time published-time 2.46pm GMT
Geraint Davies is still speaking.
There is enormous pressure for a trade deal, he says. Trade is good. Anyone with any knowledge of economics knows that the laws of comparative advantage mean a trade deal would be good for jobs.
But the ISDS provisions are the "thorn in the rose", he says. Companies would be able to sue democratically elected governments.
There are examples of companies extracting money from governments. He mentions Philip Morris suing Uruguay.
So these powers will be used to "fleece the taxpayer", he says.
Robert Walter, a Conservative, says the UK is party to 90 trade deals involving ISDS provisions. Does Davies know how many times the UK has lost?
Davies says he doesn't.
(According to what David Cameron told MPs at the end of last year, the answer is none.)
Caroline Lucas, the Green MP, intervenes. She says EU governments have lost 127 cases. So it is very serious matter.
Geraint Davies Photograph: BBC Parliament
block-time published-time 2.37pm GMT
Lindsay Hoyle, the deputy speaker, says that, after Davies, 16 MPs want to speak. He urges MPs to keep their interventions short.
block-time published-time 2.35pm GMT
Julian Huppert, the Lib Dem MP, intervenes. Does Davies welcome the suspension of the ISDS parts of the TTIP talks.
Yes, says Davies.
block-time published-time 2.34pm GMT
Geraint Davies, the Labour MP, is now opening the TTIP debate. He says around 60 MPs supported his call for a debate when he put the proposal to the backbench business committee.
This issue is fundamental to the balance of power between democracy, and multi-national giants, he says.
Parliament's right to scrutinise TTIP is "imperative".
If we end up in a position where multi-nationals can sue governments, we will be in the wrong place, he says.
This is being stitched up.
block-time published-time 2.15pm GMT
MPs debate the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP)
MPs will soon be starting a debate on the proposed the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the free trade deal being negotiated between the EU and the US. And they will focus in particular on its investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions.
They will be debating a backbench motion which has been tabled by Geraint Davies, a Labour MP, and Greg Mulholland, a Lib Dem. Here's what the motion says:
That this House believes that the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and any associated investor-state dispute settlement provisions should be subject to scrutiny in the European Parliament and the UK Parliament.
It may well be passed without a vote, but that won't necessarily mean much. Ministers now ignore these backbench motions if they want to.
Still, the debate should shed some light on one aspect of TTIP that has become particularly controversial. Here are three items of background reading that help to explain why.
A column by my Guardian colleague George Monbiot this week arguing that the ISDS provisions are undemocratic.
If a government proposes to abandon one of the fundamental principles of justice, there had better be a powerful reason. Equality before the law is not ditched lightly. Surely? Well, read this and judge for yourself. The UK government, like that of the US and 13 other EU members, wants to set up a separate judicial system, exclusively for the use of corporations. While the rest of us must take our chances in the courts, corporations across the EU and US will be allowed to sue governments before a tribunal of corporate lawyers. They will be able to challenge the laws they don't like, and seek massive compensation if these are deemed to affect their "future anticipated profits".
I'm talking about the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and its provisions for " investor-state dispute settlement ". If this sounds incomprehensible, that's mission accomplished: public understanding is lethal to this attempted corporate coup.
The TTIP is widely described as a trade agreement. But while in the past trade agreements sought to address protectionism, now they seek to address protection. In other words, once they promoted free trade by removing trade taxes (tariffs); now they promote the interests of transnational capital by downgrading the defence of human health, the natural world, labour rights, and the poor and vulnerable from predatory corporate practices.
A blog by Tim Worstall at Forbes saying Monbiot is wrong.
[Monbiot is] entirely missing the point of what is going on here. Which is simply that it's a mechanism to make sure that governments live up to the laws that they themselves have agreed to. And that's it. Governments are entirely allowed to change their minds on what those laws are, of course, but they do have to compensate those who lose money as a result of their changing them. A very close analogy is the idea of compulsory purchase: no one at all thinks that the government should be allowed to steal your house in order to build a railway line. But we all also agree that sometimes the government should be allowed to build a railway line through where your house used to be. The logic of TTIP and ISDS is exactly the same.
A report by Friends of the Earth on how much ISDS cases have cost EU governments (pdf).
block-time published-time 1.25pm GMT
Lunchtime summary
Andy Burnham, the shadow health secretary, has said Labour could stop foods high in sugar, fat and or salt being advertised on TV before a watershed, to protect children's health. As Patrick Wintour reports, publishing a public health white paper, Burnham said he wanted fresh talks between advertisers and TV companies to look at why current advertising restrictions on unhealthy products are failing to work
The Archbishops of Canterbury and York have called for a rethink of the way poverty is addressed in the UK.
The Green party has now overtaken Ukip in terms of the size of its membership. Some 2,000 people joined only yesterday, taking its membership over 43,000.
Clegg has said he backs David Cameronin his attempt to try to ensure that the state can always access internet communications used by terrorists. (See 10.32am.)
Clegg has said Cameron's refusal to take part in televised election debates unless the Green party is invited to participate is "unsustainable and slightly laughable".
Nick Clegg, has condemned as "crass, stupid and insensitive" comments made by the Liberal Democrat MP David Ward on the presence of the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, at the solidarity march in Paris on Sunday, but he stopped short of calling the remarks racist.
William Hague has brought a £2.5m home near Welshpool for when he retires from the Commons.
Sir Hugh Robertson, the Conservative former sports minister, has announced he is standing down at the election.
block-time published-time 12.57pm GMT
Ed Balls has been tweeting about his visit to Washington. (See 12.43pm.)
Just been live on @msnbc 's @Morning_Joe to launch the publication of the "Inclusive Prosperity" report pic.twitter.com/JNtoLNYXm1 "
- Ed Balls (@edballsmp) January 15, 2015
And here is the inclusive prosperity report that he is publishing.
Here is the full report of The Commission on Inclusive Prosperity which I have co-chaired with Larry Summers: http://t.co/QE7pErwhy1 "
- Ed Balls (@edballsmp) January 15, 2015
Balls has summarised the report's argument in an article for Huffington Post.
The Obama administration is backing the Balls report and on the Today programme Jon Sopel, I think, suggested that, with President Obama also hosting a visit from David Cameron, this amounted to Washington hedging its bets as to the outcome of the election.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 1.09pm GMT
block-time published-time 12.43pm GMT
You can read all today's Guardian politics stories here. And all the politics stories filed yesterday, including some in today's paper, are here.
As for the rest of the papers, here's the PoliticsHome list of top 10 must-reads, and here's the ConservativeHome round-up of today's political stories.
And here are four articles I found particularly interesting.
Peter Oborne in the Daily Telegraph says George Osborne has ruled out standing for the Conservative leadership if David Cameron stands down this year and that he is backing Boris Johnson as the candidate most likely to stop Theresa May.
Last weekend, in an interview with the Sunday Times, the Chancellor said this: "I really like Boris Johnson. I respect him. I respect what he has done in London. I like his writing. He's great company and we have quite a similar political outlook on things... It's a good political friendship and long may it continue to be so."
This is spectacular. For the past five years Mr Osborne and Mr Johnson have been rivals. Now Mr Osborne, acting on the advice of Michael Gove, has signalled that he is ready to join Boris Johnson's team. He brings with him Tory central office, the whips, and the gruesome inner circle that surrounds the Prime Minister.
I record all of this with sorrow, even perhaps an element of personal bitterness. The Telegraph colleague I know is an outsider, a maverick, a genius. Now they want to make him continuity Cameron, the best way of securing the Prime Minister's legacy, and keeping out Mrs May. He is the politician the Tory establishment favours and has suddenly become odds-on favourite for the succession.
George Parker in the Financial Times (subscription) says Ed Balls is launching an inclusive prosperity report in Washington today with the support of the Obama administration.
Ed Balls is to pre-empt David Cameron's visit to the White House by 24 hours by launching an international "inclusive prosperity" report in Washington on Thursday that has the Obama administration's blessing.
The timing of the shadow chancellor's visit is a coincidence. But it will help Labour to challenge any perception from Mr Cameron's two-day visit to Washington, starting later on Thursday, that President Barack Obama is implicitly endorsing the Conservatives at the forthcoming UK general election.
Mr Balls co-chaired the committee that wrote the centre-left economic prospectus with Lawrence Summers, the former US Treasury secretary and Obama adviser, with input from a number of leading academics and politicians around the world.
They argue that the centre-left has to map out a route for greater prosperity and higher employment for low and middle-income earners that challenges what they describe as the politics of despair espoused by populist parties.
Laura Pitel in the Times (paywall) says two YouGov surveys show there is more support for more public spending than for austerity.
One survey found that 32 per cent wanted the next government to spend more money on trying to improve public services even if it meant borrowing more. Keeping spending at the present level was backed by 29 per cent, and only 24 per cent supported cuts.
In the second survey, 42 per cent of respondents favoured increased public spending funded by tax rises.
The findings cast doubt on the wisdom of the Conservatives' election plans, which independent experts say will require "colossal" spending cuts.
John Bingham in the Daily Telegraph says the Church of England is publishing a book denouncing inequality.
Britain under the Coalition is a country in which the poor are being "left behind" and entire cities "cast aside" because politicians are obsessed with Middle England, the Church of England says today in a damning assessment of the state of the nation.
In a direct and unapologetically "political" intervention timed for the beginning of the General Election campaign, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, warn party leaders are selling a "lie" that economic growth is the answer to Britain's social problems.
Questioning David Cameron's slogan "we're all in this together" they condemn inequality as "evil" and dismiss the assumption that the value of communities is in their economic output as a "sin".
Britain, they argue has been "dominated" by "rampant consumerism and individualism" since the Thatcher era, while the Christian values of solidarity and selflessness have been supplanted by a new secular creed of "every person for themselves".
block-time published-time 12.18pm GMT
Alastair Campbell Photograph: Rebecca Naden/PA
Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's former communications chief, has strongly rejected claims that he hit someone in the street. His accuser, who has not been identified, reported the incident to George Galloway, the Respect MP and a fierce critic of Campbell, and the story has been covered by the Ham & High, which also has posted some (rather inconsequential) video footage. The accuser accepts that he provoked Campbell, calling him a "piece of shit", and tried to kick him. Campbell says that the other man, as well as trying to kick him, spat at him too. Campbell has written this up in a lengthy post on his blog. "Though I am used to robust debate, including in public, this is the first time I have been attacked in a public place like this [near his home in Gospel Oak, north London] and the first time I have been spat at," he says.
block-time published-time 11.32am GMT
The Action/2015 campaign has been launched today to pressurise world leaders into making progress on poverty and climate change at two global summits coming up this year. They are the meeting in New York in September to renew millennium development goals, and the climate change conference in December.
In a speech in London this morning, Ed Miliband backed the campaign. As the Labour news release says, he said a Labour government would work towards three aims.
· An end to extreme global poverty (people living on $1.25 a day) by 2030
· Tackling inequality must remain at the heart of the post-2015 development agenda, with a focus on securing equal access to healthcare and protecting the rights of women, children and workers.
· A separate development goal on climate change and a binding international agreement on climate change leading to zero net carbon emissions by 2050 with the UK leading the way by decarbonising electricity supply by 2030
And in his speech he said:
I know tackling climate change, global poverty and inequality are not as fashionable as they once were. But I also know they are more important than ever.
For me, they are not luxury items in our programme for change. They are not part of a branding exercise. They go to the heart of my beliefs and the reason why I entered politics.
Working together to wipe out extreme poverty - at the launch of #action2015 with @Ed_Miliband and @ONEcampaignUKpic.twitter.com/Zhlx1A26X0
- Mary Creagh MP (@marycreagh_mp) January 15, 2015
Miliband is currently at Queen's Park Community School speaking to young people about Millennium Development Goals. pic.twitter.com/uueXKVXRc8
- Siraj Datoo (@dats) January 15, 2015
block-time published-time 11.06am GMT
If you're interested in what MPs and peers are reading, these lists are interesting.
Meanwhile, MPs have been keen to read @DenisMacShane and @philipjcowley 's tomes before Christmas pic.twitter.com/oDk7f6xDuY
- Asa Bennett (@asabenn) January 15, 2015
Good to see Lords are keen to know more about the working class, women in journalism and English law pic.twitter.com/0qhhlvFha
- Asa Bennett (@asabenn) January 15, 2015
block-time published-time 11.03am GMT
Andy Burnham Photograph: Jason Alden/REX/Jason Alden/REX
Andy Burnham, the shadow health secretary, delivered a speech on public health this morning. He said that he was not proposing a "finger-wagging approach" but instead advocating ideas that would empower adults.
The whole package is quite wide-ranging. You can read full details here, and here are some of the key ideas he's announcing.
Action would taken to cut the consumption of high-strength, low-cost alcohol, perhaps through minimum pricing or changes to bottle sizes.
General food labelling would be made clearer.
Plain cigarette packing would be introduced immediately, with the aim of ensuring children born in 2015 become the first smoke-free generation.(The SNP has got a similar goal for Scotland.)
All young people would be trained in first aid, including cardiopulmonary resuscitation, before they leave school.
Defibrillators would be placed in public places, and a open register of where they were would be created, accessible via a digital app, so people can find them easily.
New recommended minimum levels of physical activity would be announced, with the goal of getting 50% of people to meet them by 2025.
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Nick Clegg's Call Clegg phone-in - Summary
Here are the key points from Nick Clegg's phone-in. I've covered what he said about internet surveillance in some detail because, until now, attention has largely focused on how divided the Conservatives and the Lib Dems are over the so-called snooper's charter. As Clegg made clear, on other internet surveillance issues the two parties are much closer.
Nick Clegg said he supported David Cameron in his attempt to try to ensure that the state can always access internet communications used by terrorists. He said that the debate on this had been "mangled" since Cameron spoke on this last week, but that he supported the key point Cameron was making.
As it happens what David Cameron has been going on about in the last few days is nothing to do with keeping Mrs Miggins' website record of her visits to the local garden centre website [ie, the communications data bill]; it's actually been about this issue of how you intrude on the communications of terrorists, or would-be terrorists, something the principle of which - there's lot of technical complexity - the principle of which no one is going to disagree with.
Clegg said he accepted that further legislation in this area may be necessary.
One issue is, do we as a society, as a government, as a state, and the police and the security services, should they retain the right to, and be given extra powers if necessary, to listen in to the communications, on all sorts of different platforms, and they change all the time, of people who want to do us harm? Of course. I've defended that. And we've updated our laws. I've supported fast-track legislation this summer to do that.
Clegg said that Cameron would be raising this issue in his talks with President Obama. They were concerned about people who pose a threat to security and ensuring "there are no dark places where they can hide", Clegg said. He said the British were dependent on American companies a great deal for their internet communication services and that Cameron would be talking to Obama about ensuring that American firms cooperate more with British authorities.
We rely very heavily as a country on their cooperation; for instance, where there's an encrypted service - and having encrypted services are important, because we don't want any of us to become subject to hacking from criminal gangs and so on, so encryption is just a fact of life; you can't undo encryption - you can ensure that you cooperate with the companies, that where you want to break that encryption, find out what nasty people are saying too each other, we can do so.
But he said this issue was not the same as the proposal in the draft communications data bill to store information about internet searches. He was still opposed to that, he said.
Actually the communications data bill was not about listening in. It was simply about saying every single website, every single social media interaction you do every year, should be stored somewhere. And I don't think... constructing some vast, gargantuan database which records what Mrs Miggins in 36 Orchard Close has done when she 's gone on to her Waitrose website for a year - do I think that's a sensible use of the statute book, or our time and resources?
Interestingly, he did not refer to the communications data bill as the snooper's charter, which is what the Lib Dems usually call it. Yesterday Theresa May, the home secretary, complained this term was highly misleading.
Clegg ridiculed David Cameron's stance on televised leaders' debates.
This cheery-eyed compassion the Conservatives have suddenly discovered for the Green party is one of the more specious excuses I've seen... I think David Cameron has put himself in an unsustainable, and actually slightly laughable position.
He said that, although Cameron was saying he would only take part if the Greens were included, the Greens and Ukip combined had as many MPs as Plaid Cymru, half as many as the SNP, and less than half as many as the DUP - even though Plaid, the SNP and the DUP are all being excluded.
He said the broadcasters should "develop a bit of backbone" and be willing to empty chair Cameron if he refuses to participate.
I really do hope the broadcasters develop a bit of backbone on this, because they shouldn't be bullied by the Conservatives throwing their weight around.
He strongly criticised the Lib Dem MP David Ward for posting a tweet saying that seeing the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Unity march in Paris on Sunday made him feel sick.
What David Ward did... was crass, was stupid, was insensitive, was offensive clearly.
But Ward's tweet was not racist, Clegg said. And he indicated that Ward would not be suspended from the party, or ordered to apologise.
He said the Lib Dems would soon be releasing the front page of their manifesto, setting out their top priorities.(Actually, one version has already been "leaked".)
Nick Clegg on LBC Photograph: LBC
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 10.37am GMT
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The Tory blogger Harry Phibbs says Nick Clegg should not have been so dismissive of the Greens. (See 9.25m.)
Nick Clegg's being dismissive about the @GreenPartyUK - but on @YouGov this morning they are on 7%, the Lib Dems on 6%... #CallClegg@LBC
- Harry Phibbs (@harryph) January 15, 2015
block-time published-time 9.35am GMT
Q: Why are the Paris attacks getting so much more attention than the massacre of 2,000 people by Boko Haram in Nigeria?
Clegg says it is understandable that an attack in a European city, only two hours from London, is getting so much attention.
And that's it.
I'll post a summary soon.
block-time published-time 9.32am GMT
Q: What do you feel about the Mayor of Rotterdam saying Muslims who do not like the West should leave?
Clegg says he does not think that was helpful.
block-time published-time 9.31am GMT
Clegg says he is alarmed by the survey showing tha t a quarter of British Jews have considered leaving the UK.
block-time published-time 9.30am GMT
Q: Could you form a coalition with Labour if you had to?
Clegg says it is not his decision. It's the voters' decision.
Whichever party wins the election has the right to try to form a government, he says.
A cottage industry will be spawned by people trying to predict the election, he says.
Q: Yesterday it was reported that Cameron would refuse a coalition with the Lib Dems unless you drop your opposition to the communications data bill.
Clegg says recently Cameron has not been talking about the communications data bill. He has been talking about ensuring the state can access the communications of suspects. Everyone would agree with that, he says.
He says the Lib Dems will soon release the front page of their manifesto, setting out their priorities.
block-time published-time 9.25am GMT
Q: Why are the Tories trying to get out of the TV debates?
Clegg says their teary-eyed compassion for the Greens is one of the most spurious excuses he has heard.
There are lots of parties that have more MPs than the Greens, like Plaid Cymru and the DUP.
Clegg says he is not totally happy with the proposals from the broadcasters. But people have to accept them.
Q: Do you think the debates will go ahead?
Yes, says Clegg, because Cameron has put himself in a "laughable" position.
He says he hopes the broadcasters develop some "backbone" and threaten to empty chair Cameron. But he hopes Cameron is there.
block-time published-time 9.23am GMT
Q: Why are you so opposed to the draft communciations data bill?
Clegg says this debate gets mangled.
One issue is whether the security services should be able to listen in to the communications of those who could do us harm? Of course they should, he says.
But a separate issue is whether details of everyone's communcations should be stored.
He says he does not think that creating some vast, gargantuan database, storing details of what Mrs Miggins did when she logged onto the Waitrose database, would be a good idea? No, he says.
Q: But even Lib Dems don't agree with you, like Lord Carlile?
Clegg says Lord Carlile has not agreed with party policy on this issue for years.
He says David Cameron is talking to President Obama about getting cooperation from US internet providers about the communications of suspects. That is much more important.
The issue of proportionality is important, he says. We should focus on the threat.
Q: What needs to come out of Cameron's meeting with Obama?
Clegg says much internet information comes through systems provided by the US. Britain wants to ensure that it can cooperate with the American internet companies, so that if they need to break into the encryption of people how might do us harm, they can.
block-time published-time 9.17am GMT
Q: In the light of the murder of four Jewish people in Paris, do you think David Ward, the Lib Dem MP's, tweets are anti-semitic? What are you going to do about it?
Clegg says what Ward did was crass and offensive. But he does not think they were racist.
He says Ward does not speak for the party in any way on this. In the past he has been suspended over remarks on Twitter.
It was foolish to criticise the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's presence in Paris. Netanyahu had ever right to be there, Clegg says.
Q: Shouldn't MPs be more responsible? These were Jewish victims, not Israeli victims?
Yes, says Clegg.
Q: Should Ward apologise?
Clegg says he has been asked if Ward should be sacked from the party. That is what the Israeli ambassador has demanded. If people are racist, that is unacceptable.
Clegg says, on previous occasions, Ward's tweets were worse. That led to a suspension and a full apology?
Q: Will he be suspended for this?
Clegg says on previous occasions Ward used offensive language about the Jewish community and Jews.
If someone feels passionately about the plight of Palestinians, they are entitled to do that.
Criticising Nenanyahu's presence in Paris was wrong. But, Clegg says, he has to make a judgment about whether something slips into racism.
Here are Ward's tweets.
#Netanyahu in Paris march - what!!!! Makes me feel sick
- David Ward (@DavidWardMP) January 11, 2015
Je suis #Palestinian
- David Ward (@DavidWardMP) January 11, 2015
block-time published-time 9.09am GMT
Nick Clegg's Call Clegg phone-in
Q: Do you agree the Charlie Hebdo story shows double standards? David Irvine was jailed for denying the Holocaust? And the French comedian Dieudonné M'Bala M'bala has been arrested.
Nick Clegg says in Britain freedom of the law is extensive, but there are some constraints.
Q: So would you defend those people who burned the poppies?
Clegg says you have to be consistent. This is why in 2008 the Lib Dems pushed for reforms to the blasphemy laws.
Q: So you would condemn the conviction of the person who burned the poppies?
Clegg says if you break the law, you should be punished.
Q: Then the law is hypocritical.
Clegg says the Lib Dems have changed the laws. They have pushed for changes to promote freedom of expression.
Nick Ferrari reads out details about a Muslim extremist fined for burning poppies in 2011. He reads from an account.
Clegg says he agrees that what the man did was offensive. But he does not know the details, and will not comment further.
We cannot be one-eyed about this, he says.
And he says the Lib Dems have pushed to change the law from more freedom of speech.
Q: But this case suggests you cannot burn poppies, but you can offend Muslims?
Clegg says he does not know about the case. But he suspects that it might be do to with committing a public order offence in a particular space.
block-time published-time 8.51am GMT
George Osborne was on ITV's Good Morning Britain earlier, in the light of a speech he gave yesterday setting out plans for the government to always run a surplus in normal times, and he became the latest Conservative figure to try his hand at persuading the nation that David Cameron does really want television debates. He said:
David Cameron wants to take part in the TV debates, he has taken part in them before. He has said very clearly the Green Party should be involved if you've got all the parties. He's made it pretty clear that that is what he'd like to see. It's only fair.
He wants to get the format right. I think most people watching this say 'We'll either watch all the parties taking part in this debate, or let's have a head-to-head between the two people who could be prime minister, David Cameron and Ed Miliband'. The broadcasters, they seem to have come up with neither of those plans. We're just saying come up with a good plan, of course we want to take part.
There would never have been TV debates in this country if it hadn't been for David Cameron last time saying 'I will take part'. In the past, when someone looked like winning an election, they've said no. David Cameron last time said yes. We're up for the debate but let's have the right plan.
We'll probably hear more about this from Nick Clegg on Call Clegg shortly.
Here's the agenda for the day.
9am: Nick Clegg hosts his Call Clegg phone-in.
9am: Andy Burnham, the shadow health secretary, gives a speech on public health.
10.30am: Ed Miliband gives a speech on climate change and global poverty.
Afternoon: David Cameron arrives in Washington for his two-day visit to President Obama.
Afternoon: MPs debate the proposed EU/US free trade deal, the transatlantic trade and investment partnership (TTIP).
As usual, I will be also covering all the breaking political news from Westminster, as well as bringing you the most interesting political comment and analysis from the web and from Twitter. I will post a summary at lunchtime and another in the afternoon.
If you want to follow me on Twitter, I'm on @AndrewSparrow.
MPs debate TTIP: Politics Live blog Andrew Sparrow 's rolling coverage of all the day's political developments as they happen, including Nick Clegg hosting his Call Clegg phone-in and speeches from Andy Burnham and Ed Miliband false theguardian.com true http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2015/1/15/1421331455973/b28d332b-aa37-49df-aaa2-b2fd231335fc-140x84.jpeg 8467 true 454631242 false 54b77a9be4b0c184c5783b3d false Andrew Sparrow false 2223805 UK false 2015-01-18T08:45:00+00:00
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January 15, 2015 Thursday 7:00 PM GMT
Rate of environmental degradation puts life on Earth at risk, say scientists;
Humans are 'eating away at our own life support systems' at a rate unseen in the past 10,000 years, two new research papers say
BYLINE: Oliver Milman
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 731 words
Humans are "eating away at our own life support systems" at a rate unseen in the past 10,000 years by degrading land and freshwater systems, emitting greenhouse gases and releasing vast amounts of agricultural chemicals into the environment, new research has found.
Two major new studies by an international team of researchers have pinpointed the key factors that ensure a livable planet for humans, with stark results.
Of nine worldwide processes that underpin life on Earth, four have exceeded "safe" levels - human-driven climate change, loss of biosphere integrity, land system change and the high level of phosphorus and nitrogen flowing into the oceans due to fertiliser use.
Researchers spent five years identifying these core components of a planet suitable for human life, using the long-term average state of each measure to provide a baseline for the analysis.
They found that the changes of the last 60 years are unprecedented in the previous 10,000 years, a period in which the world has had a relatively stable climate and human civilisation has advanced significantly.
Carbon dioxide levels, at 395.5 parts per million, are at historic highs, while loss of biosphere integrity is resulting in species becoming extinct at a rate more than 100 times faster than the previous norm.
Since 1950 urban populations have increased seven-fold, primary energy use has soared by a factor of five, while the amount of fertiliser used is now eight times higher. The amount of nitrogen entering the oceans has quadrupled.
All of these changes are shifting Earth into a "new state" that is becoming less hospitable to human life, researchers said.
"These indicators have shot up since 1950 and there are no signs they are slowing down," said Prof Will Steffen of the Australian National University and the Stockholm Resilience Centre. Steffen is the lead author on both of the studies.
"When economic systems went into overdrive, there was a massive increase in resource use and pollution. It used to be confined to local and regional areas but we're now seeing this occurring on a global scale. These changes are down to human activity, not natural variability."
Steffen said direct human influence upon the land was contributing to a loss in pollination and a disruption in the provision of nutrients and fresh water.
"We are clearing land, we are degrading land, we introduce feral animals and take the top predators out, we change the marine ecosystem by overfishing - it's a death by a thousand cuts," he said. "That direct impact upon the land is the most important factor right now, even more than climate change."
There are large variations in conditions around the world, according to the research. For example, land clearing is now concentrated in tropical areas, such as Indonesia and the Amazon, with the practice reversed in parts of Europe. But the overall picture is one of deterioration at a rapid rate.
"It's fairly safe to say that we haven't seen conditions in the past similar to ones we see today and there is strong evidence that there [are] tipping points we don't want to cross," Steffen said.
"If the Earth is going to move to a warmer state, 5-6C warmer, with no ice caps, it will do so and that won't be good for large mammals like us. People say the world is robust and that's true, there will be life on Earth, but the Earth won't be robust for us.
"Some people say we can adapt due to technology, but that's a belief system, it's not based on fact. There is no convincing evidence that a large mammal, with a core body temperature of 37C, will be able to evolve that quickly. Insects can, but humans can't and that's a problem."
Steffen said the research showed the economic system was "fundamentally flawed" as it ignored critically important life support systems.
"It's clear the economic system is driving us towards an unsustainable future and people of my daughter's generation will find it increasingly hard to survive," he said. "History has shown that civilisations have risen, stuck to their core values and then collapsed because they didn't change. That's where we are today."
The two studies, published in Science and Anthropocene Review, featured the work of scientists from countries including the US, Sweden, Germany and India. The findings will be presented in seven seminars at the World Economic Forum in Davos, which takes place between 21 and 25 January.
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January 15, 2015 Thursday 6:32 PM GMT
Does climate change exist? The Senate is about to let us know;
An amendent to the Keystone XL pipeline bill hopes to force Republican climate change deniers to state whether they agree with the science or not
BYLINE: Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 912 words
Congress is to vote on whether climate change is real. Seriously.
The measure, which will come up in the debate about the Keystone XL pipeline, will ask the Senate to vote on whether climate change is real, caused by human activities, and has already caused devastating problems in the US and around the world.
It is intended to force Republicans who deny the existence of climate change - and they are a majority in Congress - to own their anti-science positions, said Bernie Sanders, the Independent senator from Vermont behind the amendment.
"The bottom line is that I think as a nation that we walk down a very dangerous road when the majority party in the United States Congress is prepared to reject science," Sanders told the Guardian. "I think it is important for Republicans to tell their constituents, to tell the American people, and to tell the world whether they agree with the science or not."
That could make for some very awkward moments.
Sanders's amendment has no chance of passage in the Republican-controlled Congress - and he acknowledges that is not the point.
Indeed, when Sanders first introduced the measure in the Senate energy committee last week, one of his fellow Democrats, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, objected to the final clause urging the US to get off fossil fuels and move towards a clean energy economy.
But the amendment promises to produce some embarrassing footage from the Senate floor as Republicans try to align the party leadership's position on climate change with the scientific community - and indeed much of the world outside the United States.
The Republican leadership for several years now has marched in lockstep on climate change, denying its existence and opposing measures to deal with the greenhouse gas emissions that are causing it as part of their strategy against Barack Obama.
Of Republicans in the Senate, 70% deny the existence of climate change or obstruct action on climate change, according to Climate Progress.
Some, such as Jim Inhofe, the chair of the Senate environment and public works committee who calls global warming a hoax, have practised climate denial for years.
Others have shifted positions as the Republican party drifted to the right - and Sanders suggested their newfound denial was a result of political expediency.
"I think some of them - Jim Inhofe, who I like and is a friend of mine, is very sincere in his belief that climate change is a hoax, who absolutely believes that," Sanders said.
"But I think there are other senators who do not believe that. There are other senators who have scientific backgrounds but for political reasons are not prepared to come out and say that climate change is real."
One such senator could be Mark Kirk, an Illinois Republican facing re-election next year. Earlier this month, Kirk appeared to have effected a conversion to climate denial, dismissing global warming as "political correctness". Kirk later hedged on that position.
Such non-denial denials are widespread, Sanders went on. "I think many moderate Republicans, including many business people, know how serious this problem is and want to do something about it," he said.
But there are powerful forces promoting climate denial, Sanders said.
"On the other hand, we have the Koch brothers and energy companies pouring millions into the coffers of the Republican party."
Republicans blocked a similar climate vote last July - after objections from Inhofe.
But the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, seems inclined to allow a vote this time around. The Keystone bill, while guaranteed passage, is unlikely to gather enough support to circumvent a threatened presidential veto.
McConnell has an interest in extending the debate on Keystone, if only to pick off more Democrats to vote in favour of the bill.
Other Democrats would also like to tack riders on the Keystone bill, though none dealing directly with climate change.
McConnell told reporters on Tuesday afternoon that all of the proposed amendments could go ahead. "We are not anxious to block anybody's amendment. We are wide open," he said.
That could make for some interesting moments. Flat-out climate denial - though still acceptable in the Republican party leadership - is not shared by all rank-and-file Republicans.
New research this week from the Yale Project on Climate Communications found majorities of moderate and liberal Republican voters do accept the existence of climate change and do want to fight climate change.
Climate denial is also becoming a potential political liability, a signifier that Republicans are old and out of touch with reality. Climate denial has come under sustained attack from environmental campaigners and the green billionaire Tom Steyer, who poured millions into the midterm elections.
A number of prominent Republicans in tight races with Democrats shied away from outright denial, adopting a new formulation: "I'm not a scientist." Even Mitch McConnell, in his race for his Kentucky Senate seat, took up the "I'm not a scientist" wording.
Sanders refused to speculate on how senators might vote when put on the spot on climate change. But it's fair to say that he will enjoy the spectacle.
· This article was amended on 15 January 2015 to clarify that the Yale research found that majorities of moderate and liberal Republican voters accept the existence of climate change, rather than a majority of all Republican voters. An earlier version referred to "majorities of Republican voters".
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January 15, 2015 Thursday 6:04 PM GMT
Give us a better, safer future, British teenagers urge Cameron and Miliband;
Global campaign to secure political commitment on tackling poverty and climate change begins with passionate plea from young people
BYLINE: Sam Jones and Liz Ford
SECTION: GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT
LENGTH: 984 words
World leaders must demonstrate a renewed and unambiguous commitment to tackling the interlinked issues of development and climate change over the coming months, according to a young ambassador for a new global initiative that aims to make 2015 a landmark year for action on poverty and the environment.
As events to launch the action/2015 campaign kicked off in more than 50 countries across the world on Thursday, Niamh Griffin, a 15-year-old activist from London, called on politicians to face up to their responsibilities.
"We need to tackle the environmental issues - climate change and global warming - as well as inequalities, because inequality affects poverty," she said.
"As long as inequality exists, many countries will be prohibited from developing in a fair and sustainable way. Take gender discrimination: if you've only got half of your population being educated, that's half your potential income being wasted."
Griffin, one of 15 teenage British campaigners chosen to argue for greater political progress as part of the action/2015 initiative, said the world needed to heed the voices of the young people who will bear the brunt of the decisions made at two key UN summits this year.
"We're ready and we're prepared to put the effort in to make the positive change that we feel the world needs," she said.
"I think there's a lot more attention being paid to young people through things like action/2015, and that is important because it's going to be us who are taking on these new challenges."
Griffin and the 14 other young campaigners handed in a letter to Downing Street on Thursday afternoon calling on David Cameron to ensure that 2015 ends with "a global compact - an agreed pathway to a better, safer future for people and planet that will inspire the citizens of the world".
Action/2015 is backed by more than 1,000 organisations around the world as well as activists, business people and celebrities such as Malala Yousafzai, Muhammad Yunus, Ben Affleck, Bill Gates and Richard Branson. The campaign is pressing for action as the UN meets in New York in September to agree the sustainable development goals (SDGs), which will replace the millennium development goals (MDGs), and in Paris in December to seek a new international agreement on climate change.
Some of the young British campaigners met the leaders of the three main political parties this week to argue the case for swift and concrete agreements.
Speaking at a school in north London on Thursday morning, the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, said that the MDGs had shown what could be achieved when consensus was reached.
"As a result of the millennium development goals - 15 years later - 17,000 fewer children die every day in our world as a result of vaccines and other efforts and - this is an extraordinary figure - 58 million more children go to primary school across our world," he said. "There's still a long way to go in getting kids to go to primary school - something we all take for granted - but don't believe those people who tell you that nothing can change, that extreme poverty is always going to be here, and that nothing's ever going to be different."
Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, has also acknowledged the campaign's importance, saying that whatever the result of May's general election, the UK needs to "seize 2015 as a crucial opportunity to take big global decisions".
Speaking at the UK launch of action/2015 in London, Jamie Drummond, the founder and executive director of the advocacy group ONE, said the campaign connected civil society from the global south and global north, as well as groups working on a diverse range of issues, from human rights, climate justice and transparency to gender equality, poverty and hunger.
"We've got the whole kit and caboodle ... uniting to demand leaders do better this year [on their promises] and then demand they keep them. We don't want vague UN promises, we want specific, accountable plans to back up visionary goals, where financing for plans is clear and everyday people can follow the details," said Drummond, a veteran of anti-poverty coalition campaigns, including Jubilee 2000 in the 1990s and Make Poverty History in 2005.
Jonathan Glennie, director of policy and research at Save the Children, said there had been "immense progress" in reducing poverty over the past 20 years. But over the same period, levels of inequality have risen and climate change has got worse.
He pointed to research from the University of Denver that suggests the number of people living in poverty by 2030 could increase by 886 million, to 1.2 billon, unless leaders agree a strong set of sustainable development goals and take decisive action on climate change. Conversely, the number of people in poverty could fall to 360 million.
"If we get some measures wrong, we could live in a world with more people in poverty," said Glennie, who added that the outcome of a major meeting in Addis Ababa in July to discuss how to finance the new set of goals will be crucial.
The 17 proposed SDGs - which include ending poverty and hunger, women's empowerment, climate change, accountable governments and employment and education - are the result of 18 months of debate by 70 countries on the UN open working group, consultations with people in 130 countries, and the contribution of 7 million people who took part in the UN's My World survey. It represents the largest body of evidence collected by the UN in its 70-year history.
Among the top four priorities for people who took part in the survey were honest and responsive governments.
"This was not in the last set of [millennium development] goals. They are in this set of draft goals. It may not be in the final set if some governments have their way. There are real things at stake here," said Drummond.
Next Monday, member states will begin negotiations to finalise the goals, which will be ratified by the UN in September.
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The Guardian
January 15, 2015 Thursday 5:43 PM GMT
10 riskiest places to buy your seaside dream home;
As sea levels rise, real estate investments in these seaside metropolises could amount to throwing money into the sea
BYLINE: Erica Gies
SECTION: VITAL SIGNS
LENGTH: 1450 words
There's no doubt humans are attracted to oceans. Globally, 44% of all people on Earth live within 150 km (93 miles) of the shore, and eight of the 10 largest cities in the world are near the coast. But global sea levels have risen about eight inches in the last century and are projected to rise another one to four feet this century.
That growth comes at quite a cost. World Bank economist Stephane Hallegatte led a 2013 study, published in the Nature Climate Change journal, forecasting that average global flood losses would multiply from $6bn per year in 2005 to as much as $1tn a year by 2050 if large coastal cities don't take steps to adapt.
All this means that buying a dream home on the beach could amount to throwing money into the sea.
Luckily, a growing number of studies have measured the risk from rising oceans, taking into account how many people live in low-lying areas, the value of at-risk real estate and business operations, the levels of preparedness (including countermeasures, such as Amsterdam's dykes, to prevent flooding damage) in different areas - and predictions for how those factors may change in 2030, 2050 or 2070.
If you're looking for coastal property for your dream home - or just dreaming - here are 10 seaside metropolises where investments face high risks from climate change:
Guangzhou, Guangdong province, China
Historically known to Westerners as Canton, Guanzhou is the third largest city in China, with a population of nearly 13 million. Located on the Pearl River Delta and the South China Sea, close to Macao and Hong Kong, Guangzhou is a center of car manufacturing, biotechnology and heavy industry.
As Asian economies grow and urban populations boom, Asian cities, especially in China, Thailand and India, will leap to the head of the pack when it comes to risk. Guangzhou is already there, and it lacks strong protection against sea level rise. Even with savvy infrastructure upgrades for resilience, Guangzhou could see $13.2bn in annual losses by 2050, according to Nature Climate Change.
New Orleans, US
In his prescient 2001 book Holding Back the Sea, Christopher Hallowell documents New Orleans' numerous flooding risks. It has a poor location that is historically prone to flooding. Oil and gas drilling has lowered the ground elevation while engineering on the Mississippi River has starved the area of rejuvenating alluvial deposits. Meanwhile, its marshes have been weakened by invasive species. Sea levels rise around it as extreme storms batter it.
Over the last century, the sea has swallowed more than one-third of Louisiana's coastal plain. Hurricane Katrina brought that all home in 2005, when the resulting flood lasted for weeks and the recovery reconfigured the city.
In general, wealthier cities have better protection against sea level rise than those in developing countries, but New Orleans, along with Miami and New York, lag behind. Post-Hurricane Katrina investments in New Orleans, however, including decisions to relinquish some areas to the ocean, are helping.
Guayaquil, Ecuador
The commercial, manufacturing and population center of Ecuador, Guayaquil sits at the mouth of Guayas River, near the Gulf of Guayaquil the Pacific Ocean. Home to more than 2 million residents, its major industries include business, agriculture and aquaculture. Even with flood protection upgrades, Guayaquil could see $3.2bn in annual losses by 2050 , according to Nature Climate Change .
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Home to 7.4 million people, Ho Chi Minh City sits on the banks of the Saigon River, where the Mekong Delta empties out into the South China Sea. One-third of the city is already exposed to flooding, with much land just a meter or so (about three feet) above sea level.
But with the economy and population booming, it is building out towards the coast, exposing new real estate to risk of flooding. Rising sea levels are already turning inland water saltier, making it unsuitable for growing rice.
Rotterdam, another delta city in the Netherlands, is advising Ho Chi Mihn City on how best to adapt. The Vietnamese city launched a climate adaptation strategy in 2013 that would wield technologies and policies that have helped Rotterdam fend off the sea.
Abidjan, Ivory Coast
The economic capital of Ivory Coast, Abidjan, lies near the Gulf of Guinea on the Ébrié Lagoon, an industry epicenter. With 13 million people in the greater urban area, its population is second only to Lagos, Nigeria, in the region. Major industries include a large oil refinery as well as food production, lumber and manufacturing, including cars, textiles, chemicals, and soap.
An engineering project to turn the lagoon into a deepwater port, though, is causing erosion problems. Human activity is causing some places along the West African coastline to lose 23-30 meters (75-98 feet) a year, damaging valuable infrastructure such as roads and houses.
Mumbai, India
Formerly known as Bombay, Mumbai is one of the world's true megacities, with a metro area population of nearly 21 million. The capital of Maharashtra state, Mumbai is also the financial, commercial and entertainment capital of India. Many of Bollywood's most famous stars own mansions there.
But all this is built upon seven islands, which were fishing colonies in another era. Coastal flooding wouldn't just make homes soggy, it would reduce the availability of freshwater due to seawater intrusion and flood submerged waste dumps, contaminating the limited water supply. Even with protection upgrades, Mumbai could see $6.4bn in annual losses by 2050, according to Nature Climate Change.
Miami, US
Located at the mouth of the Miami River, between the Everglades and Biscayne Bay, most of Miami is just six feet (1.8 meters) above sea level. The glitzy city, with a metro-area population of 5.5 million, is already seeing regular flooding of city streets at high tide (pdf).
A two-foot rise in sea levels is expected by 2060, according to the US Geological Survey. Miami has always flaunted its seaside locale, building $16bn of real estate below a two-foot (0.6 meter) elevation (pdf). Nevertheless, insurers and lenders continue to support the city's development.
New York City and Newark, US
New York City needs no introduction as a global hub of finance, art, culture and education. But its location on the Atlantic Ocean, at the mouth of the Harlem River and in a tidal strait, isn't doing it any favors. And despite having a larger GDP than London, Tokyo and Amsterdam, it has lower levels of protection than they do, according to Nature Climate Change.
Aside from sea level rise, NYC is threatened by regional changes in ocean currents. Together these factors are likely to increase loss of wetlands, coastal flooding, storm surge, erosion and property damage. Hurricane Sandy was an early warning of what could come, pushing floodwaters over barrier islands and into seaside communities, destroying or damaging 305,000 homes in New York and 72,000 homes and businesses in New Jersey.
Shenzhen, China
Located just two hours' drive from Guangzhou, Shenzhen lies at the mouth of the Pearl River Delta. Shenzhen was the first of China's Special Economic Zones, attracting foreign investment, turning it from a small village into the 15 million-person city it is today. It is home to a stock exchange and high-tech companies and is one of the world's busiest container ports.
As a village, it perched on hills. But most of those hills have now been leveled for development. Migrants from inland are now flowing into the city, and nearby hills are also being leveled to make room for more development. All this increases its risk.
Osaka, Japan
Osaka is Japan's third largest city. For centuries, it has been an economic center of Japan, benefitting from its location at the mouth of the Yodo River on Osaka Bay. But now that location could make it vulnerable to coastal flooding (pdf). More than 10% of greater Osaka's 2.5 million population and more than US$200bn in economic assets are at risk, according to a report from OECD. As the city continues to expand, those losses could damage nearly US$1tn in assets by 2070.
This article was amended 12 January. A previously version mistakenly referred to Osaka as Japan's second largest city. In fact, it is the third largest city in Japan.
The Vital Signs platform is funded by Avery Dennison, Domtar and Chiquita. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled "brought to you by". Find out more here.
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The Guardian
January 15, 2015 Thursday 11:59 AM GMT
Celebrities push to make 2015 year of action on poverty and climate change;
Matt Damon and Malala Yousafzai among supporters of Action/2015 campaign to ensure success at UN summits on development goals and climate change
BYLINE: Patrick Wintour
SECTION: GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT
LENGTH: 693 words
Celebrities and campaigners including Matt Damon, Bill Gates, Jody Williams and Malala Yousafzai are joining forces to launch an international campaign to persuade the planet's leaders to make 2015 the defining year in the fight against world poverty and climate change.
The campaign action/2015 - which launches on Thursday backed by more than 1,000 organisations across 50 countries - is focused on securing successful outcomes for two pivotal UN summits, one in September on remodelled development goals, and the other in December in Paris on a new international agreement on climate change.
In Britain, the campaign's specific aim is to ensure politicians do not put the issues on the backburner during a general election that will inevitably be dominated by domestic issues.
In a letter to David Cameron, the celebrities, businessmen and Nobel peace prize winners tell the prime minister that the summits represent "the opportunities of a lifetime, yet with months to go few leaders are playing the leadership roles we need".
They add: "If this does not change, we fear you and your fellow leaders could be sleepwalking the world towards one of the greatest failures of recent times."
Other signatories include Bono, Desmond Tutu, Richard Branson, the entrepreneur Mo Ibrahim, the actor Aamir Khan, the Avaaz network founder Ricken Patel and Queen Rania of Jordan.
Cameron, who flew to the US on Wednesday, met some of the campaigners before he left. And in a speech on Thursday, Ed Miliband will endorse the campaign. The Labour leader will say: "I know tackling climate change, global poverty and inequality are not as fashionable as they once were. But I also know they are more important than ever.
"For me, they are not luxury items in our programme for change. They are not part of a branding exercise. They go to the heart of my beliefs and the reason why I entered politics."
Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, also acknowledged the campaign's importance, saying: "Whatever the colour of the next government, I want the UK to seize 2015 as a crucial opportunity to take big global decisions."
The campaign's vast international scale has meant the aim at the outset is as much raising awareness of the importance of the summits as pushing specific demands.
The goals include:
· An end to poverty in all its forms, including UK backing for zero-based targets in strategic development goals such as poverty and child mortality.
· Meeting fundamental rights and tackling inequality and discrimination, and for this to be a priority for the UN framework agreement.
· An accelerated transition to 100% renewable energy, requiring UK commitment to this as the long-term goal for UN climate change negotiators.
Speaking for action/2015, Ben Jackson of Bond, the umbrella body for UK non-governmental organisations, said: "If we get this wrong, we could see the number of people living in poverty increase for the first time in our generation. But if we get it right - tackle poverty, inequality and climate change - we could eradicate extreme poverty within a generation.
"The UK has the potential to play a critical galvanising role on these issues, but we're worried, with a UK election in the middle of the year, they might take their eye off the ball."
According to new research, almost a billion extra people face a life of extreme poverty if the two summits fail to agree ambitious goals backed by financing packages.
The data, released by the action/2015 coalition, shows that the number of people living in extreme poverty - defined as less than $1.25 (80p) a day - could be reduced dramatically from more than 1 billion to 360 million by 2030.
Based on work by the University of Denver, in the year 2030, about 4% of the global population would live in extreme poverty, compared with 17% today, if critical policy choices on inequality, poverty investment and climate change are made this year and implemented thereafter. Under the best case scenario the number of people living in poverty could be reduced to 360 million by 2030. In the worst case scenario the number of people living in poverty could increase to 1.2 billion, a difference of 886 million.
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The Guardian
January 15, 2015 Thursday 11:06 AM GMT
Armed conflict is now biggest fear for world leaders, according to WEF;
Ahead of Davos next week, the Global Risks 2015 report also lists extreme weather events, failure of national governance, state collapse, and high unemployment
BYLINE: Larry Elliott, economics editor
SECTION: BUSINESS
LENGTH: 465 words
Unrest in Ukraine and the Middle East has catapulted conflict between states to the top of the list of risks to the stability of the world in the next decade, according to experts polled by the World Economic Forum.
Ahead of the WEF's annual meeting in Davos next week, the organisation's Global Risks 2015 report found that geo-politics has replaced income inequality as the leading concern.
The widening gap between rich and poor failed to make the top five risks after three years in which it has been seen as the leading threat to stability.
Six years after the depths of the worst recession suffered by the global economy since the 1930s, the WEF said replies to its survey showed that geopolitics was now a bigger worry.
"Twenty-five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the world again faces the risk of major conflict between states," said Margareta Drzeniek-Hanouz, lead economist, World Economic Forum. "However, today the means to wage such conflict, whether through cyberattack, competition for resources or sanctions and other economic tools, is broader than ever. Addressing all these possible triggers and seeking to return the world to a path of partnership, rather than competition, should be a priority for leaders as we enter 2015."
After a year dominated by the tension between Ukraine and Russia and the rise of Islamic State (Isis) in Iraq, the leading risk identified by the 900 WEF experts was interstate conflict with regional consequences.
It was followed in the top five by extreme weather events, failure of national governance, state collapse or crisis, and high structural unemployment or underemployment.
When asked which of 28 risks would have the biggest global impact, the experts identified a water crisis. The battle against Ebola in West Africa meant the rapid and massive spread of infectious disease was in second place, followed by the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction, interstate conflict with regional consequences and failure to adapt to climate change.
The WEF said it was "noteworthy" that environmental risks had supplanted economic anxieties. "This comes as a result of a marked increase in experts' negative assessment of existing preparations to cope with challenges such as extreme weather and climate change, rather than owing to a diminution of fears over chronic economic risks such as unemployment and underemployment or fiscal crises, which have remained relatively stable from 2014," the report said.
Axel Lehmann, chief risk officer at Zurich Insurance Group, said: "Without doubt, urbanization has increased social well-being. But when cities develop too rapidly, their vulnerability increases: pandemics; breakdowns of or attacks on power, water or transport systems; and the effects of climate change are all major threats."
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The New York Times
January 15, 2015 Thursday
Late Edition - Final
West Virginia Withdraws Altered Climate Curriculum
BYLINE: By JOHN SCHWARTZ
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 21
LENGTH: 299 words
West Virginia education officials on Wednesday retreated from an earlier curriculum decision that expressed doubts about widely held views of climate change.
The State Board of Education voted 6-to-2 to withdraw its altered version of the Next Generation Science Standards, which were developed by 26 states, including West Virginia. The changes had been quietly made by a member of the West Virginia board before it adopted the standards in December.
Once the extent of the changes -- including an inserted reference that global temperature rise ''and fall'' -- became known, they were criticized by local and national science educators, as well as West Virginia parents and environmental activists.
The board voted to revert to the original standards, which emphasize the scientific consensus on human activity as a cause of climate change, and will adopt those standards after a 30-day comment period, said Gayle Manchin, the board president and wife of United States Senator Joe Manchin III.
''We listened, we learned and, well, I think, grew in our knowledge and understanding,'' Ms. Manchin said in an interview. ''We all knew at the end of the day more than what we did at the beginning -- and that's what I'd hope for for our students.''
One of the two ''no'' votes was cast by L. Wade Linger Jr., the member who said he had originally called for the changes to add balance to a politicized issue.
Climate Parents, a national organization that took an active role in the debate over West Virginia's actions, applauded the change. Lisa Hoyos, the group's director, said, ''Ensuring students are taught evidence-based facts in their science education is a fundamental principle that the board affirmed today, after veering off course in December in adopting altered climate science standards.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/15/us/west-virginia-withdraws-altered-climate-curriculum.html
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The New York Times Blogs
(Dot Earth)
January 15, 2015 Thursday
Can Humanity's 'Great Acceleration' Be Managed and, If So, How?
BYLINE: ANDREW C. REVKIN
SECTION: OPINION
LENGTH: 2001 words
HIGHLIGHT: A revised set of planetary boundaries for human activities engenders fresh debates about how to manage our planet-changing growth spurt.
Through three-plus decades of reporting, I've been seeking ways to better mesh humanity's infinite aspirations with life on a finite planet. (Do this Google search - "infinite aspirations" "finite planet" Revkin - to get the idea. Also read the 2002 special issue of Science Times titled "Managing Planet Earth.")
So I was naturally drawn to a research effort that surfaced in 2009 defining a "safe operating space for humanity" by estimating a set of nine "planetary boundaries" for vital-sign-style parameters like levels of greenhouse gases, flows of nitrogen and phosphorus and loss of biodiversity.
The same was true for a related "Great Acceleration" dashboard showing humanity's growth spurt (the graphs below), created by the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program.
Who would want to drive a car without gauges tracking engine heat, speed and fuel levels? I use that artwork in all my talks.
Now, both the dashboard of human impacts and planetary boundaries have been updated. For more detail on the dashboard, explore the website of the geosphere-biosphere organization.
In a prepared statement, a co-author of the acceleration analysis, Lisa Deutsch, a senior lecturer at the Stockholm Resilience Center, saw little that was encouraging:
Of all the socio-economic trends only construction of new large dams seems to show any sign of the bending of the curves - or a slowing of the Great Acceleration. Only one Earth System trend indicates a curve that may be the result of intentional human intervention - the success story of ozone depletion. The leveling off of marine fisheries capture since the 1980s is unfortunately not due to marine stewardship, but to overfishing.
And all that acceleration (mostly since 1950, as I wrote yesterday) has pushed us out of four safe zones, according to the 18 authors of the updated assessment of environmental boundaries, published online today by the journal Science here: "Planetary Boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet."
The paper is behind a paywall, but the Stockholm Resilience Center, which has led this work, has summarized the results, including the authors' conclusion that we're in the danger zone on four of the nine boundaries: climate change, loss of biosphere integrity, land-system change and alteration of biogeochemical cycles (for the nutrients phosphorus and nitrogen).
Their work has been a valuable prod to the community of scientists and policy analysts aiming to smooth the human journey, resulting in strings of additional studies. Some followup work has supported the concept, and even broadened it, as with a 2011 proposal by Kate Raworth of the aid group Oxfam to add social-justice boundaries, as well: "A Safe and Just Space for Humanity - Can We Live Within the Doughnut?"
But others have convincingly challenged many of the boundaries and also questioned their usefulness, given how both impacts of, and decisions about, human activities like fertilizing fields or tapping aquifers are inherently local - not planetary in scale. (You'll hear from some critics below.)
In 2012, the boundaries work helped produce a compelling alternative framework for navigating the Anthropocene - "Planetary Opportunities: A Social Contract for Global Change Science to Contribute to a Sustainable Future."
I hope the public (and policy makers) will realize this is not a right-wrong, win-lose science debate. A complex planet dominated by a complicated young species will never be managed neatly. All of us, including environmental scientists, will continue to learn and adjust.
I was encouraged, for instance, to see the new iteration of the boundaries analysis take a much more refined view of danger zones, including more of an emphasis on the deep level of uncertainty in many areas:
The authors, led by Will Steffen of Australian National University and Johan Rockström of the Stockholm Resilience Center, have tried to refine how they approach risks related to disrupting ecosystems - not simply pointing to lost biological diversity but instead devising a measure of general "biosphere integrity."
That measure, and the growing human influence on the climate through the buildup of long-lived greenhouse gases are the main source of concern, they wrote:
Two core boundaries - climate change and biosphere integrity - have been identified, each of which has the potential on its own to drive the Earth System into a new state should they be substantially and persistently transgressed.
But the bottom line has a very retro feel, adding up to the kind of ominous, but generalized warnings that many environmental scientists and other scholars began giving with the "Limits to Growth" analysis in 1972. Here's a cornerstone passage from the paper, reprising a longstanding view that the environmental conditions of the Holocene - the equable span since the end of the last ice age - is ideal:
The precautionary principle suggests that human societies would be unwise to drive the Earth System substantially away from a Holocene-like condition. A continuing trajectory away from the Holocene could lead, with an uncomfortably high probability, to a very different state of the Earth System, one that is likely to be much less hospitable to the development of human societies.
I sent the Science paper to a batch of environmental researchers who have been constructive critics of the Boundaries work. Four of them wrote a group response, posted below, which includes this total rejection of the idea that the Holocene is somehow special:
[M]ost species evolved before the Holocene and the contemporary ecosystems that sustain humanity are agroecosystems, urban ecosystems and other human-altered ecosystems....
Here's their full response:
The Limits of Planetary Boundaries
Erle Ellis, Barry Brook, Linus Blomqvist, Ruth DeFries
Steffen et al (2015) revise the "planetary boundaries framework" initially proposed in 2009 as the "safe limits" for human alteration of Earth processes (Rockstrom et al 2009). Limiting human harm to environments is a major challenge and we applaud all efforts to increase the public utility of global-change science. Yet the planetary boundaries (PB) framework - in its original form and as revised by Steffen et al - obscures rather than clarifies the environmental and sustainability challenges faced by humanity this century.
Steffen et al concede that "not all Earth system processes included in the PB have singular thresholds at the global/continental/ocean basin level." Such processes include biosphere integrity (see Brook et al 2013), biogeochemical flows, freshwater use, and land-system change. "Nevertheless," they continue, "it is important that boundaries be established for these processes." Why? Where a global threshold is unknown or lacking, there is no scientifically robust way of specifying such a boundary - determining a limit along a continuum of environmental change becomes a matter of guesswork or speculation (see e.g. Bass 2009; Nordhaus et al 2012). For instance, the land-system boundary for temperate forest is set at 50% of forest cover remaining. There is no robust justification for why this boundary should not be 40%, or 70%, or some other level.
While the stated objective of the PB framework is to "guide human societies" away from a state of the Earth system that is "less hospitable to the development of human societies", it offers little scientific evidence to support the connection between the global state of specific Earth system processes and human well-being. Instead, the Holocene environment (the most recent 10,000 years) is assumed to be ideal. Yet most species evolved before the Holocene and the contemporary ecosystems that sustain humanity are agroecosystems, urban ecosystems and other human-altered ecosystems that in themselves represent some of the most important global and local environmental changes that characterize the Anthropocene. Contrary to the authors' claim that the Holocene is the "only state of the planet that we know for certain can support contemporary human societies," the human-altered ecosystems of the Anthropocene represent the only state of the planet that we know for certain can support contemporary civilization.
Human alteration of environments produces multiple effects, some advantageous to societies, such as enhanced food production, and some detrimental, like environmental pollution with toxic chemicals, excess nutrients and carbon emissions from fossil fuels, and the loss of wildlife and their habitats. The key to better environmental outcomes is not in ending human alteration of environments but in anticipating and mitigating their negative consequences. These decisions and trade-offs should be guided by robust evidence, with global-change science investigating the connections and tradeoffs between the state of the environment and human well-being in the context of the local setting, rather than by framing and reframing environmental challenges in terms of untestable assumptions about the virtues of past environments.
Even without specifying exact global boundaries, global metrics can be highly misleading for policy. For example, with nitrogen, where the majority of human emissions come from synthetic fertilizers, the real-world challenge is to apply just the right amount of nitrogen to optimize crop yields while minimizing nitrogen losses that harm aquatic ecosystems. Reducing fertilizer application in Africa might seem beneficial globally, yet the result in this region would be even poorer crop yields without any notable reduction in nitrogen pollution; Africa's fertilizer use is already suboptimal for crop yields. What can look like a good or a bad thing globally can prove exactly the opposite when viewed regionally and locally. What use is a global indicator for a local issue? As in real estate, location is everything.
Finally, and most importantly, the planetary boundaries are burdened not only with major uncertainties and weak scientific theory - they are also politically problematic. Real world environmental challenges like nitrogen pollution, freshwater consumption and land-use change are ultimately a matter of politics, in the sense that there are losers and winners, and solutions have to be negotiated among many stakeholders. The idea of a scientific expert group determining top-down global limits on these activities and processes ignores these inevitable trade-offs and seems to preclude democratic resolution of these questions. It has been argued that (Steffen et al 2011):
Ultimately, there will need to be an institution (or institutions) operating, with authority, above the level of individual countries to ensure that the planetary boundaries are respected. In effect, such an institution, acting on behalf of humanity as a whole, would be the ultimate arbiter of the myriad trade-offs that need to be managed as nations and groups of people jockey for economic and social advantage. It would, in essence, become the global referee on the planetary playing field.
Here the planetary boundaries framework reaches its logical conclusion with a political scenario that is as unlikely as it is unpalatable. There is no ultimate global authority to rule over humanity or the environment. Science has a tremendously important role to play in guiding environmental management, not as a decider, but as a resource for deliberative, evidence-based decision making by the public, policy makers, and interest groups on the challenges, trade-offs and possible courses of action in negotiating the environmental challenges of societal development (DeFries et al 2012). Proposing that science itself can define the global environmental limits of human development is simultaneously unrealistic, hubristic, and a strategy doomed to fail.
I've posted the response online as a standalone document for easier downloading; there you can view the authors' references, as well.
I'll be adding more elements to this post as input arrives and relevant commentary is posted elsewhere.
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The Guardian
January 14, 2015 Wednesday 5:08 PM GMT
Barack Obama moves to cut US methane emissions by almost half;
Environmental Protection Agency will cut oil and gas industry methane emissions as president seeks to bolster climate legacy
BYLINE: Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 575 words
Barack Obama will unveil a plan to cut methane emissions from America's booming oil and gas industry by as much as 45% over the next decade in an attempt to cement his climate legacy during his remaining two years in the White House.
The new methane rules - which will be formally unveiled on Wednesday - are the last big chance for Obama to fight climate change.
The Environmental Protection Agency is aiming to cut methane emissions by up to 45% from 2012 levels by 2025, White House officials told campaigners during a briefing call.
But it was not clear whether the new rules would apply to existing oil and gas installations, in addition to future sources of carbon pollution, which could weaken their effectiveness in fighting climate change.
"It is the largest opportunity to deal with climate pollution that this administration has not already [been] seized," said David Doniger, director of the climate and clean air programme at the Natural Resources Defence Council.
Methane is the second biggest driver of climate change, after carbon dioxide. On a 20-year timescale, it is 87 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas.
US officials acknowledge that Obama will have to cut methane if he is to make good on his promise to cut US greenhouse gas emissions 17% from 2005 levels by 2020, and by 26% to 28% by 2025.
"It is the largest thing left, and it's the most cost-effective thing they can do that they haven't done already, and all the signs are there that they intend to step forward on that," Doniger said.
The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to roll out a combination of regulations and voluntary guidelines for the oil and gas industry, people familiar with the plan said.
The rules represent Obama's first big climate push on the oil and gas sector, after moving to cut emissions from power plants and, during his first term, cars and trucks.
But the clock is ticking. Any new EPA regulations would have to be finalised by the end of 2016 - and Republicans in Congress and industry lobby groups are already mobilising to oppose the standards.
Methane accounts for about 9% of greenhouse gas emissions, according to the EPA. The biggest share of this by far comes from the oil and gas industry, which has exploded over the last decade.
The US is now the world's largest producer of natural gas, and is on track to become the world's largest oil producer in 2015.
Most of those greenhouse gas emissions are from leaky equipment - faulty casing on newly fracked wells, but also millions of miles of pipelines and ageing infrastructure.
The EPA had originally promised to announce a new methane plan by the end of last year.
The agency administrator, Gina McCarthy, indicated that the agency would combine regulations with voluntary guidelines for industry.
Unlike the power plant rules, which left industry a fair amount of latitude in cutting emissions, the methane standards are believed to be tightly focused on plugging leaks.
The new rules could directly target leaking valves and other equipment that allow methane to escape from wells, pipelines and other infrastructure.
The new rules could also be backed up with voluntary guidelines for other types of air pollutants that would also lower methane emissions.
"If you take steps to reduce volatile organic compounds, those steps would automatically have the secondary benefit of reducing methane emissions," said Sandra Snyder, an environmental attorney at the Bracewell Giuliani law firm.
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The Guardian
January 14, 2015 Wednesday 4:12 PM GMT
Harvard defies divestment campaigners and invests tens of millions of dollars in fossil fuels;
Campaigners protest over 'blood money' investments that come ahead of a lawsuit brought by students over Harvard's refusal to divest from companies that cause climate change
BYLINE: Suzanne Goldenberg
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 898 words
Harvard has newly invested tens of millions of dollars in oil and gas companies, rebuffing campaigners' demands to sever the wealthy university's ties to the companies that cause climate change.
The university's refusal to withdraw an $32.7bn endowment from fossil fuels has frustrated campaigners and resulted in a law suit brought by seven Harvard students. The university - the world's richest - is due to appear in court next month.
Now it emerges Harvard increased its holdings in publicly traded oil and gas companies by a factor of seven during the third financial quarter of 2014, the latest data available.
The new investments increased Harvard's stake in oil and gas companies - including those involved in the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster and fracking - from $11.8m (£7.8m) to about $79.5m, according to an analysis of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings by campus divestment activists.
Jim Recht, assistant professor of psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School and a supporter of the divestment campaign, described the new oil and gas holdings as "blood money" and said they indicated Harvard's unwillingness to review its policies despite the growing awareness of the dangers of climate change.
"That's blood money," he said. "It is making money out of something we see as fundamentally illicit."
The biggest single investment was $57.4m in Anadarko Petroleum, which was involved in the Deepwater Horizon disaster and last year agreed to a $5bn fine for the clean-up of toxic waste sites. Other investments were in companies involved in fracking including Concho Resources Inc ($9.6m), Pioneer Natural Resources Inc ($9.3m), Range Resources Corporation ($2.2m) and WPX Energy ($979,000).
The SEC filings cover only a small fraction of Harvard's $34bn endowment, said Chloe Maxmin, a co-founder of Divest Harvard, who analysed the investments. Most of the $34bn is not held in direct investments, and is not included in the SEC filings - which means fossil fuel holdings could be even greater.
Those new investments - and Harvard's refusal to consider changes to endowment policies - have spurred new protests from students as well as faculty.
In a petition made available to the Guardian, five Harvard faculty members,including Recht said the new investments put the university out of step with a small but growing number of universities and philanthropic institutions, such as Stanford and the Rockefeller Brothers, that have reviewed or taken steps to eliminate fossil fuel holdings.
"In striking contrast to these other institutions, Harvard has newly invested tens of millions in publicly traded fossil fuel companies," the five Harvard faculty members wrote."Can putting tens of millions in companies like Anadarko be regarded as responsible sustainable investing - investing that befits a charitable corporation dedicated to scientific truth and ethical education? Such investments... signify an investment policy that is profoundly indifferent to its consequences," the letter said.
"We are among a growing number of concerned faculty who question the idea that investment returns are justified at any cost, including the enormous cost our students and future generations will need to pay for what the fossil fuel industry is doing now and - more importantly - for what it is planning and lobbying to do, with writing checks to political organizations a key part of that planning."
Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard's president, has rejected fossil fuel divestment as not "warranted or wise". In October 2013, she wrote : "The endowment is a resource, not an instrument to impel social or political change."
Jeff Neal, a spokesman for Harvard, said in an email that the university acknowledged the "serious threat" of climate change. "We agree that threat must be confronted, but sometimes differ on the means. Harvard has been, and continues to be, focused on supporting the research and teaching that will ultimately create the solutions to this challenge," he said.
Harvard's unwillingness to reconsider its investment policies has frustrated campaigners. Seven students last year brought a lawsuit against the university, which the five faculty members supported in their letter as a "new and necessary type of thinking".
The lawsuit argues that Harvard's continued investment in fossil fuels is an abdication of its responsibilities to current and future generations of students.
"We are saying that investment in fossil fuels amounts to mismanagement of public charitable funds," said Alice Cherry, one of the law students bringing the suit. "The language of the charter says that Harvard needs to protect the education and advancement of youth so that's something we think is inconsistent with fossil fuel investments."
The suit faces a high barrier, however. Harvard has sought its dismissal on the grounds that the students don't have the standing to sue on behalf of future generations.
James Engell, an English professor and one of those who signed the letter, said the campaigners saw little evidence Harvard was considering a change in its policies.
"It is an interesting indication that Harvard went ahead about bought close to $80 million late last year in fossil fuels. It just shows that their attitude has not changed at all and they feel that for whatever reasons these are good investments," he said.
"It sends a message that they are sticking to their policy."
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The New York Times
January 14, 2015 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
Obama Is Said to Be Planning New Rules on Oil and Gas Industry's Methane Emissions
BYLINE: By CORAL DAVENPORT
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 16
LENGTH: 734 words
WASHINGTON -- In President Obama's latest move using executive authority to tackle climate change, administration officials will announce plans this week to impose new regulations on the oil and gas industry's emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, according to a person familiar with Mr. Obama's plans. The administration's goal is to cut methane emissions from oil and gas production by up to 45 percent by 2025 from the levels recorded in 2012.
The Environmental Protection Agency will issue the proposed regulations this summer, and final regulations by 2016, according to the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the administration had asked the person not to speak about the plan. The White House declined to comment on the effort.
Environmental advocates have long urged the Obama administration to target methane emissions, and the rules would be the first to do so. Most of the planet-warming greenhouse gas pollution in the United States comes from carbon dioxide, which is produced by burning coal, oil and natural gas. Methane, which leaks from oil and gas wells, accounts for just 9 percent of the nation's greenhouse gas pollution -- but it is over 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide, so even small amounts of it can have a big impact on global warming.
''This is the biggest opportunity to curb climate change pollution that they haven't already seized,'' said David Doniger, director of the climate and clean air program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an advocacy group.
The oil and gas industry has pushed back against methane regulations, insisting that new rules could stymie a booming industry and that voluntary industrywide standards are sufficient to prevent methane leaks.
''We don't need regulation to capture it, because we are incentivized to do it,'' said Howard Feldman, director of regulatory affairs for the American Petroleum Institute.
Methane is a major component of natural gas, and oil and gas companies say they are motivated to prevent leaks of the product that they sell.
''We want to bring it to market,'' Mr. Feldman said. ''We don't think additional regulation is needed at this time.''
Both sides said that the stringency, cost and effectiveness of the rules would be revealed this summer.
The new rules are part of Mr. Obama's push for regulations designed to cut emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gases from different sectors of the economy. The White House says it can make the moves under the Clean Air Act, rather than by trying to push legislation through the Republican-controlled congress.
In November, in a joint agreement with President Xi Jinping of China, Mr. Obama pledged that the United States would cut greenhouse gas pollution by up to 28 percent by 2025. That deal came on top of a 2009 United Nations accord in which Mr. Obama pledged to lower greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent by 2020 from their 2005 levels.
Neither of those goals can be achieved without new climate change legislation or a suite of new regulations aimed at slashing greenhouse gases from different sectors of the economy, according to most climate policy experts.
Mr. Obama issued rules in his first term to regulate emissions of carbon dioxide from cars and trucks. Last year, he proposed regulations on carbon dioxide from power plants.
Methane emissions from oil and gas drilling and production and transmission systems are projected to increase because of the breakthroughs in hydraulic fracturing technology that have led to an energy boom. A 2014 study published in the journal Science found that methane was leaking from oil and natural gas drilling sites and pipelines at rates 50 percent higher than previously thought.
Mr. Obama's new regulations will be designed to curb methane leaks from oil and gas wells, pipelines and valves -- the entire fossil fuel drilling, production and transportation system.
Initially, they will apply only to new and modified oil and gas systems, but eventually, the E.P.A. is expected to issue regulations on existing systems.
The Interior Department is also expected to propose standards this spring that would reduce methane leaks from oil and gas wells on federal land.
The methane announcement will coincide with a series of climate change moves from the administration this summer. The E.P.A. has said that it will also release final regulations on power plants' carbon dioxide emissions.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/14/us/politics/obama-administration-to-unveil-plans-to-cut-methane-emissions.html
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The New York Times Blogs
(Taking Note)
January 14, 2015 Wednesday
Bernie Sanders Forces Republicans to State Their Views on Climate Change
BYLINE: FRANCIS X. CLINES
SECTION: OPINION
LENGTH: 277 words
HIGHLIGHT: A “sense of Congress” resolution in the Keystone debate will get senators to state their environmental beliefs, on the record.
With Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell promising an open debate on the Keystone XL pipeline bill, Senator Bernie Sanders, the maverick Independent from Vermont, has crafted a beauty of an amendment. He plans to offer a "sense of Congress" resolution in the debate asking each senator if he or she agrees with "the opinion of virtually the entire worldwide scientific community" that climate change is a factually proven problem resulting in "devastating problems in the United States and around the world."
If nothing else, the proposal should attract extra attention to the pipeline debate and Republican members' discomfort in staking an un-hedged position on the global warming issue.Senator McConnell, anxious to garner all the support he can, insisted there will be no back room maneuvering to block amendments. "We are wide open," he told Capitol reporters. When asked if that included the Sanders amendment, Mr. McConnell exclaimed, "Yeah," according to The Hill newspaper.
The Sanders amendment confronts what lately has been the classic answer from Republican politicians trying the shave the issue: "I'm no scientist."
"Okay, but what do you think as a senator?" is effectively Mr. Sanders' follow-up question. No I'm-glad-you-asked-me-that essay answers, please. An aye or a nay will do, on the record.
Registered Republican voters recently faced much the same question ("Do you think global warming is happening?") from the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication. Forty-four percent agreed it was. That's not a majority, but at least they answered unequivocally-which is exactly what Senator Sanders is aiming to make his colleagues do next week.
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The Guardian
January 13, 2015 Tuesday 11:22 AM GMT
Will Gadd: 'We were climbing ice that isn't going to be there next week';
When ice-climber Will Gadd set out to conquer the world's greatest glaciers he didn't realise it would become a race against climate change. Now he hopes striking images of his climbs will raise awareness of the effects of global warming
BYLINE: Jared Lindzon
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 549 words
When explorer Will Gadd set out to climb ice on every continent in the world 10 years ago, he assumed he would have plenty of time to accomplish his goal. With only Africa and Antarctica left on his to-climb list, however, the professional free climber and National Geographic Adventurer of the Year recently discovered that he would have to act sooner than he thought.
"I'd seen pictures of the ice on Kilimanjaro - and there are other peaks in Africa that have ice too - and I thought 'I'll get around to that one day, glaciers are there forever, they don't go away,'" he said. "It didn't really hit me until I started reading research papers on Africa, and one of them said the ice on Kilimanjaro could be gone in as little as five years."
Arriving at the peak of the tallest mountain in Africa last October, Gadd could hardly believe that the massive ice structures he'd seen in recent pictures were the same as the small frozen formations that greeted him.
"The ice that I had pictures of wasn't there, it was gone. The things I planned to climb were gone," he said. "It was really striking to stand on top of the mountain and look around and feel this absence of ice."
Approximately 85% of the glacial ice on Mount Kilimanjaro disappeared between 1912 and 2011, and the remainder could disappear before 2020, according to a 2012 report by Nasa. These are the same glaciers that survived three periods of abrupt climate change thousands of years ago, the most recent of which brought with it a 300 year drought starting in 2200 BC.
Traversing such delicate terrain presented its own challenges for Gadd and his team. Gadd says that he could feel the ice shifting in the sands as he climbed some of the smaller structures, his own body weight almost enough to topple the crumbling ice towers.
"I didn't want them to fall over on me and I'd get squished like a fly under a book or something," said the 47-year old, who has nearly 30 years of ice climbing experience. "I've spent a lot of time doing this and a lot of time judging the quality of ice, and I felt like it was pushing things a bit at times."
Having grown up in Canmore, Alberta, the province that's home to Canada's oil and gas industry and controversial oil sands extraction, Gadd was never "on the global warming bandwagon," at least not until he saw it happening before his own eyes.
"We were climbing ice that is easily 10,000 years old and isn't going to be there next week," he said. "We camped up on top of Kilimanjaro for about five days, and some of the things we climbed on, we came back and they had fallen over."
Now Gadd is determined to share his story in hopes of inspiring environmental action.
"Everywhere I go in the world things are changing fast in a way that they probably haven't changed in human history," he said. "It has politicised me."
The pictures Gadd captured during his travels were initially intended as souvenirs for his four- and seven-year-old children, but now he hopes to find a wider audience. Gadd suspects that much of the ice he climbed in October has since disappeared, and likens those images to documenting a species just before its extinction.
"I think showing these pictures will help convince the doubters," he said. "Anybody who sees them has to ask the question, 'why does it look like this?'"
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The New York Times
January 13, 2015 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final
Senate Opens Debate on Oil Pipeline, Setting Stage for More Energy Battles
BYLINE: By CORAL DAVENPORT
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 16
LENGTH: 888 words
WASHINGTON -- The Senate voted Monday to take up a bill that would force approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, opening a debate on energy and climate change that will preview other clashes to come between President Obama and the new Republican Congress. It will also set the stage for the energy and climate battles of the presidential election next year.
But the bill's fate appears certain: Republicans, with the help of some Democrats, are expected to easily push it through Congress, and Mr. Obama is expected to veto it.
The floor debate, which is scheduled to play out in the next two to three weeks, will serve as a showcase for various energy and environmental issues and is expected to involve votes on the science of climate change and humanity's role in causing it, as well as on a proposal to lift a 42-year-old ban on exporting crude oil.
The debate will also provide potential presidential candidates with a platform for promoting their own energy policies. Senators are expected to debate amendments on dozens of other energy issues like subsidizing heating bills for poor people, increasing taxes on oil production, and promoting renewable energy.
It has been eight years since the Senate held a similar debate before passage of an energy bill.
''I know senators from both sides are hungry for a real Senate debate,'' said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader. ''We'll have an open floor debate on jobs, the middle class, infrastructure and energy.''
Arguments over energy issues have changed drastically since the passage of the 2007 law.
At the time, lawmakers worried about increased dependence on imported oil, but the United States is now on track to become the world's largest oil and gas producer. Energy companies, in turn, have campaigned aggressively to lift the ban on crude oil exports that was imposed after the crippling 1973 Arab oil embargo.
At the same time, a growing number of scientific reports have concluded that climate changes caused by the burning of fossil fuels have begun to harm the global economy. Mr. Obama has proposed a series of Environmental Protection Agency regulations on power plants and cars in an effort to curb greenhouse gas pollution, but Republicans have said the rules would force employers to eliminate jobs.
Both issues -- how the United States responds to the oil boom and to climate change -- will be top priorities for the next president.
The Keystone fight, in particular, lawmakers from both parties said, is likely to be a Senate referendum on climate change. Democrats have criticized those Republicans who question that humans are causing global warming, which almost all scientists believe. The issue has divided Republicans, with conservatives openly questioning the science behind that conclusion and moderates trying to avoid it.
Senator Bernard Sanders, the Vermont independent, will introduce a resolution declaring that climate change caused by humans is a major threat.
''It's not going to be forgotten by history,'' said Mr. Sanders, who is considering a 2016 campaign for president as a progressive. ''They're going to be asking: Did you not hear what the scientific community all over the world is saying -- that climate change is the most serious environmental crisis facing this planet?''
Democrats are expected to attack Republicans who vote against the resolution as science deniers -- an accusation that could resonate into 2016.
A group of liberal Democrats who have made climate change their priority -- including Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Brian Schatz of Hawaii and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico -- are also expected to propose climate change amendments during the Keystone debate. And Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, who has openly spoken of the climate-change threat, said he might introduce a resolution of his own.
On the Republican side, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who is frequently mentioned as a possible presidential candidate next year, is expected to offer amendments of his own that would lift the oil export ban and speed approval of export permits for liquid natural gas.
''A booming new energy economy can also provide critical resources to our allies so they are no longer energy-dependent on petro-tyrants such as Russia's Vladimir Putin,'' Mr. Cruz said last year. ''The only thing the federal government needs to do is get out of the way and let Americans do what they do best: dream, innovate and prosper.''
Even if Mr. Cruz's proposal does not make it into the final bill, Senator Lisa Murkowski, the Alaska Republican who is chairwoman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, is preparing a separate bill aimed at promoting domestic oil and gas exports.
Democrats, led by Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, will counter with an amendment requiring that any oil shipped through the Keystone pipeline remain in the United States.
There is some bipartisan agreement on energy issues. Senators Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, and Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, will introduce a Keystone amendment that would improve energy efficiency in buildings. The measure, though modest, has drawn strong support from both parties. That amendment would die with the president's veto of the Keystone bill, but it could return as a stand-alone measure bill later this year.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/13/us/senate-votes-to-start-debate-on-keystone-bill.html
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The New York Times
January 13, 2015 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final
West Virginia Revisits Science Standards
BYLINE: By JOHN SCHWARTZ
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 15
LENGTH: 825 words
West Virginia joined 25 other states several years ago to help develop a set of standards for teaching science across the United States. Among other topics, the standards acknowledge the overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is real and has been profoundly affected by human activity.
And last month, the West Virginia Board of Education announced that it was among the first 13 states and the District of Columbia to adopt the ''Next Generation Science Standards,'' which it said would ''equip students with the critical thinking and analytical skills they need to be successful in college and to compete for today's most rewarding jobs.''
But before the standards were adopted, board members quietly made some changes that science educators say substantially weaken the current state of climate science and introduce far more doubt than is warranted.
The board's decision has come under fire and at a meeting scheduled for Wednesday the board will reconsider its action. The board could decide to go back to the original language of the curriculum, to do nothing or to drop the new standards altogether.
The changes go far beyond mere tweaks and have importance beyond the boundaries of West Virginia, said Minda Berbeco, programs and policy director for the National Center for Science Education, based in Oakland, Calif.
''They are taking the standards, they are calling it the next-generation science standards, and they are changing the composition of the science to match their own personal views,'' she said. ''That defeats the purpose of having standards developed by scientific advisory boards.''
L. Wade Linger Jr., the board member who asked for the changes, said in an interview that members had improved the curriculum. ''We simply added some balance, to get the politics out of it,'' he said. ''Adding balance to the classroom is a good thing, not a bad thing.''
One part of the altered standards, he told The Charleston Gazette, told sixth graders to ''ask questions to clarify evidence of the factors that have caused the rise in global temperatures over the past century.'' Mr. Linger had ''and fall'' added after ''the rise.''
He said he had called for the inclusion of ''and fall'' because satellite data shows temperatures going up and down. ''We shouldn't be having a standard that implies there's just a steady rise in temperature, as opposed to what the data shows, which is the temperature rises and falls all the time.''
The changes also call for discussion of Milankovitch cycles, which are extremely long-term variations in climate. Those cycles are often cited by people who deny the scientific underpinnings of climate change and note that factors other than human actions can also have a powerful effect on the climate.
Mr. Linger, who is a technology entrepreneur, said he had come to his conclusions about warming after doing research on the Internet and comparing data from satellites, weather balloons and ground sensors over time. Last month, Mr. Linger told The Gazette, ''We're on this global warming binge going on here.''
Amy Hessl, a professor of geography at West Virginia University who studies climate change, said that while temperatures might vary from year to year, the overall trend over time clearly shows warming.
Ms. Hessl said she taught her students about Milankovitch cycles -- but to prove the human effects on climate, not to disprove them. According to the science of those cycles, the earth should be in a stable period or even a period of cooling, she said.
Mr. Linger's arguments, she said, were ''exactly what the problem is with regard to teaching our students.'' Students ''need to have the understanding, and the ability, to discuss these things in an intelligent way,'' she added.
Ms. Hessl said she was unimpressed with the argument that the changes in the curriculum introduced balance, which she compared to ''bringing someone into the classroom who says smoking is actually good for your health.''
Bobbi Nicholson, a professor of education at Marshall University's graduate school in South Charleston, criticized the board, saying that ''they see their primary constituency not as West Virginia students, but as the fossil fuels industry.''
Mr. Linger said that being accused of doing the work of the state's powerful coal interests was ''a little frustrating,'' considering that he had no connection with the industry.
The board, he said, acts ''in the best interest of the kids,'' and adhered to its usual processes, including a 30-day public comment period and a vote by the full board.
The West Virginia Science Teachers Association, however, issued a statement complaining that although it had been involved with previous stages of the process, the board ''made these final changes unilaterally,'' without consulting or informing it.
''The science was compromised by these modifications to the standards,'' the teachers' group stated in a letter signed by its president, Libby Strong.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/13/us/west-virginia-revisits-science-standards.html
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The Guardian
January 12, 2015 Monday 3:03 PM GMT
Economics supports immediate action on global warming;
While optimal climate policies are debatable, the need for such policies is not
BYLINE: Dana Nuccitelli
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 794 words
Lately there seems to have been a shift away from climate science denial, toward arguments downplaying the costs of human-caused climate change. Specifically, some economists publishing reports for Bjorn Lomborg's Copenhagen Consensus Center have argued that we should focus our efforts more on adapting to climate impacts and on other issues, rather than on cutting carbon pollution and slowing global warming.
According to the Climate Action Tracker, current international climate policies will result in a global surface warming of about 4°C. If we act on all conditional pledges, including those recently made by China and the USA, we'll see about 3°C warming. This (3-4°C) is the range of global warming that the Copenhagen Consensus Center claims would be the most optimal for the global economy.
One might ask, what sorts of climate impacts would we expect to see as a result of this much global warming? Research indicates that the consequences would be quite severe. For example, widespread coral mortality would occur, and 40-70% of global species would be at risk of extinction. Glacier retreats would threaten water supplies in Central Asia and South America. Sea level rise of one meter or more would be expected by 2100, with the possibility of destabilization of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, which would cause much more sea level rise and flooding of coastal communities.
How can we reconcile such serious climate impacts with the argument that they represent the most economically optimal scenario? Part of the answer lies in dollar signs. For example, in modeling, economists only consider the value of the Great Barrier Reef in terms of its monetary value. If a species goes extinct, the cost is only measured in terms of its dollar value for human economies.
If we care only about economic costs, modeling suggests that the optimal pathway would involve further global warming of about 2°C, or close to 3°C above pre-industrial temperatures. That's higher than the international target of 2°C, but it also represents significant risks. If a significant fraction of global species go extinct, will that really have such a minimal impact on our society? And do we really value those species and overall biodiversity so little?
While economic strength is important, it's not the only thing humans value. It's also not the only consideration in deciding how much global warming we can live with. We have to consider all the risks from the resulting climate changes. Climate modeling has uncertainties, and economic modeling has even bigger ones. Climate uncertainty is not our friend; more uncertainty translates into more urgency to prevent the dangerous potential climate change consequences.
As glaciologist Lonnie Thompson famously said of climate change,
The only question is how much we will mitigate, adapt, and suffer.
There will be some combination of mitigation costs and adaptation costs to minimize the suffering resulting from climate change. Limiting global warming to even the very risky 3°C level would require that we follow through with all current conditional climate pledges, and continue along that pathway of cutting carbon pollution. Mitigating climate risks further and preserving biodiversity would require even more action.
The good news is that these economists agree that immediate climate policies, such as carbon taxes, are needed. The latest report from the Copenhagen Consensus Center notes,
the stricter the cumulative target, the more urgent that mitigation begins immediately. Every delay in striking a target effectively causes the cumulative target to rise.
The bad news is that as this report notes, limiting global warming to 2°C might be expensive because we've waited so long to make serious carbon pollution cuts.
The long delays to reach an effective international agreement to date have made the 2°C target a very expensive solution.
As Cambridge climate economist Chris Hope similarly told me,
It just seems so hard to reach a mean 2°C increase since pre-industrial times now.
In other words, the longer we wait to implement serious policies to tackle global warming, the more expensive it becomes to reach targets that will limit climate damages. Economists agree, we need immediate action to cut carbon pollution and slow global warming.
· Two links were removed on 9 January 2015 because they were inconsistent with the material linked to. The text has been revised to specify that it's economic modeling in which the monetary value of systems that are the only consideration.
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The Guardian
January 12, 2015 Monday 7:00 AM GMT
Five ways to achieve climate justice;
A recent report by the International Bar Association suggests concrete steps to getting the law right for the victims of climate change
BYLINE: Helena Kennedy
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 902 words
We are learning to see climate injustice. We see it in the distressing stories of lives destroyed, epic droughts, floods and typhoons, and families and whole peoples uprooted. Climate injustice is not at first glance a legal problem any more than climate change itself is: it is economic, political, scientific. And yet, year after year, it is to law we turn for a solution in the hope that each next round of climate talks will yield a binding international agreement.
Today, faced with the reality of the human cost of climate change, all around the world people are turning to law for help, seeking a remedy, redress, some guarantee that it won't happen again. This is the challenge of climate justice.
So far, the law has not seemed up to the task. Indeed, as the recent report of an International Bar Association (IBA) Task Force (pdf) has shown, some of our laws, both national and international, apparently make climate action more rather than less difficult. The report, however, has plenty of suggestions for improvement. Here are five recommendations that are politically palatable and could make a big difference.
1. Recognise climate change victims
We need to recognise that climate change has victims and give them a day in court. The report proposes that states adopt a "model statute on legal remedies for climate change" that can open doors to those directly affected by climate change. This is largely a matter of clarifying procedural rules. As a next step, the IBA has already embarked on drafting a model statute of this kind.
2. Reinforce human rights
It has been clear for a long time that climate change harms human rights. What has been less clear is whether courts can apply existing law and legal precedent to cover these violations. After all, the law was developed without the enormity and urgency of climate change in view. But, like other human rights harms, climate change has agents, victims and injuries. It does not require much legal imagination to make the causal connection. Politicians, lawyers and the international community can help by making the connection clear.
3. Hold corporations to account
At present, multinational corporations can escape carbon accountability in much the same way as they have often escaped responsibility for human rights violations caused by subsidiaries and suppliers abroad. As with human rights, what is needed is simple due diligence. The point must be to ensure that carbon emissions are counted right along the international supply chain, from sourcing to production to distribution to point of sale.
4. Beef up international institutions
When it comes to environmental disputes, states rarely make use of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the world's principal court for international law disputes.
No climate-related actions have come to the court. There are political reasons for this, of course, but there are also concerns about the competence of the court to manage what are often highly technical questions.
The ICJ needs bolstering. Recent appointments to the court's judicial panel may help. A recently-disbanded environmental panel could be reconstituted and strengthened. Courts are at least better than arbitration panels in these matters. But where states do choose arbitration, especially in disputes with investors over energy or environmental policy, everything should be fully transparent - not always the case today. The IBA also suggests making use of the environmental expertise at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague.
5. Get the trade system right
We need to make sure trade rules do not penalise climate actions such as low carbon trade policies. The same governments who have spent decades hashing out a climate agreement can more easily send ministers to the WTO to make this happen. At present governments wanting to tax high-carbon imports, for example, may fear a slap from the WTO's judicial authority. It is an easier matter by far to issue a ministerial declaration to the effect that such measures are lawful.
Of course, similar measures ought to be included in all bilateral and regional trade agreements, such as the Transpacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership now under negotiation. These and any other future agreements need to be thoroughly vetted for long-term climate impacts before they are finalised.
The IBA report has much more to say besides these recommendations and, in my view, ought to be mandatory reading for lawyers and policymakers everywhere. It is high time we began thinking seriously about preventing and redressing the human harm caused by climate change.
Baroness Helena Kennedy QC is co-chair of the IBA Presidential Task Force on Climate Change Justice and Human Rights and co-chair of the International Bar Association's Human Rights Institute
Read more stories like this:
· Mary Robinson: international law is coming up short in its response to climate change
· Lord Stern: global warming may create billions of climate refugees
· Ebola is a product of a destructive and exploitative global economic system
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January 12, 2015 Monday
Late Edition - Final
Kerry Lays Groundwork for Obama's Visit to India
BYLINE: By MICHAEL R. GORDON and GARDINER HARRIS; Michael R. Gordon reported from Ahmedabad, and Gardiner Harris from New Delhi.
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Foreign Desk; Pg. 5
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AHMEDABAD, India -- Secretary of State John Kerry met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday to promote economic ties with India and set the stage for President Obama's visit later this month.
''The goal is to have very concrete and tangible things that we can show forward movement on when President Obama and Prime Minister Modi meet, including on climate change,'' a senior State Department official told reporters.
Mr. Obama is planning to attend India's Republic Day celebrations on Jan. 26. It is the first time that an American president has been invited to the event as the nation's chief guest.
Negotiations between India and the United States on issues like climate change, an agreement on civilian nuclear plants, military purchases, and investment and manufacturing rules have quickened in recent weeks because of Mr. Obama's coming visit. But it remains to be seen whether the president's trip will be mainly symbolic or if it will lead to significant agreements.
Earlier in the day, Mr. Kerry participated in an investment conference in Mr. Modi's home state, Gujarat, which was attended by foreign officials, business leaders and international dignitaries like Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general of the United Nations, and Jim Yong Kim, the president of the World Bank.
India's leaders are eager for more foreign investment to energize the nation's moribund economy, and the conference was devised to showcase a state where foreign investment has been welcomed in the past 10 years.
When Mr. Modi led Gujarat as chief minister, he was able to smooth the way for foreign investors by speeding the bureaucratic decision-making process. Now that he is prime minister, he must rely more on legislative fixes. And despite having a large majority in the lower house of Parliament, Mr. Modi has yet to deliver many of the promised changes that investors are seeking.
''We're trying to complete the circle of economic reforms speedily,'' Mr. Modi told the conference attendees. ''We are planning to take a quantum leap.''
Attracted by such vows and by India's population of more than 1.2 billion people, representatives of foreign governments took turns proclaiming their determination to expand economic relations with India.
''Japan and India complete each other,'' said Yosuke Takagi, Japan's economic minister.
During his presentation to the investment conference, Mr. Kerry underscored that the United States wanted to increase trade with India to $500 billion a year, a significant leap from $97 billion in 2013.
''We can do more together, and we must do more together, and we have to do it faster,'' Mr. Kerry said.
American companies, however, have faced considerable challenges to expanding their business here, including caps on foreign investment, disputes over intellectual property and provisions that have hampered nuclear energy projects.
The two sides have also been talking for five years about how to navigate around an Indian nuclear liability law that American energy companies insist must be changed before they can build civilian plants in India. The Indians have long complained that American officials should be able to persuade the companies to invest anyway; the Americans say they do not have that power.
''I think there's a commitment on both sides to try to find a way through that,'' said a State Department official, who could not be identified under the agency's protocol for briefing reporters. ''I don't know whether that will be resolved in time for the president's visit.''
On efforts to deal with climate change, a policy priority of the Obama administration, Indian officials have repeatedly rejected any notion that India -- the world's third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases -- should promise any limits on its emissions or growth. Indeed, the government is in the midst of a coal rush, and intends to double the nation's production of coal in the next five years.
But the two sides may come to some agreement on American funding for solar power projects. A sticking point for such an agreement, however, is that Indian rules require that components of India's solar projects be made in India and not purchased abroad.
''That's what we're trying to work with India on,'' the State Department official said. ''We have, obviously, some things that we've developed in the high technology area of solar panels that we'd like to be able to bring to bear.''
During his visit here, Mr. Kerry also talked with Indian business executives and met with Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay of Bhutan, the first time in recent memory that an American secretary of state has met with a leader of the Himalayan nation.
Mr. Kerry also toured an ashram that was established in 1917 by Mahatma Gandhi, who led the drive for Indian independence.
''Gandhi's example inspires all of us to this day and for my generation helped to shape America,'' Mr. Kerry wrote in a guest book at the ashram.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/12/world/asia/john-kerry-india-narendra-modi.html
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GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Secretary of State John Kerry, left, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at an investment conference in Mr. Modi's home state, Gujarat. President Obama will visit India later this month. (PHOTOGRAPH BY RICK WILKING/REUTERS)
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January 12, 2015 Monday
The International New York Times
A Pope That Makes Democrats Squirm and Republicans Wriggle
BYLINE: By ALBERT R. HUNT | BLOOMBERG VIEW
SECTION: Section ; Column 0; Foreign Desk; LETTER FROM WASHINGTON; Pg.
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WASHINGTON -- In the Reagan era, conservative Republicans felt they had a powerful ally in Pope John Paul II, whose forceful anti-communism and anti-abortion stances played out in American politics.
Today's conservatives are apprehensive about Pope Francis, who has changed the tone and culture, not the doctrines, of the Roman Catholic Church in less than two years as pontiff. He stresses, with passion and authenticity, a commitment to addressing poverty and income inequality more than the social issues that have dominated much of the Catholic debate in America.
John Carr, a former top official of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, notes that Francis' message on abortion is ''no obsession, no retreat.'' The pope helped broker the recent thaw in American-Cuban relations, to the consternation of conservatives such as the Florida senator Marco Rubio. Francis now is determined to make addressing climate change a moral imperative for the world's 1.2 billion Catholics.
This doesn't mean that Francis is the poster pope for liberal Democrats: ''He's challenging everybody,'' said Mr. Carr, now director of the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown University. ''Most Democrats haven't been talking about poverty.'' He suggested that Francis' impact is starting to change the conversation among Democrats, along with some conservative Republicans, such as the House Ways and Means Committee chairman, Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.
Still, Francis' message is unsettling to more than a few conservatives, particularly his focus on climate change and his initiatives to influence the United Nations' conference in Paris this year. Some prominent Republicans, such as the Senate Environment Committee chairman, James Inhofe, are climate-change deniers.
Some Catholic business leaders have complained about Francis' emphasis on income inequality and the defects of capitalism. Kenneth G. Langone, the billionaire co-founder of the Home Depot and a major Republican donor, warned Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York that if the pope kept up the drumbeat, some wealthy Catholics might stop giving to church causes. (''Liberals say popes don't know anything about sex, conservatives say they don't know anything about economics,'' Mr. Carr observed.) And Francis has rattled the United States church hierarchy, notably the bishops.
American church leaders have long been advocates for the poor and for immigrants. But these are edicts many conservatives felt could be ignored; the focus and priorities were the social issues, led by hard-line prelates such as Cardinal Raymond Burke, the former archbishop of St. Louis, who refused communion to any Catholic politicians who weren't on the right side of the abortion issue.
Francis removed Cardinal Burke as head of the Vatican's high court. The cardinal, a Francis critic, recently asserted that a ''feminized'' church, which permits altar girls, is responsible for a shortage of priests and some of the pedophilia crimes. Equally important, the pope chose Blase J. Cupich, the progressive bishop of Spokane, Wash., to be the archbishop of Chicago, the third-largest American diocese. He succeeds Cardinal Francis George, a conservative cultural warrior.
Garry Wills, a renowned historian and Catholic scholar, said the pope has sent a strong message to entrenched interests, such as those that oppose ''Obamacare'' for offering contraception coverage, even though the vast majority of American Catholics practice birth control.
''Francis has condemned careerism, which will make the bishops pay more attention to Catholic lives,'' Mr. Wills said.
The pope is set to visit the United States in September. He'll go to Philadelphia and New York and probably Washington. If so, look for a visit to the White House, as well as to a soup kitchen or some other venue that serves the poor, and he might accept Speaker John Boehner's invitation to be the first pontiff to address a joint session of Congress.
Privately, some right-wing Republicans have grumbled about this invitation, but they can't block it. It's not hard to envision an exceptional moment in the Capitol as pro-choice Democrats squirm when the pontiff celebrates the sanctity of life and Republicans wriggle when the Holy Father talks about social justice, income inequality and the moral imperative of addressing climate change.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/12/us/politics/a-pope-that-makes-democrats-squirm-and-republicans-wriggle.html
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(First Draft)
January 12, 2015 Monday
Today in Politics
BYLINE: THE NEW YORK TIMES
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HIGHLIGHT: President Obama is under fire by conservatives because he did not attend the antiterrorism unity march in Paris.
Obama Misses French Unity March, and His Absence Is Noted
Good Monday morning from Washington, where President Obama is under fire by conservatives because he did not attend the antiterrorism unity march in Paris, Republicans are moving quickly to set the tone in a Congress they control, and several Democrats appear ready to buck their party's leadership. A Yale study finds that Republicans are sharply split over climate change and what to do about it. And Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin schools Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wis.
It was a photograph printed, broadcast and tweeted around the globe: The front line of Sunday's Paris unity march. There was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority. Between them were the French president, the German chancellor and the leader of Mali, arm in arm.
Glaringly missing were President Obama, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. or Secretary of State John Kerry.
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. was in Paris for an antiterorrism meeting, but he didn't march. The United States ambassador, Jane D. Hartley, did march, but her presence was not widely noted in a crowd of more than a million people that included 40 world leaders.
"Not an excuse in universe can explain why US failed to send to Paris a more visible rep. than Holder. MIAs BHO/Mrs BHO/Kerry/Biden," tweeted Aaron David Miller, a former State Department official who has worked for both Democratic and Republican administrations.
Conservatives were uniformly brutal, as expected, with some snidely pointing out that Mr. Obama did make room on his schedule to meet the N.B.A. champions, the San Antonio Spurs, at the White House on Monday.
The White House declined to say whether Mr. Obama or Mr. Biden had considered marching. One administration official noted that the president had issued several public statements about the terrorist attacks, made a condolence trip to the French Embassy in Washington and had spoken on the phone with President François Hollande of France.
A senior State Department official said that Mr. Kerry couldn't attend because was in India meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a trip that had long been scheduled. However, Mr. Kerry said on Monday that he would fly to Paris this week in a gesture of support for the French government.
On CNN, Fareed Zakaria took a nuanced view of what he said was a White House mistake. The absence in Paris of a high-ranking American leader, he said, highlighted that the fight against Islamic terrorism is "not all about America."
- Michael D. Shear and Steve Kenny
Republicans in Congress Waste No Time in Getting Aggressive
The new Republican Congress will challenge President Obama on two fronts this week. The Senate is taking up its Keystone XL pipeline measure, and the House will consider a Homeland Security spending bill that Republicans intend to use to thwart the administration's immigration efforts.
With the Department of Homeland Security operating under a spending plan that expires Feb. 27, the Appropriations Committee rolled out a $40 billion bill on Friday that would finance border control, law enforcement and antiterrorism efforts. House Republicans are expected to add a series of amendments that would not only deny funding to carry out the president's executive order on immigration but take aim at some of the earlier White House efforts to tackle the issue.
There is a good reason that the House, which typically waits until the last minute on spending fights, is moving so quickly and so aggressively. The Republican leadership wants its most conservative members to see that the legislation they favor cannot clear the Senate. So by starting early, they preserve time to go back and find a different approach before the money runs out. Both House and Senate leaders have said they would not allow funding for the agency to lapse in the aftermath of the Paris attacks.
The Senate is to begin its Keystone debate on Monday, but it is not expected to get to a final vote on the measure until next week. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, has said he will allow senators a chance to amend the bill, and House and Senate Republicans are scheduled to leave on Wednesday for a joint retreat in Hershey, Pa.
- Carl Hulse
Yale Study Shows G.O.P. Divisions on Climate Change
Listening to Republican leaders, you'd think that party members across the board question or deny a human link to global warming.
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the new majority leader, has made it a priority to block, delay and deny funds to President Obama's climate change regulations. In 2012, every Republican presidential candidate but one - former Gov. Jon M. Huntsman Jr. of Utah - questioned or denied the science of climate change. In the last year's elections, many Republicans chose to dodge the issue with a simple phrase: "I'm not a scientist."
But Republican voters are deeply divided on the issue, according to a survey analysis out on Monday from the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication. It found that 56 percent of all Republicans support regulating planet-warming carbon pollution. The divide is more apparent when Republicans are asked to define their ideology: 62 percent who called themselves moderate Republicans said that climate change is real, but just 38 percent of conservative Republicans and 29 percent of Tea Party Republicans agreed.
"There's a simmering struggle within the Republican Party to define their stance on climate change," and Anthony Leiserowitz, an author of the study. "It's part of the bigger struggle you're seeing within the Republican establishment and the Tea Party."
The split could prove to be a challenge for 2016 Republican candidates hoping to win over conservative donors and "super PACs." Deep-pocketed advocacy groups like Americans for Prosperity have made it clear that they'll attack candidates in the primaries who support climate-change policy.
Climate change was almost never mentioned in the 2012 presidential race, but it will be impossible to ignore next year. Among the most consequential decisions facing the next president will be whether to carry out President Obama's proposed climate change rules or try to undo them.
- Coral Davenport
Which Democrats Will Go Renegade? Early Votes Provide Some Hints
One of the major questions of the new Congress is which Democrats will be willing to break ranks and work with Republicans, who now hold majorities in both the House and Senate. Some early votes last week provided a few clues.
In the House, 12 Democrats joined with Republicans in voting to define full-time work as 40 hours per week under the new health care law, and 28 Democrats voted for the Keystone XL pipeline. More tellingly, eight Democrats voted with Republicans in both instances, guaranteeing that they would be courted by Republicans on future votes. The eight included two freshmen, Representatives Brad Ashford of Nebraska and Gwen Graham of Florida.
In the Senate, Democrats split on an unsuccessful attempt by Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts to change a Wall Street provision in a terrorism insurance bill. Thirteen Democrats voted against Ms. Warren, and Republicans looking for Democratic votes will be sure to remember them.
- Carl Hulse
What We're Watching Today
The Supreme Court begins hearings at 10 a.m., including in the First Amendment case Reed v. Town of Gilbert, No.13-502.
Anthony Foxx, the transportation secretary, is to unveil a 30-year transportation plan.
Heritage Action - the political arm of the Heritage Foundation - begins a two-day policy conference focusing on conservative issues, starting at 11 a.m.
The Brookings Institution holds a conference on the dangers posed by Westerners who have joined Islamist fighters in Iraq and Syria, starting at 10 a.m.
Chris Christie, Paul Ryan and the Karma Cowboys
In a year's time, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey and Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin could be facing off in Republican primary presidential debates.
On Sunday, they were on opposite sides of a very cold football field in Green Bay, Wis., with Mr. Ryan cheering on the Packers and Mr. Christie in town with his good friend Jerry Jones, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys (their bear-hug bromance was made famous in a video last week).
So when the Packers beat the Cowboys on Sunday, Mr. Ryan got in a rare last word against Mr. Christie:
"@GovChristie, do you need a hug now? #GoPackGo #WinninginWisco?"
- Steve Kenny
Our Favorites From Today's Times
A newly declassified report shows thegrowing F.B.I. role in wireless surveillance.
Republican governors are facing a test of their pragmatism.
Nate Cohn of The Upshot makes the argument that Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin is the potential candidate who should most worry former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida.
Former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania indicates "heintends to reclaim conservative primary voters ahead of another White House bid in 2016."
The firing of Atlanta's fire chief has turned into a political debate aboutfreedom of speech and religious expression.
What We're Reading Elsewhere
Global coverage of the Paris unity rally from The Guardian,Le Monde (in French), Frankfurter Allgemeine (in German), The Jerusalem Post (in English), Al Jazeera (in English), El País (in Spanish), O Globo (in Portuguese), Dawn(from Pakistan, in English) and China Daily (in English).
Given Mitt Romney's recent signals to Republican donors that he is thinking of a 2016 run, The Washington Posts asks: What the heck is he doing?
Some congressional Democrats say the party isn't doing enough to line up younger leaders, Politico reports.
In anticipation of a same-sex marriage ruling from the Supreme Court, The Los Angeles Times revisits a 1958 California case that it says was "the first gay rights victory at America's highest court."
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The Guardian
January 11, 2015 Sunday 5:40 PM GMT
At least one major oil company will turn its back on fossil fuels, says scientist;
Jeremy Leggett, former industry adviser, warns over plunging commodity prices and soaring costs of risky energy projects
BYLINE: Terry Macalister
SECTION: BUSINESS
LENGTH: 689 words
The oil price crash coupled with growing concerns about global warming will encourage at least one of the major oil companies to turn its back on fossil fuels in the near future, predicts an award-winning scientist and former industry adviser.
Dr Jeremy Leggett, who has had consultations on climate change with senior oil company executives over 25 years, says it will not be a rerun of the BP story when the company launched its "beyond petroleum" strategy and then did a U-turn.
"One of the oil companies will break ranks and this time it is going to stick," he said. "The industry is facing plunging commodity prices and soaring costs at risky projects in the Arctic, deepwater Brazil and elsewhere.
"Oil companies are also realising it is no long morally defensible to ignore the consequences of climate change."
Leggett, now a solar energy entrepreneur and climate campaigner, points to Total of France as the kind of group that could abandon carbon fuels in the same way that E.ON, the German utility, announced plans before Christmas to spin off coal and gas interests and concentrate its future growth on renewables.
Pressure on the energy industry to pull out of fossil fuels has grown in recent months with a campaign for pension funds to disinvest from coal, oil and gas.
A new report published this week by researchers at University College London deepened the message that vast amounts of oil in the Middle East, coal in the US and gas in Russia cannot be exploited if the global temperature rise is to be held at the 2C level safety limit agreed by countries.
Leggett, who once conducted research into shale funded by BP and Shell, chairs Carbon Tracker Initiative, a thinktank which aims to raise awareness among key decision-makers about the risks that fossil fuel investments pose to wider financial stability. He believes the current 50% slump in the price of Brent crude will cause the US shale boom to go bust with potentially alarming consequences for the financial system.
"Many of the shale drillers have been feasting on junk bond finance, which was so easy when oil prices were above $100 (£66) but with prices at $50 confidence is going to collapse," he said. "Should the shale narrative evaporate then it is going to be very embarrassing for all sorts of political promoters of the industry, including George Osborne."
Leggett said that despite the price collapse due to oversupply, he remained convinced the "peak oil" theory that supplies will eventually be unable to meet demand remains intact.
This is not because there are not the oil or gas reserves in the ground to meet future growth, but because they are too costly and environmentally dangerous to produce, he argues.
"I would say to both the utility industry and the oil and gas industry: its game over, guys," he said. "You have got to identify the point at which it's all going to be thoroughly changed and you have got to map back from it.
"You have to think strategically. The point to map back from is zero carbon in the energy system, not the electricity system, by 2050, because more than 100 governments want that in the [next UN climate change] treaty being prepared for signing in Paris."
But he also believes the energy industry is privately aware of the problems as it watches its own costs of fossil fuel extraction going up while the costs of solar and other new technologies are coming down.
Leggett, who plans to stands down as chairman of the highly successful Solarcentury renewable business he founded to focus on climate change campaigning, holds what he calls "friendly critic" sessions with the fossil fuel sector these days. The tone of the meetings has changed significantly over the past two years, he said.
"Before it was know your enemy. Now it's: 'Crikey. A lot of this may be coming true on our watch. What shall we do about it?' There are top-to-bottom strategic reviews going on in E.ON but in other companies as well, utility and oil and gas. So it will be really interesting to see which is the first of the oil and gas companies to break from the pack, although I fear BP and Shell are going backwards not forwards on carbon."
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The Guardian
January 11, 2015 Sunday 1:28 PM GMT
Stanford professors urge withdrawal from fossil fuel investments;
Faculty members call on university to recognise urgency of climate change and divest from all oil, coal and gas companies · Read the Stanford professors' letter
BYLINE: Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 876 words
Three hundred professors at Stanford, including Nobel laureates and this year's Fields medal winner, are calling on the university to rid itself of all fossil fuel investments, in a sign that the campus divestment movement is gathering force.
In a letter to Stanford's president, John Hennessy, and the board of trustees, made available exclusively to the Guardian, the faculty members call on the university to recognise the urgency of climate change and divest from all oil, coal and gas companies.
Stanford, which controls a $21.4bn (£14.2bn) endowment, eliminated direct investments in coalmining companies last May, making it the most prominent university to cut its ties to the industries that cause climate change. Months later, however, the university invested in three oil and gas companies.
Campus divestment campaigns have spread to about 300 universities and colleges over the last few years, but are largely dominated by students. The Stanford letter was initiated by faculty, and signed by the first female winner of the prestigious Fields prize in mathematics, Maryam Mizarkhani, as well as the Nobel laureates Douglas Osheroff and Roger Kornberg, Paul Ehrlich, a population analyst, Terry Root, a biologist and UN climate report author, and others - 300 faculty members in total.
The letter calls on Stanford to pull out of all fossil fuel investments, not just coal. "The urgency and magnitude of climate change call not for partial solutions, however admirable; they demand the more profound and thorough commitment embodied in divestment from all fossil-fuel companies," the letter says.
"The alternative - for Stanford to remain invested in oil and gas companies - presents us with a paradox: if a university seeks to educate extraordinary youth so they may achieve the brightest possible future, what does it mean for that university simultaneously to invest in the destruction of that future? Given that the university has signalled its awareness of the dangers posed by fossil fuels, what are the implications of Stanford's making only a partial confrontation with this danger?"
Elizabeth Tallent, an English professor and one of the organisers of the letter, said she saw the campaign as a natural extension of her work as a professor. "I think if you want what you do to matter, and not only for a moment in the classroom, you think: how can students make use of this in 10 years or 20 years? If you are imagining the future of youth in 20 years, then you run into the problem of what the world will look like."
Ehrlich, known for his warnings about overpopulation, said Stanford had an obligation to protect its endowment. "It's crystal-clear that fossil fuels, most of them, are going to have to remain in the ground if we are going to avoid a real catastrophe and of course the value of stock is tied to that," he said. "If we are not going to be able to use those fossil fuels, the stock is going to tank and places like Stanford have a fiscal responsibility to maintain the endowment. Having an investment in fossil fuels is a very bad investment."
Stanford would not comment directly on the petition. But a spokeswoman, Lisa Lapin, said in an email that Stanford had completely withdrawn its investments from coalmining companies.
She said an advisory panel was studying the feasibility of further fossil fuel divestment. "Stanford takes all concerns raised with the university about the nature and impact of its investments very seriously," Lapin said.
The fossil-fuel divestment campaign has grown rapidly over the past few years, driven by the deepening awareness that most of the world's coal, oil and gas reserves must stay in the ground to avoid catastrophic climate change. According to the world's leading climate scientists, those safety limits could be breached within 30 years if the world goes on burning fossil fuels at the current rate,
Last September, the heirs to the Rockefeller oil fortune withdrew their $860m philanthrophic fund from investments in tar sands, coal, and oil. Campaigners claimed at the time to have persuaded 800 investors - foundations such as the Rockefeller brothers, religious groups, healthcare organisations, cities and universities - to withdraw a total of $50bn from fossil fuel investments over the next five years.
But Harvard rejected a campaign by students and 100 faculty to remove fossil fuel holdings from its $32bn endowment, claiming such a move would have only a negligible financial impact.
George Shultz, secretary of state under Ronald Reagan and a fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution who has tried to push fellow Republicans to act on climate, said the university should think instead about imposing a revenue-neutral carbon tax.
"I am very much on the side of worrying about climate issues," he said. But he did not support the divestment campaign, adding: "It's mainly to make people here feel good."
Ehrlich said it was important for leading universities such as Stanford to take a stand. "It is very important that educational institutions in particular and organisations that think of themselves as part of civil society make this important step," he said. "It is symbolic. It is not going to instantly change the amount of greenhouse gas emissions, but it is damn important."
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The Guardian
January 9, 2015 Friday 9:59 PM GMT
Obama faces growing pressure as construction of Keystone pipeline moves a step closer;
Nebraska supreme court rules that pipeline can go ahead as House of Representatives again votes to begin work
BYLINE: Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 908 words
Barack Obama was staring at decision day on the Keystone XL pipeline on Friday after the contentious project cleared an important legal hurdle and gained new support in Congress.
In a much anticipated decision, the Nebraska supreme court on Friday narrowly upheld a decision by the Republican governor, Dave Heineman, to reroute the pipeline through the state without consulting an independent commission.
Three hours later, the US House of Representatives voted 266-153 to force construction of the pipeline, keeping Keystone at the top of the agenda of the new Republican-controlled Congress. Twenty-eight Democrats voted in favour of the pipeline, the 10th time the House has approved it.
"President Obama is now out of excuses for blocking the Keystone pipeline and the thousands of American jobs it would create," said the House speaker, John Boehner. "It's time to start building."
The White House said it would veto such legislation, pending decisions from the Nebraska court and the State Department.
But with the court ruling now in from Nebraska, one of Obama's main justifications for blocking efforts in Congress to force his hand - or rejecting the pipeline outright - was gone.
TransCanada said: "We welcome today's decision. Every aspect of this project has been extensively reviewed and we have repeatedly demonstrated how this project is in America's national interest.
"Building Keystone XL is the choice of reason. It is time to approve Keystone XL."
Campaigners said Keystone still failed the climate change test and called on Obama to reject the pipeline outright.
"Obviously we have a bloody nose this morning, but we are not down for the fight," Jane Kleeb, founder of Bold Nebraska, the coalition of landowners and environmental campaigners that had sought to block the pipeline, told a conference call with reporters. "We are confident the president has all the information he needs to reject a Keystone permit."
More than six years after TransCanada first proposed a pipeline that would transport tar sands crude across the American heartland to refineries on the Texas Gulf coast, Obama could at last be running out of time to make a decision on Keystone.
The pipeline - now a flashpoint for a wider debate about climate change and the economy - is still under review by the State Department. Up to 10 other government agencies could also weigh in before the State Department decides whether the pipeline is in the national interest. Then it's up to Obama.
Keystone opponents in Nebraska said they expected a final decision from the State Department to arrive within a few weeks or a month. Girling said he believed the State Department could reach a decision about a permit in two months.
In both scenarios, the pressure is building on Obama to act, following Friday's vote in the House, and moves in the Senate to hold a debate on Keystone early next week.
"Today's court decision wipes out President Obama's last excuse," Lisa Murkowski, the Alaska Republican and chair of the Senate energy committee said in a statement.
The split ruling from the Nebraska supreme court on the proposed pipeline route represents a wafer-thin victory for Keystone supporters.
Four of the seven justices agreed with a lower court ruling in 2012 rejecting TransCanada's route. But the proposed route remains lawful because court rules required a super majority of five judges to overturn the route.
"We believe that Nebraska citizens deserve a decision on the merits. But the supermajority requirement, coupled with the dissent's refusal to reach the merits, means that the citizens cannot get a binding decision from this court," the court wrote in the majority opinion.
A court ruling in the other direction would have forced TransCanada to gain approval for its route from an obscure regulatory commission in Nebraska, a process that could take at least seven months.
Brian Jorde, a lawyer for the three Nebraska landowners who sued to block the pipeline's route, said the matter was far from settled - although he did not say whether he would seek other legal avenues.
"This will be decided once and for all on another day," Jorde said. "Unfortunately for TransCanada this could potentially be the worst possible outcome."
Girling said he understood that opposition to the pipeline could continue.
Republicans have seized on the pipeline for the first substantive business of the new Congress, ratcheting up the pressure on Obama with successive votes for approval.
The Keystone vote in the Senate is also expected to pass, with more than 60 co-sponsors so far. Democrats will try to slow its process or use the debate to expose Republicans' views on climate change, but they do not have the numbers to block a Keystone vote outright.
However, the White House has been just as adamant that it will not allow Congress to force its hand.
The House and the Senate while having enough votes for pro-Keystone legislation do not have the votes to overcome a presidential veto.
The White House said it would still veto Keystone legislation despite the Nebraska ruling.
"Regardless of the Nebraska ruling today, the House bill still conflicts with longstanding executive branch procedures regarding the authority of the president and prevents the thorough consideration of complex issues that could bear on US national interests," the deputy press secretary, Eric Schultz, said in a statement.
"If presented to the president, he will veto the bill."
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The Guardian
January 9, 2015 Friday 3:49 PM GMT
A new study urges leaving fossil fuels in the ground. How will it affect business?;
Climate researchers are urging that fossil-fuel extraction come to a complete halt if governments are to stall temperature rise. We asked business experts and investors to weigh in Leave fossil fuels buried to prevent climate change, study urgesGeorge Monbiot: Why leaving fossil fuels in the ground is good for everyone
BYLINE: Katharine Gammon
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 1260 words
To prevent the earth from overheating, countries must leave vast reserves of fossil fuels untouched underground. That's the conclusion of a new report published this week in the journal Nature. Trillions of dollars of known and extractable coal, oil and gas - including deposits in Canada and the Arctic - cannot be burned if the global temperature rise is to be kept under the agreed-upon goal of 2C.
While much of the carbon math is known - about three to five times more carbon in reserve than can be burned to stay within the world-set temperature limit - this is the first study to look at exactly where those fossil fuels are.
Around the world, 82% of current fossil fuels must be left underground. In the US, Australia and Russia, more than 90% of coal reserves must be unused, and in China and India, two-thirds of coal reserves are not to be burned in the scenario. The researchers question why fossil fuel companies continue to pour billions (approximately $670bn in 2013) into the search for new oil and gas when there is more underground than humans can safely use.
We asked green business experts and investors for their views. Add your voice to the conversation in the comments below.
Andrew Winston, CEO of Winston Eco-Strategies
What this study seems to do is to take the carbon math-data and actually overlay it over real places. So it's not in theory that we have to cut 80% of our carbon emissions by 2050 - there are a bunch of studies that say there's this three-to-five-times ratio of known reserves to what we can safely burn. But I haven't seen anything before that says: this is what it means for Canada, for the Arctic, for the US. That's why this is such a great piece of analysis.
It's great because it does the simple math that says we can't burn all of the reserves we're trying to excavate. There's a certain number of gigatons of carbon and a certain number we can't burn.
We are not suicidal as a species, so I think we will not burn it all. We may burn more than we should, and play with fire, but there's no way we can burn all this.
Since we're not going to burn it all, we know that there are massive quantities of investment going into assets that are stranded. The spending of hundreds of millions per year finding new reserves because they have to keep their reserve ratios up is fundamentally irresponsible. You're keeping a reserve ratio up of something you're never going to use.
I think we're going to look back and find this to be the greatest waste of capital. We're sinking trillions of dollars into finding unconventional oil and gas that we're never going to use rather than planning for the transition.
If the oil companies put that much money into renewable investment, energy transmission and storage, we could get pretty far. From the corporate, country and geopolitical perspective it's about where we are putting our bets.
Jonathan Grant, director of sustainability and climate change for PricewaterhouseCoopers
This is an issue that more investors and companies are considering, as some governments and pressure groups have called for the phase-out of fossil fuels by 2050. Some investors are looking for more consistency and transparency in how energy companies report on their reserves and the impact of carbon constraints on their business.
But many in the energy sector take the view that energy demand will continue to rise, and that the targets to phase out fossil fuels by 2050 appear implausible. They also comment that carbon capture and storage could increase the amount of "burnable" carbon. The issue stirred controversy at the climate summit in Lima, where there were big gaps between the science of climate change and the policy and business responses.
Ed Davey noted yesterday that the Paris summit is likely to fall well short of the 2-degree target, highlighting the gap between what is scientifically sufficient and what is politically possible. However there are many big businesses, including some energy companies, still calling for the trillion-ton carbon budget.
Danielle Fugere, president and chief counsel at As You Sow
I think the basics of this report we understood anyway. I think this report confirms the issues that the world is dealing with. Investors are starting to ask the hard questions: we see the writing on the wall. We see energy market fundamentals change. And that's why we are starting to ask companies the hard questions about these issues.
This year we filed a shareholder resolution against Chevron and Exxon, citing to these facts - if we are committing to a 2-degree scenario, the majority of fossil fuel resources cannot be burned. We looked at the increasing cost of finding these new reserves and the fact that demand is expected to slow because of competition in low-cost renewables and energy efficiency.
The basic fundamentals are not looking good, so we're asking companies: does it make sense to continue to expend resources on high-cost, high-carbon reserves when it looks like there is a high potential for those resources to be stranded in the future?
We asked Chevron and Exxon, instead of investing in those resources, to return capital to shareholders. We are also interested in getting those companies to be more diversified, as a way to protect investor assets.
We even talked yesterday with Exxon. They continue to believe that they can sell all the resources they develop. It's interesting - their view of the world is different. They think the developing world will continue to use fossil fuel energy as they've done in the past.
I think that investors are starting to perceive that market fundamentals are changing, whether or not governments readily jump on the 2-degree bandwagon. We see a whole number of factors moving markets away from fossil fuels - pollution, technology changes, efficiency increases, competition from low-cost renewables. We're seeing the market changing - the world is moving to cleaner resources, and these energy companies have to move with the market or they'll get replaced.
Leslie Samuelrich, president of Green Century Capital Management
We think that investors can potentially reduce financial risk by staying away from fossil fuel companies. The report amplifies the message that fossil-free investors have been hearing and responding to. It's like one more nail in the coffin of developing fossil fuels that the earth can't afford to burn and that investors shouldn't risk supporting.
In the short-term, investing in fossil fuels is becoming more and more expensive for companies. We did a report with another firm and 350.org that showed the big oil companies have tripled their capital spending in the last five years, as they pursue more dangerous and expensive projects to find oil.
All that money could be going back into shareholder pockets but instead is being used to pursue unneeded oil that may never be able to be burned. It's an irresponsible corporate strategy to be pursuing.
The more evidence and ammunition that independent reports can demonstrate for investors on this, the quicker we get to people moving out of investing in fossil fuels and investing in companies doing water conversation, renewable energy and energy efficiency.
Katharine Gammon is a journalist based in Santa Monica, writing about innovation, science and technology.
The values-led business hub is funded by SC Johnson. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled 'brought to you by'. Find out more here.
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The Guardian
January 9, 2015 Friday 11:04 AM GMT
Eight months until new development goals are agreed. Then what?;
What is the evidence that the sustainable development goals will make the world a better place? A former World Bank economist considers the theory of change
BYLINE: Charles Kenny
SECTION: GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT PROFESSIONALS NETWORK
LENGTH: 820 words
This is a big year for global gatherings on existential topics. There's the Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons planned for New York, then in September, still at the United Nations headquarters, a new set of global development goals will be agreed, and finally the 21st UN Climate Change conference will be held in Paris late in the year.
The outlook for these three conferences is mixed. But at least two of them have an obvious path towards world-changing impact. The summit to adopt the post-2015 development agenda is the odd one out. The politics of writing the goals appears to have ensured the politics of using them has been relegated to a distant afterthought. And unless the UN secretary general and the world's governments agree on what the goals are actually designed to accomplish, the hope that they'll make a difference is misguided.
It is far from clear the nuclear and climate conferences will leave the peoples of earth cheering dramatic progress towards a world of peace, harmony and stability. But both events still share an advantage over the UN general assembly meetings on the sustainable development goals (SDGs). There is at least a clear rationale for why they could make a difference if anything was agreed. Were Pakistan and India to sign the non-proliferation treaty, or North Korea or Israel to state they will comply with it, these would be dramatic steps to a safer world. Even if negotiators have stepped away from signing a binding international treaty at Paris, it makes sense that a global pledging session on reducing carbon emissions might help slow the pace of climate change.
That leaves the SDGs. Imagine for a moment that the 169 targets were agreed by the full UN assembly as the draft stands. We would be setting ourselves the goal of achieving phenomenal global progress by 2030, including eliminating global poverty, malnutrition, HIV/Aids, malaria, and all violence against women; providing universal secondary education and health care as well as adequate housing, water, sanitation, energy and communications for all. It would be hard to write a more generous wishlist for Santa Claus but how will that make the world a better place? To put it in development jargon, what the sustainable development goals lack is a theory of change.
There's a strong consensus in the international community that it is worth creating new global development goals because the old set - the millennium development goals (MDGs) - worked. But there are holes in that argument. First off, the evidence that the MDGs made a difference isn't as watertight as commonly thought. Some analysts ( including me ) argue that for issues such as child mortality, rates of improvement did speed up a little in the MDG period. But even these marginal associations have been contested. And while the goals provided a rationale and direction for greater aid flows - and aid did rise after the MDGs were announced - the link between aid and progress in meeting the targets is also arguable.
Make no mistake: a marginal impact on pushing marginally faster progress at the global level can still add up to many millions of lives saved and millions more improved. It is completely reasonable to think that the MDGs had that impact, so it is perfectly logical to try for another set. But the second problem with the rationale that "the MDGs worked, so why shouldn't the SDGs?" is that no one thinks that the new goals will lead to more aid. Those flows look set to stagnate, at best and continue declining in importance to emerging economies.
If not aid, then what? Will a non-binding, aspirational statement of world leaders at the UN really push dramatic policy change in rich and poor countries? There is little evidence of that from previous UN declarations.
So what is the realistic ask from the development community for these new goals? To set an agenda for UN agencies? To channel what aid remains? As a tool to raise attention and money? It is in part because there has been no agreement on what they are for that the draft goals have ended up a laundry list of the sadly impossible (for example, the target to "halt the loss of all biodiversity"), practically immeasurable ("respect cultural diversity") and simply unfathomable ("forge unity in diversity").
There is no doubt that a new set of development goals will be agreed this year but time is fast running out to make sure they matter.
Read more stories like this:
How the MDGs have changed the world: eight leaders reflect
What makes people happy and why it matters for development
Impact evaluation: which way forward?
Advertising feature: Water, sanitation and hygiene: what should we aim for post-2015?
Join our community of development professionals and humanitarians. Follow @GuardianGDP on Twitter.
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The Guardian
January 9, 2015 Friday 9:38 AM GMT
Mary Robinson: international law is coming up short in its response to climate change;
Climate justice requires solidarity between nations. The law can help promote change, but it is up to us all to acknowledge our responsibilities
BYLINE: Mary Robinson
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 784 words
When it comes to human suffering, the IPCC doesn't mince its words. According to its latest report - the culmination of seven years of research and intense negotiations - climate change is on its way to causing "severe, pervasive and irreversible" damage on the world's people, cultures, ecosystems and economies.
The report identifies a series of imminent risks, including illness, the breakdown of infrastructure and public services, food and water insecurity, and loss of rural livelihoods.
The human cost of global warming has a name: climate injustice. The remedy, then, is climate justice. Climate justice is not just the recognition that climate change is a matter of human rights and development; it also involves recognising that the victims of global warming are not responsible for it, nor can their actions alone halt it.
Take the Maldives islands in the Indian Ocean, coral atolls vulnerable to rising sea levels. In 2009, the country's leaders and its people showed extraordinary foresight and courage as they embarked on a plan to become carbon neutral by 2020. But they cannot do it alone, they need the rest of the world to support them to achieve this goal.
Solidarity is at the core of climate justice. It is about sharing the benefits and burdens of climate change - and our response to it - fairly, making sure that the 1.3 billion people living without access to electricity and the 2.7 billion relying on biomass for cooking reap the benefits of access to clean, sustainable energy.
Climate justice also means sharing responsibility. Those most responsible must take the lead and show greatest ambition in their domestic climate actions and support for vulnerable countries. As we make the transition to a carbon neutral world, we should all participate in the decisions taken along the way. This is the challenge of climate justice, finding fair solutions to a global problem.
The concept of climate justice has an advocate in one of the world's leading legal organisations. The International Bar Association (IBA), the global voice of the legal profession, has released a detailed report on the role of international law in addressing climate change (pdf). Its assessment is frankly shocking. It finds that climate change touches on every area of international law - human rights, trade, investment, migration - and everywhere the law is coming up short.
Yet the report is also full of hope. The authors, a group of eminent lawyers from around the world, looked hard at the international legal system and found that more effective and coherent use of existing laws, rules and norms would inform better climate responses at the international and national level. The report is also full of practical and realistic suggestions for reform, from sharpening state obligations under international human rights law to getting the World Trade Organisation to state clearly and publicly that trade policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gases do not fall foul of the rules.
Of particular interest is the report's strong call for better human rights protections for the victims of climate change. States must take into account the fact that carbon emissions cost lives. Likewise, I back the report's call for nations to have the courage to prepare the ground for a legally-binding commitment on climate change which will address not just climate change but climate justice.
The IBA's backing for climate justice is pivotal, but we cannot leave climate justice to the lawyers. Climate justice is about all of us. It is about acknowledging our personal responsibility in an interconnected world. It is about acting outside the narrow confines of self-interest - even as it becomes clear that our self-interest can destroy the lives of our own children and grandchildren.
The IBA report is not the last word on climate justice, but it is an important and credible voice. It is a clarion call, and a sign that the word is spreading. The only solutions to climate change are fair solutions that protect human rights and uphold the rule of law.
Mary Robinson is the former president of Ireland and chair of the Mary Robinson Foundation - Climate Justice
Read more stories like this:
· Lord Stern: global warming may create billions of climate refugees
· Ebola is a product of a destructive and exploitative global economic system
· 8 institutional innovations that could update the economic system
Join the community of sustainability professionals and experts. Become a GSB member to get more stories like this direct to your inbox.
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The Guardian
January 9, 2015 Friday 7:00 AM GMT
Mary Robinson: International law is coming up short in its response to climate change;
Climate justice requires solidarity between nations. The law can help promote change, but it is up to us all to acknowledge our responsibilities
BYLINE: Mary Robinson
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 784 words
When it comes to human suffering, the IPCC doesn't mince its words. According to its latest report - the culmination of seven years of research and intense negotiations - climate change is on its way to causing "severe, pervasive and irreversible" damage on the world's people, cultures, ecosystems and economies.
The report identifies a series of imminent risks, including illness, the breakdown of infrastructure and public services, food and water insecurity, and loss of rural livelihoods.
The human cost of global warming has a name: climate injustice. The remedy, then, is climate justice. Climate justice is not just the recognition that climate change is a matter of human rights and development; it also involves recognising that the victims of global warming are not responsible for it, nor can their actions alone halt it.
Take the Maldives islands in the Indian Ocean, coral atolls vulnerable to rising sea levels. In 2009, the country's leaders and its people showed extraordinary foresight and courage as they embarked on a plan to become carbon neutral by 2020. But they cannot do it alone, they need the rest of the world to support them to achieve this goal.
Solidarity is at the core of climate justice. It is about sharing the benefits and burdens of climate change - and our response to it - fairly, making sure that the 1.3 billion people living without access to electricity and the 2.7 billion relying on biomass for cooking reap the benefits of access to clean, sustainable energy.
Climate justice also means sharing responsibility. Those most responsible must take the lead and show greatest ambition in their domestic climate actions and support for vulnerable countries. As we make the transition to a carbon neutral world, we should all participate in the decisions taken along the way. This is the challenge of climate justice, finding fair solutions to a global problem.
The concept of climate justice has an advocate in one of the world's leading legal organisations. The International Bar Association (IBA), the global voice of the legal profession, has released a detailed report on the role of international law in addressing climate change (pdf). Its assessment is frankly shocking. It finds that climate change touches on every area of international law - human rights, trade, investment, migration - and everywhere the law is coming up short.
Yet the report is also full of hope. The authors, a group of eminent lawyers from around the world, looked hard at the international legal system and found that more effective and coherent use of existing laws, rules and norms would inform better climate responses at the international and national level. The report is also full of practical and realistic suggestions for reform, from sharpening state obligations under international human rights law to getting the World Trade Organisation to state clearly and publicly that trade policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gases do not fall foul of the rules.
Of particular interest is the report's strong call for better human rights protections for the victims of climate change. States must take into account the fact that carbon emissions cost lives. Likewise, I back the report's call for nations to have the courage to prepare the ground for a legally-binding commitment on climate change which will address not just climate change but climate justice.
The IBA's backing for climate justice is pivotal, but we cannot leave climate justice to the lawyers. Climate justice is about all of us. It is about acknowledging our personal responsibility in an interconnected world. It is about acting outside the narrow confines of self-interest - even as it becomes clear that our self-interest can destroy the lives of our own children and grandchildren.
The IBA report is not the last word on climate justice, but it is an important and credible voice. It is a clarion call, and a sign that the word is spreading. The only solutions to climate change are fair solutions that protect human rights and uphold the rule of law.
Mary Robinson is the former president of Ireland and chair of the Mary Robinson Foundation - Climate Justice
Read more stories like this:
· Lord Stern: global warming may create billions of climate refugees
· Ebola is a product of a destructive and exploitative global economic system
· 8 institutional innovations that could update the economic system
Join the community of sustainability professionals and experts. Become a GSB member to get more stories like this direct to your inbox.
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The New York Times
January 9, 2015 Friday
Late Edition - Final
Experts Say That Battle on Keystone Pipeline Is Over Politics, Not Facts
BYLINE: By CORAL DAVENPORT
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 14
LENGTH: 1246 words
WASHINGTON -- In 2009, the Obama administration approved a 986-mile pipeline to bring 400,000 barrels of oil sands petroleum a day from western Canada to the United States. Almost no one paid attention. Construction on the pipeline, called the Alberta Clipper, was quietly completed last year.
In that same period, the administration considered construction of a similar project, the Keystone XL. So far only in the blueprint stage, this pipeline has become an explosive political issue that Republicans are seizing as their first challenge to President Obama in the new Congress.
The Republican-controlled House is set to pass a bill to force approval of Keystone on Friday and the Senate is expected to pass the measure in coming weeks. Republicans say the pipeline will create jobs and spur the economy while environmentalists and some Democrats say it will destroy pristine forests and create carbon pollution. Mr. Obama has vowed to veto the bill.
But most energy and policy experts say the battle over Keystone overshadows the importance of the project as an environmental threat or an engine of the economy. The pipeline will have little effect, they say, on climate change, production of the Canadian oil sands, gasoline prices and the overall job market in the United States. At the same time, Mr. Obama's promised veto will not necessarily kill the pipeline because the president will retain the authority to make a final decision about its fate.
''The political fight about Keystone is vastly greater than the economic, environmental or energy impact of the pipeline itself,'' said Robert N. Stavins, director of the environmental economics program at Harvard. ''It doesn't make a big difference in energy prices, employment, or climate change either way.''
Environmentalists who have been arrested outside the White House protesting Keystone say that extracting petroleum from the Canadian oil sands produces more carbon emissions than conventional oil production and that the pipeline will provide a conduit to market for the oil. But a State Department review of the project last year concluded that building the pipeline would not significantly increase the rate of carbon pollution in the atmosphere because the oil is already making its way to market by existing pipelines and rail.
Republicans promote the project as a major source of employment and an economic engine, but the State Department review estimated that Keystone would support only about 35 permanent jobs. Keystone would create about 42,000 temporary jobs over the two years it will take to build it -- about 3,900 of them in construction and the rest are in indirect support jobs, such as food service. In comparison, there were 241,000 new jobs created in December alone. Over all, the jobs represented by Keystone account than for less one-tenth of 1 percent of the American economy.
''This pipeline has become a symbolic issue all out of proportion to reality,'' said Robert McNally, the president of the Rapidan Group, a Washington-based energy consulting firm and a former top energy official in the George W. Bush administration. ''Why is what ought to be a routine matter turned into an all-consuming Armageddon battle?''
The story of how a routine pipeline became such a politically volatile infrastructure project began during the George W. Bush administration, when the companies that hoped to build both the Alberta Clipper and the Keystone XL submitted their permit applications to the State Department.
Neither pipeline was an issue in the 2008 presidential campaign, nor did the Keystone pipeline draw much attention in the next few years as the State Department under Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton reviewed the project. By the summer of 2011, top State Department officials signaled that they were on the verge of approving the pipeline.
That was when environmentalists, led by an activist named Bill McKibben, made their move. Disappointed that Mr. Obama had failed to pass a climate change bill in his first term, they wanted to push him on environmental issues. They settled on the pipeline as their symbol and in that summer of 2011 staged the White House protests demanding that Mr. Obama stop Keystone. They hoped to send the message that by approving the pipeline, Mr. Obama would lose the support of his political base in the 2012 re-election. The State Department delayed the decision.
In those protests, Republicans saw an opening. ''When folks started to get arrested outside the White House, it was obvious something was going on,'' said Michael McKenna, a Republican energy lobbyist who frequently consults on political strategy with House Republican leaders. In their internal polls on the issue, the strategists found that Americans generally supported the project -- often by a ratio of 3 to 1, Mr. McKenna said. Those numbers bear out today: A November poll by Pew Research found that 59 percent of Americans supported the project.
''We saw that this thing could be a killer for us,'' Mr. McKenna said. ''It's easy to grab on to. It's a simple narrative. It's easy to explain to candidates and easy for them to turn around and explain to voters.''
Republican consultants advised candidates to take on the issue, and the candidates did. Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential nominee in 2012, promised to approve the Keystone on his first day in office. Americans for Prosperity, the conservative advocacy group with financial ties to the billionaire libertarians Charles and David Koch, criticized Mr. Obama's delay of the Keystone decision in their first ad in the 2012 campaign season.
Two years later, Republican candidates for the House and Senate aired about 10,000 ads featuring the Keystone pipeline, according to data provided by Kantar Media/CMAG, a political media analysis firm. Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, a possible Republican presidential candidate in 2016, frequently mentions his support of Keystone as a centerpiece of a possible job creation plan. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the new majority leader, vowed that his first bill on the Senate floor would be a forced approval of Keystone. The political fight over Keystone will probably last a long time. Mr. Obama has said he will issue a final decision on the project only after a Nebraska court issues a verdict on a dispute over the pipeline's proposed route through that state. Then the State Department will complete its additional environmental review, which could push the decision back for months, if not years.
Until then, Mr. McKibben and his fellow environmentalists will continue to push on the issue and hope to claim a symbolic victory if Mr. Obama vetoes the project.
''It does not solve climate change if we stop Keystone,'' Mr. McKibben said. ''But if we build out the oil sands, it's an enormous quantity of carbon that won't leave the ground. If the president blocks Keystone XL, he becomes the first world leader to say, 'Here's a project we're not doing because of its effect on the climate.' ''
But the oil will continue to flow out of Canada with or without the Keystone.
''There are several oil pipelines that cross the Canadian border, and the oil is already moving to market through them,'' said Christine Tezak, an analyst with ClearView Energy Partners, a Washington consulting firm. ''It seems strange that we're going through such gyrations over this particular piece of infrastructure, when the State Department said, 'Oh, sure' to the Alberta Clipper.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/09/us/senate-panel-approves-keystone-pipeline-bill.html
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GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: Above, Senators John Barrasso, Joe Manchin III, Lamar Alexander and Mike Lee of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which passed the Keystone XL pipeline bill. At left, the panel chairwoman, Senator Lisa Murkowski. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY JABIN BOTSFORD/THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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The New York Times Blogs
(First Draft)
January 9, 2015 Friday
Politics Helpline: The 114th Congress, Part II
BYLINE: FIRST DRAFT
SECTION: US; politics
LENGTH: 560 words
HIGHLIGHT: Our congressional team is answering select questions about the 114th Congress.
We're taking questions and answering them as fast as we can as part of our continuous political helpline. In this latest installment, our congressional team is answering select questions about the 114th Congress. This is the second batch of answers. The first group of answers can be found here.
Question:
Do Republican members of Congress have an actual valid alternative to the Affordable Care Act that will insure as many people and address the large systemic problems with our nation's healthcare system? Can they offer any actual improvements to the health care law or do they intend to continue trying to weaken and repeal it?
Considering that "I am not a scientist" is one of the most common answers you'll get from a Republican these days if you ask about the threats from global warming, it's unlikely that the 114th Congress will bring much in the way of new environmental protection laws.
The closest possible policy change lawmakers are talking about now is an increase in the gas tax, which would help pay for highway infrastructure improvements. But any drop in gasoline consumption that could result from that would be unintended.
The clean-air rules that environmental advocates and Democrats would like to see imposed will have to come from President Obama's pen via executive order. He has already been doing that, much to the chagrin of Republicans in energy-producing states.
They are suing to stop him, leaving in doubt whether any of the new regulations will remain in tact.
- Jeremy W. Peters
Question:
Global climate change is an actual problem impacting the world today. What policies will Congress pass to prepare for and mitigate the impacts of climate change?
While there is overwhelming scientific consensus that human activity - specifically, burning coal for electricity and gasoline for transportation - is the chief driver of climate change, that fact carries little weight in the new Republican Congress.
President Obama, who tried but failed to enact climate change legislation in the Democratic-majority Congress, is now using his executive authority to enact regulations designed to slash planet-warming carbon pollution from cars and coal-fired power plants.
A top priority of Republican leaders in the new Congress - particularly of the new Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, a major coal-producing state - will be to find ways to block, delay or defund those climate change rules.
- Coral Davenport
Question:
Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama was bumped out of the chairmanship of the Budget Committee, even though he was ranking member for the past four years. Has he also been denied the chairmanship of any other committee?
Mr. Sessions seemed to be in line to assume the chairmanship of the Budget Committee, not because he was the most senior Republican on the committee but because the Republican who outranked him, Michael B. Enzi of Wyoming, was ranking member on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
Most assumed he would jump at that job. Instead, a still-more-senior Republican, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, asserted his right to the health committee gavel, sending Mr. Enzi back to Budget.
And in the game of musical chairs, Mr. Sessions was left standing when the music stopped. He had no full committee chairmanship because he had insufficient seniority.
- Jonathan Weisman
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The Guardian
January 8, 2015 Thursday 7:38 PM GMT
Keystone XL showdown to move to Senate floor on Monday;
Committee approval sets the stage for a clash over the controversial pipeline Nebraska state supreme court could rule on proposed route as early as Friday Senator Bernie Sanders proposes rider on climate change voteObama issues veto threat as Republicans flex muscles in new Congress
BYLINE: Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
SECTION: US NEWS
LENGTH: 599 words
The showdown over the Keystone XL will move to the Senate floor next Monday, with Republicans and Democrats girding up for a clash over the pipeline and climate change.
The Senate energy committee voted 13-9 on Thursday in favour of a bill that would force construction of the Keystone XL, moving the measure towards the Senate floor.
The committee vote all but ensures that the pipeline will be the first substantial order of business for the new Republican-controlled Congress.
It also sets the stage for an early clash between Congress and the White House over President Barack Obama's environmental agenda.
The White House has said the president would veto any legislation that attempts to circumvent the process now under way in the Nebraska courts and the State Department.
Keystone supporters acknowledge they do not have the votes to override the president.
Democrats are hoping to use the Keystone debate to put Republicans on the spot about their views on climate change.
The bill passed by the energy committee had the support of all Republicans on the panel and one Democrat, Joe Manchin of West Virginia.
The White House has said it would veto the bill - and a similar measure in the house - at least until the State Department and the Nebraska state supreme court finish their deliberations on the project.
The court could rule as early as Friday on the pipeline's proposed route across Nebraska.
The decision could help bring an end to the Keystone saga - although much still depends on Obama's decision.
It has been more than six years since TransCanada Corporation first sought to transport crude from the tar sands of Alberta across the American heartland to refineries and ports on the Texas Gulf coast.
Along the way, the Keystone XL project - which would help expand production of one of the dirtiest of fossil fuels - has become an important symbol to campaigners on the dangers of climate change.
Republicans meanwhile claim the pipeline as critical to American energy security.
"It is fair to say that the country but also the world is watching the United States to see if we are ready to lead as a global energy superpower," Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican and chair of the Senate energy committee, said on Thursday. "I think the American people are ready but they continue to be blocked by this administration."
Both positions will be up for debate next week, but Democrats are hoping to expose Republicans' climate denial.
"Our kids are going to be asking us: 'What were you guys thinking about? What were you doing? Did you not hear what the scientific community all over the world was saying that climate change is in fact that most environmental crisis facing this planet?'" Bernie Sanders told the energy committee.
The senator from Vermont, who votes with Democrats, is hoping to tack a rider to the Keystone bill that will ask the Senate to vote on whether climate change is real and caused by human activity.
Other Democrats opposed to Keystone are planning similar riders to slow the bill's progress through the Senate - and expose the Republicans' views on climate change.
A majority of Republicans in Congress deviate from the scientific consensus on climate change, and are opposed to actions curbing greenhouse gas emissions.
James Inhofe, the new leader of the Senate environment and public works committee, has dismissed climate change as a hoax.
Most of the Republican leadership denies the existence of climate change, including a majority of Republicans on the environment, energy and science committees, according to an analysis by the Center for American Progress.
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The Guardian
January 8, 2015 Thursday 5:21 AM GMT
Climate change push as Victoria seeks to join with NSW and South Australia;
'Each state has a responsibility to push the federal government in this area,' Victorian environment minister Lisa Neville says
BYLINE: Oliver Milman
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 683 words
The Victorian government wants to join forces with New South Wales and South Australia to press the federal government for more action on climate change in the wake of record or near-record temperatures in the three states in 2014.
Victoria's environment minister, Lisa Neville, said she was seeking "urgent" talks with the NSW and SA governments to forge a united front against Tony Abbott's stance on climate change.
Neville told Guardian Australia the states would seek greater clarity on how the federal Emissions Reduction Fund, which will provide grants to businesses, would work. The federal government's leadership on climate change would also be questioned.
"I'm looking to have urgent conversations with NSW and South Australia on the role they can play with us," she said. "We'll look at whether there's a shared view on emissions reduction and also national advocacy so we can put climate change back into public debate.
"Each state has a responsibility to push the federal government in this area. National action will have the most impact on climate change, so we need a unified voice to get the federal government, first of all, to acknowledge climate change.
"The Abbott government has, unfortunately, walked away from its responsibility to act on climate change. We'd prefer strong national and international action, but if we have to play a leadership role in Victoria, we will do that.
"We need to put pressure on the federal government as well as build a proper community conversation about climate change again."
Neville, who will have her first meeting with the federal environment minister, Greg Hunt, this month, said the federal Coalition needed to resolve the "mess" surrounding its attempts to cut the national renewable energy target and ensure its ERF grants were spent effectively to bring down emissions.
Victoria's Labor government, which came into power in November, is formulating its own climate change strategy, which may include the reinstatement of a state-based emissions reduction target. But there is no plan to phase out Victoria's highly polluting brown coal generators.
South Australia's renewable energy investment has forged ahead of Victoria and NSW, at a time when all states are experiencing a trend of rising temperatures.
The Bureau of Meteorology's annual climate report, released this week, showed that NSW had its warmest year on record in 2014, with Victoria and South Australia both experiencing their second warmest years on record.
The NSW government, while keen to not publicly criticise its Coalition counterpart in Canberra, has indicated that it wants stronger action on climate change. A NSW Coalition source said: "We are the NSW government, we believe in climate change."
The NSW environment minister, Rob Stokes, said: "We strongly believe in protecting the vulnerable by providing the community with the best available science and energy efficiency solutions.
"We are also using this information to plan for the future delivery of infrastructure and vital services such as health and emergency services. We believe it is an important duty for a responsible government to help communities understand future risk."
"The NSW government also has a renewable energy action plan to increase the proportion of renewable energy in NSW and has made its position on the renewable energy target clear."
Stokes said the NSW government had spent $3m on climate predictions out to 2070, to help the state prepare for change.
The federal government has stressed that it accepts the overwhelming science of human-influenced climate change and says its Direct Action climate plan will ensure Australia cuts its emissions by 5% by 2020 on 2000 levels, although the Climate Change Authority has expressed doubt over this.
In its first year in power, the federal Coalition scrapped carbon pricing, disbanded or attempted to disband a number of climate and clean energy agencies and is involved in on-and-off negotiations with Labor over its desire to limit Australia's energy mix to 20% of renewables and no more.
Hunt's office did not respond to a request for comment.
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January 8, 2015 Thursday 12:23 AM GMT
Adelaide bushfires: PM announces cash payments for people left homeless;
Tony Abbott says Centrelink will pay $1,000 an adult and $400 a child to those whose houses have been destroyed or badly damaged
BYLINE: Shalailah Medhora
SECTION: AUSTRALIA NEWS
LENGTH: 569 words
Short-term income assistance will be made available for people who lost their homes in the South Australian bushfires, Tony Abbott has announced.
The government will supplement the income of people affected by the disaster for up to 13 weeks.
"We will be making the disaster recovery payments and the disaster recovery allowance available to the victims of the bushfires in South Australia," the prime minister told Adelaide radio station 5AA on Thursday morning.
"These are Centrelink payments of $1,000 an adult and $400 a child for people whose houses have been destroyed or whose houses have been badly damaged.
"This is modest additional commonwealth assistance that will be made available to victims of these terrible bushfires here in South Australia," Abbott said.
Abbott said the payments would not be available to volunteer firefighters who lost income from their regular jobs.
The prime minister drew on his own experience as a volunteer with the New South Wales rural fire service to say he was sure that missing out on the payments "doesn't deter" people who volunteered to help after disasters.
"We do what we do not because someone tells us to do it but because we want to do it. Not because we are paid, but because we are committed to the community. And this idea that you should start to pay volunteers, I think is an idea which should be treated with great caution," he said.
Abbott met volunteers at a South Australian firefighting staging area on Thursday morning.
"This has been a major incident. It's now been running for the best part of the week. All of you have been flat out since Friday and you have responded magnificently to all the challenges that you have faced," Abbott said.
"You have shown all of those great Australian characteristics - mateship, creativity, of calmness in a crisis - and that's something which is very special."
The Centrelink payments are on top of the national disaster relief and recovery arrangements, in which the commonwealth government and states split the cost of rebuilding and paying compensation to victims.
The South Australian premier, Jay Weatherill, praised the federal government's efforts to help and said now the "process of rebuilding begins".
"This is a massive team effort. It has been seamless. It's been effective," Weatherill said.
Abbott shied away from linking the bushfires directly with climate change.
"While there is no doubt that over time climate change could make a difference to these sorts of occurrences, fire, flood and storm are a part of living in Australia, always have been, always will be," he said.
"Climate change is real. Humanity does contribute to it and it's important that the government does make a strong and effective effort to combat it."
By Wednesday morning, 350 claims totalling more than $13m had been lodged with insurers, the Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) said.
"More properties may be potentially vulnerable at this time and it is critical for residents in bushfire-affected areas to ensure they follow the advice of emergency services," the ICA's chief executive, Rob Whelan, said.
"The ICA continues to liaise with the state government, emergency services, local governments and members of parliament to provide support and help resolve issues," he said.
Victims of the South Australian bushfires can find out more about compensation via the federal government's disaster relief assistance hotline on 18 22 66.
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January 8, 2015 Thursday 12:22 AM GMT
Australia aid cuts 'jerk around' Marshall Islands and hit development;
The latest round of 'reprioritised' funding announced by Australian treasurer Joe Hockey has been roundly criticised by the Pacific nation's foreign minister
BYLINE: Karl Mathiesen in Majuro
SECTION: GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT
LENGTH: 952 words
Successive Australian aid cuts have "jerked around" the Marshall Islands and severely hampered development projects, according to the Pacific nation's foreign minister, Tony de Brum.
The latest round of "reprioritised" aid funding, announced by the Australian treasurer, Joe Hockey, in his mid-year economic and financial outlook, stripped another A$3.7bn (£1.9bn) from the country's aid budget.
The move has further weakened Australia's influence in the Marshall Islands' capital, Majuro, where what De Brum referred to as Australia's "backsliding" on climate change had already led to dismay; for the low-lying Marshall atolls, rising sea levels are a key issue.
Since taking office in 2013, the Coalition government in Australia has cut the foreign aid budget by more than A$11bn. De Brum said Australia's aid promises had "derailed" vital infrastructure projects in his country. In the middle of last year, he said, Australia pulled funding from water, energy and sewage projects in his constituency of Ebeye, setting them back "a full year".
"We appreciate all the assistance we can get from our partners, but not in this kind of way when we get jerked around and it doesn't result in a well-thought-out, well-run, well-operated, well-executed plan," De Brum said.
The cuts, De Brum said, reduced Australia to an "insignificant" aid partner for the Marshall Islands, which has a long-standing funding arrangement with the US and also influential Asian partners in Taiwan and Japan.
The foreign minister was also scathing about Australia's decision to cut back ABC's international news service Radio Australia. "Now, not only are we getting cut, we can't find out [in the news] if we get cut or not."
A spokesperson for Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (Dfat) said the government's aid program was "generous", especially when it came to the Pacific. "We have focused Australia's aid program on our immediate region, and the Pacific is a particular focus. It is here that Australia has the most influence and can do the most good. We continue to work closely with Pacific partner countries and regional organisations to build resilience and manage the impacts of climate change on economic development."
Aluka Rakin, director of Youth to Youth in Health in Majuro, said the organisation's clinic is falling apart. The organisation provides sexual health advice and treatment for young people in the nation's most populated atoll, and has been able to rely on Australian funding in the past. But two years ago, cash for infrastructure and maintenance dried up - although volunteer help continued.
Rakin said further cuts in Australian aid can only make it harder. "It will really have a negative effect on the services we provide," he said.
According to Rakin, the situation is even worse in Ebeye. Teenage pregnancy rates are high and sexually transmitted infections including HIV are increasing. There is no clinic for young people or safe-sex counselling service. "We are desperate for funding for the new clinic," he said. "Now, with all the [Australian] assistance being cut, we are seeking help from Taiwan and Japan."
Alson Kelen, who runs Waan Aelon in Majol, an organisation aimed at providing skills training and other programs for young people who do not finish school, said he has had to be creative to survive the reduction in Australian assistance.
"Instead of having three programs fully funded, we are getting one fully funded and spreading it over three ... We see that Australian aid is shifting a bit. The Marshall Islands is getting less and it's affecting a few of us at the grassroots level. We used to have a few programs supported by Australia, but now there are less opportunities for us."
When it comes to climate change, Australia should advocate for its neighbours
Tony de Brum
Kelen said the people of low-lying island states feel that countries like Australia have a responsibility to look after them, as the effects of climate change will hit them hardest and soonest."We look at big countries and the effect we are getting from their economic development, like climate change ... it's hurting us," Kelen said.
Australia recently announced it would make a A$200m contribution to the Green Climate Fund (GCF), which will help vulnerable nations adapt to climate change. But the money will come from its aid budget.
Small nations, such as the Marshall Islands, may have received some of this money directly from Australia as bilateral aid. But now, De Brum said, the tiny nation would have to compete for funding with countries around the world. Contributing to the GCF by taking money from the aid budget had moved Australian money "further away" from the Marshall Islands, he said.
"Australia should take a leadership role and be part of the Pacific. When it comes to climate change they should advocate for their neighbours and not behave as if there is nothing around Australia except its coal and its bottom line, and ballot boxes," De Brum said.
On De Brum's criticism of the source of Australia's donation to the GCF, the Dfat spokesperson said the government had already made headway on increasing climate resilience in the Marshall Islands through its aid programs outside the GCF.
"Australia is also working with all countries, including our Pacific islands neighbours, to develop a new global climate change agreement that establishes a common playing field for climate action from 2020. Our support for Pacific programs, such as those administered by the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Program have delivered real outcomes in [the] Republic of Marshall Islands by enhancing water security and other forms of economic and environmental resilience."
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The New York Times
January 8, 2015 Thursday
Late Edition - Final
For States That Don't File Carbon-Cutting Plans, E.P.A. Will Impose 'Model Rule'
BYLINE: By CORAL DAVENPORT
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 14
LENGTH: 516 words
WASHINGTON -- The Environmental Protection Agency will force states to comply with a federal ''model rule'' to cut their carbon emissions if the states do not submit customized plans under the Obama administration's new climate change regulations, a senior official said Wednesday.
Janet McCabe, the agency's top climate change official, said that the E.P.A. was creating the model rule with the expectation that some states would refuse to submit plans.
The regulations, the heart of President Obama's climate change agenda, are based on the Clean Air Act and require states to cut planet-warming carbon dioxide from power plants. Each state may create its own plan for how to do so, but the requirements have the potential for shutting hundreds of coal-fired power plants.
The proposed rules are already the focus of political fighting. Republicans have attacked them as a ''war on coal,'' and governors of some states that rely heavily on coal mining or coal-fired electricity are suing the E.P.A. over the regulations. Some Republican governors may choose not to submit a plan at all, as a gesture of defiance.
''We certainly hope that every state feels like it's in their best interest to create a plan,'' Ms. McCabe said. ''But we have an obligation under the Clean Air Act, should there be states that don't submit plans, to be sure we're ready.''
Republicans and the coal industry were quick to criticize the move.
''Rather than looking to work together to reach common-sense and practical energy guidelines in 2015, the administration is doubling down on its climate crusade at the expense of our economy and our people,'' said Mike Duncan, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee and the president of a coal advocacy group, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity.
Ms. McCabe said she expected the E.P.A. to release final versions of the climate change regulations by midsummer, when it would also issue the proposed model rule for states.
Under Mr. Obama, the E.P.A. has proposed two key climate change regulations: one to limit emissions from future power plants, which the E.P.A. unveiled last January, and the other to regulate emissions from existing plants, which the E.P.A. announced in June. Obama administration officials initially said they would release final versions of those rules one year after proposing each one. But on Wednesday Ms. McCabe said that given the complexity of the rules and the difficulty in writing them, it made more sense to release them together.
''It's become clear to us that there are crosscutting topics on these rules,'' she said. ''For the overlapping issues, we believe it's essential to consider these in a coordinated fashion -- so we will do them all at once.''
Also adding to the delay, she said, was the need to review more than four million public comments that have been filed about the regulations -- a number far greater than E.P.A. officials anticipated, and which they said indicated the magnitude and potential impact of the regulations.
Generally, proposed environmental regulations draw a few thousand public comments.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/08/us/politics/for-states-that-dont-file-carbon-cutting-plans-epa-will-impose-model-rule-.html
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The Guardian
January 7, 2015 Wednesday 9:12 PM GMT
Australia accelerates coal mine projects in the face of study that finds it should stay buried;
Research finds more than 80% of reserves should stay in the ground to avoid dangerous climate change, just as Australia expands productionGeorge Monbiot: leaving fossil fuel in the ground is good for everyone
BYLINE: Oliver Milman
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 766 words
Australia is pressing ahead with huge new coalmining projects, just as a new study has calculated that more than 80% of the world's current coal reserves must remain in the ground to avoid dangerous climate change.
The research, by the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources, found that globally a third of all oil reserves, half of all known gas deposits and 82% of coal capacity would have to remain unused by 2050 if the world was to remain within an internationally agreed limit of 2C warming compared with pre-industrial times.
The report found the world needed to stay within a carbon dioxide "budget" of 1,100 gigatonnes emitted between 2011 and 2050 to have at least a 50% chance to avoid more than 2C warming.
That level of warming is considered to have highly damaging consequences for human health, coastal infrastructure, food production and endangered species.
Despite its commitment to the 2C warming limit, Australia is pushing ahead with a massive escalation in its coal output, with prime minister Tony Abbott declaring in October that coal is "good for humanity" while warning against any "demonisation" of the fossil fuel.
Nine new coal projects are earmarked for the Galilee Basin region of central Queensland, producing a combined 330m tonnes a year at capacity.
This coal, destined for export to countries such as China and India, would produce an estimated 705m tonnes of CO2 when burned - substantially more than Australia's entire annual greenhouse gas emissions of 542m tonnes.
Several international financial institutions have rejected funding the largest of the Galilee Basin mines, Adani's Carmichael project, but the Queensland government has stepped in to provide taxpayers' money for construction, citing the jobs the mine would create.
Tim Buckley, the director of energy finance studies at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, said the Australian government's energy policies "fly in the face" of the need to avoid digging up the vast majority of known coal reserves.
"Rather than acknowledge the problem and transition energy sources over time, Tony Abbott is wedded to an idea of digging up coal as fast as possible before we're not allowed to do so, which is a globally irresponsible position," he told Guardian Australia.
"At the current price of thermal coal, the profit margin is zero. It makes no sense to sponsor these projects when the world is awash with coal. Why is Queensland providing millions of dollars to projects that aren't commerciallly viable? Why does a project funded by a foreign billionaire need taxpayer subsidy?"
Buckley said Abbott's argument that coal could lift people in developing countries out of poverty was "a highly embarrassing parroting of a coal industry PR campaign".
Victoria McKenzie-McHarg, climate campaigner at the Australian Conservation Foundation, said Australia was "completely out of kilter" with the required action to avoid dangerous climate change.
"Tony Abbott and [Queensland premier] Campbell Newman have bent over backwards to push through coal projects and side with polluting mining companies over the need to protect Australians from climate change," she said.
"If we become the greedy polluter, it puts unfair pressure on developing nations to cut their emissions when Australia has been one of the largest polluters for so long. We have a responsibility to clean up our act and take advantage of our real natural resources, such as wind and solar."
But the Minerals Council of Australia (MCA) disputed the findings of the report, stating that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change made it clear last year that carbon capture and storage technology would ensure that fossil fuels could remain widely used.
"The report's apparent conclusions are at odds with a series of recent forecasts by a range of respected international bodies, including the International Energy Agency and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change," said Brendan Pearson, chief executive of the MCA.
"Those reports show that addressing climate change, eradicating energy poverty and a continued strong future for Australia's energy sector are not mutually exclusive goals."
Pearson said the International Energy Agency's 2014 outlook showed that the global coal trade was set to grow by 40% by 2040, with Australia forecast to regain its ranking as the world's top coal exporter by 2030.
According to the UCL institute's paper, published in Nature, companies spent $670bn last year searching for and securing new fossil fuel deposits. The research was funded by the UK Energy Research Centre.
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The Guardian
January 7, 2015 Wednesday 6:10 PM GMT
Why leaving fossil fuels in the ground is good for everyone;
As a new report is published on the need to limit fossil fuel production to stop dangerous global warming, the UK is poised to pass an act committing governments to extracting as much oil out of the ground as possibleMuch of world's fossil fuel reserve must stay buried to prevent climate change, study says
BYLINE: George Monbiot
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 1298 words
As you read this, a monster of a bill is passing smoothly and quietly through Britain's parliament. It's so big and complex, and covers so many topics, that it makes a mockery of democracy.
The infrastructure bill epitomises the rising trend of legislation-stuffing: cramming so many unrelated issues into one bag that parliamentary votes become meaningless. MPs must either accept this great bundle of unrelated measures in its entirety or reject it in its entirety. So laws can pass which no one in their right mind would have voted for.
Bills like this are good places for burying bad news, and this one is a graveyard.
Among its outrageous and scarcely-debated provisions, slipped in by the government some time after parliamentary debates began, is a measure that undermines every claim it has made about preventing dangerous climate change. It is a legal obligation on current and future governments to help trash the world's atmosphere.
The government already has a legal obligation to do the opposite. The Climate Change Act 2008, supported by all the major parties, commits successive governments to minimise the UK's greenhouse gas emissions. The Infrastructure Act 2015 will commit successive governments to maximise them.
Needless to say, that's not quite how it is expressed. The bill obliges governments to produce strategies for " maximising the economic recovery of UK petroleum ": in other words for getting as much oil out of the ground as possible. Oil is extracted to be burnt; burning it releases greenhouse gases; maximising recovery means maximising greenhouse gases.
The Infrastructure Act, if passed - and so far it is scarcely being contested (hello Labour, do you still exist?) - will be the Climate Change Act's evil twin. Both acts oblige current and future governments to report at fixed periods on how they will achieve their contradictory objectives. The same person, the secretary of state for energy and climate change, will be responsible for both policies: ensuring that the UK both consumes less oil and produces more. Perhaps he'll seek to minimise climate change by day, then, after a stiff dose of potion, come out at night to maximise it.
But there could not be a greater contrast between the ways in which the two acts (or their relevant clauses) were developed. The Climate Change Act was the result of a massive campaigning effort, over many years, by citizens' movements that mobilised public opinion and pressed MPs to act on it. The provisions in the infrastructure bill were slipped surreptitiously into the back of a legislative juggernaut that was already rolling down a six-lane motorway. In other words, the first act was an example of how democracy is supposed to work; the second is an example of how it gets corrupted.
Now, on the day that MPs sit down in committee to discuss this bill, the journal Nature publishes the most detailed scientific paper yet on how much fossil fuel should be left in the ground if we're to have a chance of preventing more than 2C of global warming.
To deliver a 50% probability (which is not exactly reassuring) of no more than 2C of warming this century, the world would have to leave two-thirds of its fossil fuel reserves unexploited.
I should point out that reserves are just a small fraction of resources (which means all the minerals in the Earth's crust). The reserve is that proportion of a mineral resource which has been discovered, quantified and is viable to exploit in current conditions: in other words that's good to go.
The Nature paper estimates that a third of the world's oil reserves, half its gas reserves and 80% of its coal reserves must be left untouched to avert extremely dangerous levels of global warming. 2C is dangerous enough; at present we are on course for around 5C by the time the century ends, with no obvious end in sight beyond 2100.
The only sensible response to such findings, which some of us have been advocating for years, is a global agreement to leave these unburnable fossil fuels in the ground. But it's not just that no such agreement exists, no such agreement has ever been mooted.
Researching Don't Even Think About It, which I see as the most important book published on climate change in the past few years, George Marshall discovered that there has not been a single proposal, debate or even position paper on limiting fossil fuel production put forward during international climate negotiations.
"From the very outset fossil fuel production lay outside the frame of the discussions and, as with other forms of socially constructed silence, the social norms among the negotiators and policy specialists kept it that way."
I would guess that it is not altogether inconvenient for governments to ignore the role of fossil fuel companies in causing climate change.
While most states have not taken the astonishing, ecocidal step of making it a legal obligation, almost all are pursuing the same policy as the United Kingdom: maximising the production of fossil fuels. And almost all pay lip service to the idea of minimising greenhouse gas emissions.
There is no attempt to resolve this contradiction, or even to acknowledge it. They don't have to. They know that it will resolve itself. If the stuff keeps coming out of the ground, it will be burnt, without regard to the feeble policies seeking to limit its consumption.
I believe I might have been the first person to suggest in the media that the best means of addressing climate change is to leave fossil fuels in the ground, in a Guardian column in 2007. Since then, this solution has been championed by the indefatigable Bill McKibben, through his Do the Math tour and 350.org, and it has been picked up by many other organisations.
But still our politicians pretend not to hear. Even the current secretary of state for energy and climate change in the UK, Ed Davey, who is often fairly responsive, blocks his ears and sings loudly when the crashing contradictions in his role are mentioned. Otherwise, how could he creep out at night to reverse the policies he pursues by day? Like Dr Jekyll, he could not live with himself if he was fully aware of what Mr Hyde was doing.
Were the world's governments to regulate the wellhead rather than just the tailpipe, logistically the task would be a thousand times easier. Instead of trying to change the behaviour of 7bn people, they would need to control just a few thousand corporations.
These companies would buy permits to extract fossil fuels in a global auction. As a global cap on the amount of fossil fuel that could be burnt came into force, the price would rise, making low carbon technologies, such as wind, solar and nuclear, much better investments. The energy corporations would then have no choice but to start getting out of dirt and into clean technologies. The money from the auction could be used either to compensate poorer nations for not following us down the coal hole or to help them survive in a world in which some dangerous warming - but hopefully no more than 2C - will inevitably occur.
For 23 years, governments have been wasting precious time by pursuing an unworkable solution. Perhaps that was their intention? But if the climate talks in Paris in December are to have any meaning or purpose, they should abandon the self-defeating policy of addressing only consumption, and concentrate on restricting production. This, I believe should be the focus of our campaigns. Through groups like 350.org, we must make this such a potent electoral issue that we drag governments out of the clutches of the fossil fuel industry.
You think that's tough? Well try the alternative: living in a world with 5C of global warming, in other words a world of climate breakdown. By comparison, almost anything looks easy.
www.monbiot.com
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The Guardian
January 7, 2015 Wednesday 5:27 PM GMT
Organic farming not always best for environment, says government adviser;
Lord Krebs claims that organic farming needs more land than conventional methods to produce the same yield
BYLINE: Fiona Harvey
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 631 words
Organic farming could be worse for the climate than conventional farming methods, one of the government's scientific advisers has said, because of the greater land use required and the methods used.
Lord Krebs, who advises ministers on how to adapt to climate change, told the Oxford Farming Conference that organic farming did not necessarily mean more environmentally friendly farming.
Instead, he suggested, agricultural methods known as "no-till" - which usually involves the use of genetically modified crops or biotechnology, with herbicides to kill the weeds that tilling normally prevents - were better for the climate as they reduce the turnover of soils, a process that releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
At least 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions are thought to come from agriculture, and that proportion is likely to rise as the world's population grows and an increasingly prosperous middle class around the world opt for more meat in their diets, requiring a greater production of feed crops.
Krebs also argued that organic farming needs more land than technological methods to produce the same yield, which could be an increasing problem as the world's population is projected to grow from more than 7 billion people today to 9 to 12 billion by mid-century, requiring a correspondingly large rise in agricultural productivity.
Krebs, formerly the first chief executive of the UK's Food Standards Agency from 2000 to 2005, said in 2000 organic vegetables were no more nutritious than those produced from other agricultural methods. He told the BBC in that year that people who bought organic food were "not getting value for money, in my opinion and in the opinion of the Food Standards Agency, if they think they're buying food with extra nutritional quality or extra safety. We don't have the evidence to support those claims."
He told the conference on Wednesday that the UK's soils could not be relied upon to continue to produce food at current levels in future decades, as they are likely to become much more eroded by rain and wind in future. Floods and droughts are both likely to become more common across Britain in a future of global warming, he noted.
Helen Browning, the chief executive of the Soil Association, which promotes organic farming and produce, said she was "bemused by the hostility" of Krebs towards organic methods. She cited a scientific paper published last year in the Proceedings of the Royal Society that found organic farming could play an important role and for many crops did not produce a smaller yield than conventional methods.
"A global analysis has shown that organic farming stores significant amounts of carbon in the soil over time, and is a very effective way of combatting climate change," she said.
With regard to soils, she added: "Organic techniques have a great deal to offer in building organic matter in soils and improving efficiency of fertiliser use. When the increasing use of non-renewable inputs [in the form of fertilisers, such as phosphates] is considered, non-organic farming is significantly less productive than organic, and the productivity of non-organic [farming] is falling because conventional farming is using more and more fertiliser inputs simply to keep yields level."
The world's soils are a major source of atmospheric carbon. So, too, is nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas that is the byproduct of adding artificial nitrogen fertilisers to soils.
Intensive agriculture has also been blamed for soil erosion, as small fields bounded by hedgerows in the UK have been replaced by large "prairie"-type fields that make soil more vulnerable to erosion. Farmers can be encouraged to reduce this problem, for instance by ploughing along contours rather than uphill to downhill, but this is not mandatory.
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The New York Times
January 7, 2015 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
Climatologists Balk as Brazil Picks Skeptic for Key Post
BYLINE: By SIMON ROMERO
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Foreign Desk; Pg. 4
LENGTH: 591 words
RIO DE JANEIRO -- Calling Aldo Rebelo a climate-change skeptic would be putting it mildly. In his days as a fiery legislator in the Communist Party of Brazil, he railed against those who say human activity is warming the globe and called the international environmental movement ''nothing less, in its geopolitical essence, than the bridgehead of imperialism.''
Though many Brazilians have grown used to such pronouncements from Mr. Rebelo, 58, his appointment this month as minister of science by President Dilma Rousseff is causing alarm among climate scientists and environmentalists here, a country that has been seeking to assert leadership in global climate talks.
''At first I thought this was some sort of mistake, that he was playing musical chairs and landed in the wrong chair,'' said Márcio Santilli, a founder of Instituto Socioambiental, one of Brazil's leading environmental groups. ''Unfortunately, there he is, overseeing Brazilian science at a very delicate juncture when Brazil's carbon emissions are on the rise again.''
Brazil won plaudits for lowering its annual emissions from 2004 to 2012, largely by slowing the rate of deforestation in the Amazon. But emissions jumped 7.8 percent in 2013, according to the Climate Observatory, a network of environmental organizations. Several factors were to blame, the observatory said: deforestation on the rise again, growing use of power plants that burn fossil fuels, and increased consumption of gasoline and diesel.
Ms. Rousseff, a leader of the leftist Workers Party, has been speaking strongly about the need to reduce carbon emissions around the world, raising hopes that Brazil will work harder to preserve much of its Amazon rain forest. The destruction of tropical forests is viewed as a major contributor to climate change.
But Mr. Rebelo's appointment comes as some scientists are questioning Brazil's commitment to reducing deforestation and emissions. Environmentalists have also expressed concern over Ms. Rousseff's new minister of agriculture, Kátia Abreu, a combative supporter of industrial-scale farming who worked with Mr. Rebelo on a recent overhaul of Brazil's forest protection laws.
''Old-line Communist Rebelo is on exactly the same page on climate science as the hardest of the hard-core Tea Partiers,'' Stephan Schwartzman, director of tropical forest policy at the United States-based Environmental Defense Fund, said in a blog post.
Before the international climate talks that were held in Lima, Peru, in December, the Brazilian government said that the rate of deforestation in the Amazon had declined by 18 percent in the period from August 2013 to August 2014. But analysts said the government had tailored its announcement to exclude a recent resurgence in deforestation. Imazon, a Brazilian institute that uses satellite imagery to track the issue, saw a fourfold increase in November compared with the same month in 2013.
Mr. Rebelo, who was sports minister during Ms. Rousseff's first term as president, has not distanced himself from his earlier statements about climate science, including his assertion that ''there is no scientific proof of the projections of global warming, much less that it is occurring because of human action.''
But in a speech last week at his swearing-in ceremony, he said the science ministry would be guided by the government's established positions on climate change. ''The controversy in relation to global warming exists independent of my view,'' he told reporters. ''I follow the debate, as is my duty as a public figure.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/07/world/americas/climatologists-balk-as-brazil-picks-skeptic-for-key-post.html
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The New York Times
January 7, 2015 Wednesday
The International New York Times
Thailand and Human Rights
SECTION: Section ; Column 0; Editorial Desk; LETTERS; Pg.
LENGTH: 742 words
Re ''Thailand and the coup trap'' (Opinion, Jan. 2) by Forrest E. Cookson and Tom F. Joehnk: Your readers might think that the most significant problem caused by the May 2014 coup was economic stagnation, but Messrs. Cookson and Joehnk could not be more mistaken. Contrary to their final claim that economic recovery will justify the coup, there is no possible justification.
Since the coup, hundreds have been arrested and arbitrarily detained, many have reported being tortured, and there has been a sharp upsurge in the use of the repressive lèse majesté law to prosecute people for peacefully expressing their opinions. The New York Times has taken an admirable stance for justice on the use of torture by American security forces. I would urge you to apply the same standards to the abrogation of human rights in Thailand.
Tyrell Haberkorn Cambridge, Mass.
The writer is a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University.
Lessons in the decline of cod
Re ''Where have all the cod gone?'' (Opinion, Jan. 2) by W. Jeffrey Bolster: It's sad to see that the Gulf of Maine is experiencing a mass depletion in codfish stocks parallel to what happened to the once-abundant fishing grounds off the coast of Newfoundland. The fishing shutdown by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration is long overdue. How can a fish stock be left to dwindle to 1 percent of what it was a little more than two centuries ago? Those involved in the cod industry in the United States and Canada, as well as policy makers and environmental groups, need to think long and hard about this disastrous situation so that it can be prevented from taking hold in other ecosystems.
Donna Brodowski, Kinnelon, N.J.
A banner year for forests?
Re ''Finding hope in new forests'' (News, Dec. 26): Justin Gillis's article on how conserving and restoring forests helps combat climate change was quality reporting on one of humankind's most important ecological accomplishments. The international goodwill created by saving and rebuilding forests is also helping to forge a new international climate change agreement. The year 2015 will be critical for cementing global cooperation under an emerging climate-change accord. In the next year, countries must codify forest-friendly commitments into national and international policies. By March, nations are required to declare their incentives for financing verified reductions in deforestation, among other environmental targets. And in December, countries are expected to come to an agreement that will include a new legally binding mechanism to fight climate change with good forest management. Let's hope we see another success story in one year's time.
John O. Niles, San Diego
Pan-European hopes in Greece
Re ''Fresh troubles in Greece test Europe's financial safeguards'' (News, Dec. 18): This article describes the Greek left-wing party Syriza as anti-European. In fact, however, Syriza has made extensive efforts to build a pan-European political movement with the aim of establishing a properly European political party that would operate beyond the scope of national interests. For many disillusioned young people, in Southern Europe especially, this is one of the few ''European'' ideas that still excites and instills hope for breaking out of the Continent's current morass. Lumping together vastly different left- and right-wing parties under the banner of Euroskeptic or anti-European oversimplifies the debate. The relevant question is not simply whether one is for or against Europe, but rather what Europe one is striving for.
Darian Meacham, Brussels
Taking on the powers in Italy
Re ''Trying to reinvent Italy'' (Dec. 15) by Roger Cohen: If Prime Minister Matteo Renzi wants to change Italy, he'll have to take on centers of power that are much stronger than the working class and its unions. The power behind the national inertia lies elsewhere: industrialists who do not invest in innovation and send their profits to tax havens; rampant tax evasion; a bloated and inefficient public bureaucracy; a judicial system that seems designed to punish the weak and absolve the powerful; a university hiring system based on cronyism rather than merit; the political influence of the Catholic Church; and the bosses of the Mafia, 'Ndrangheta and Camorra who have beachheads in every region of the country. These are the real power centers that Mr. Renzi has yet to take on.
Gregory Conti, Perugia, Italy
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/07/opinion/thailand-and-human-rights.html
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The New York Times
January 7, 2015 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
With Veto Threat, Obama and Congress Head for Collision on Pipeline
BYLINE: By CORAL DAVENPORT; Ashley Parker contributed reporting.
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 14
LENGTH: 887 words
WASHINGTON -- The White House on Tuesday made it clear that President Obama would veto a bill authorizing construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, setting up an immediate clash with Republicans just as they assume control of Congress.
''The president threatening to veto the first bipartisan infrastructure bill of the new Congress must come as a shock to the American people who spoke loudly in November in favor of bipartisan accomplishments,'' Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the new majority leader, said on Tuesday.
Mr. McConnell has vowed to make the Keystone bill the first measure that the new Congress sends to the president's desk. The House is expected to pass the bill on Friday, and the Senate is expected to take up the measure next week.
For nearly four years, the Keystone pipeline has been a symbolic flash point in the political war between Republicans and Democrats over energy, climate change and jobs -- even though many policy experts say the project's impact in those areas will be small.
The legislation proposed by Republicans would take away Mr. Obama's authority to make a decision on the pipeline, which the president has because the pipeline would cross an international border. But Mr. Obama has said he cannot make a decision until the State Department completes an environmental review, which has been held up until there is a verdict in a Nebraska court case over the route of the pipeline.
''I would not anticipate that the president would sign this legislation,'' the White House spokesman, Josh Earnest, said on Tuesday. ''There's a well-established process that shouldn't be changed by legislation.''
Mr. Obama's veto would make the pipeline even more of a political issue. The 1,179-mile oil pipeline, which would carry 830,000 barrels of petroleum a day from the oil sands of boreal forests in western Canada to oil refineries and ports on the Gulf Coast, enjoys bipartisan support in Congress as well as with the public.
Six Senate Democrats have signed on to the Republican-sponsored bill, and a poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press in November found that 59 percent of Americans support the project. One of those senators, Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, said he was ''very upset, very surprised,'' by the president's threat to veto the bill. ''I think it's absolutely, totally ridiculous that they would do something like that in this period of time, when we're just starting out,'' he said.
But Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said he was ''pretty confident'' that Republicans would still not be able to muster the 67 votes necessary to override a presidential veto. As the Senate debates the bill over the coming weeks, Mr. Schumer said, Democrats will offer up amendments designed to highlight what they see as the project's flaws.
If Mr. Obama does veto a bill, it will not stand as his last word on the pipeline's construction. Nonetheless, environmentalists cheered Mr. Earnest's announcement Tuesday as a sign that the president would eventually reject the pipeline.
''It's becoming more clear by the day that President Obama rightly recognizes this dirty and dangerous tar sands pipeline is a bad deal for our country,'' said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club.
The company hoping to build the pipeline, TransCanada, applied for a building permit with the State Department in 2008. During the early years of the Obama administration, the pipeline was viewed as little more than a routine infrastructure project. But environmental groups seized on the issue during the 2012 presidential campaign, demanding that Mr. Obama veto the project as a symbol of his commitment to fighting climate change. Republicans and the oil industry retaliated by demanding that he approve a project that they called a major job-creator.
A State Department analysis of the project, released last January, concluded that it would not significantly increase the rate of planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions, noting that producers would extract oil sands petroleum and move it to market with or without construction of the pipeline. The review estimated that Keystone would support 42,000 temporary jobs over its two-year construction period -- about 3,900 of them in construction, the rest in indirect support jobs, such as food service. It estimated that it would create 35 permanent jobs.
''This is a tempest in a teapot, in terms of substance,'' said Michael Levi, an expert on energy and climate change policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. ''The costs are small. The benefits are small. It's the politics that are big.''
Once the Nebraska court delivers its verdict, the State Department is expected to restart its environmental review, but there is no deadline for a final decision. However, if the Nebraska court concludes that the pipeline's route was improperly permitted, TransCanada may have to reapply for its permit to build in the state -- a process that could take months or even years.
If Mr. Obama decides to wait until that process is complete, the final decision could be pushed well into 2016 or beyond. The result, said Paul Bledsoe, a top climate change official in the Clinton administration who is now with the German Marshall Fund, is that ''Keystone will now be front and center in the presidential cycle.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/07/us/politics/with-veto-threat-obama-and-congress-head-for-collision-over-keystone-pipeline.html
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The New York Times Blogs
(Dot Earth)
January 7, 2015 Wednesday
Brazil's Former Sports Minister is Moved to Science Post Despite Rejection of Global Warming Science
BYLINE: ANDREW C. REVKIN
SECTION: OPINION
LENGTH: 780 words
HIGHLIGHT: Brazil’s president picks a former sports minister who rejects global warming science as her new science minister.
For the president in any democracy, compromises are often necessary in assembling a cabinet that satisfies a range of constituencies. But even with that in mind, it's really hard to understand how President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil, who has repeatedly pressed for strong global action to curb climate change, could possibly justify her choice of Aldo Rebelo as her new minister of science, technology and innovation.
It's unfortunate that Rebelo has no scientific background and probably didn't absorb many relevant insights in the position he held since 2011 - minister of sports. But that's a minor issue compared to his attacks on even the most basic, established aspects of science pointing to human-driven global warming.
To get a feel for his views, which put the longtime Communist Party legislator in line with Tea Party talking points, start with the blistering critique of the appointment by Steve Schwartzman of the Environmental Defense Fund, who's been immersed in Brazilian environmental and forest science and politics for decades.
Schwartzman begins with Rebelo's lead role in drafting controversial revisions to the country's Forest Code, then focuses on this excerpt from an open letter Rebelo sent last July to Márcio Santilli, an environmentalist and former congressman, responding to Santilli's criticisms (the translation is by Schwartzman):
The positivist scientism that you call natural science and contrast with my devotion to dialectical materialism is not magical enough to convert me to the article of faith that is the theory of global warming, which is incompatible with current knowledge.
Science is not an oracle. In fact, there is no scientific proof of the projections of global warming, much less that it is occurring because of human action and not because of natural phenomena. It is a construct based on computer simulations.
In fact, my tradition links me to a line of scientific thought that prioritizes doubt over certainty and does not silence a question at the first response. Parallel to the extraordinary advances and conquests that Science has bequeathed to the progress of Humanity, come innumerable errors, frauds or manipulations always spun in the service of countries that finance certain research projects or projections.
I am curious to know whether those who today accept the theory of global warming and its alleged anthropogenic causes as unshakeable dogma, are the same ones who some years ago announced, with identical divine certainty, global cooling.
Please read the rest here. The translation is by Schwartzman but you can check it against the original.
Just to top things off, Rousseff made another cabinet choice that bodes poorly for the Amazon rain forest and its indigenous inhabitants. Here's Schwartzman's summary:
The new Minister of Agriculture, Katia Abreu, was the president of the National Confederation of Agriculture (the national association of large and middle-size landowners and ranchers). As senator, she led the Congress's powerful anti-environmental, anti-indigenous "bancada ruralista", or large landowners', caucus and earned the title among environmentalists of "chainsaw queen."
At Bloomberg View, Mac Margolis, who was previously a Latin America correspondent for Newsweek and wrote a fine book on the Amazon frontier 22 years ago, seconded Schwartzman's concerns and added this about his stance on his other new portfolio - technology:
Denying climate change is not Rebelo's only contribution to policy obscurantism. As a lawmaker in 1994, just as Brazil was beginning to modernize public service, he demanded that government forsake "labor-saving innovative technology," such as computers and automatic elevators. The proposal was quietly shelved in committee, on fear that it would create, among other monstrosities, "a frightening bureaucracy." He had more success in later stopping self-service fuel pumps at Brazilian filling stations, so sparing an underpaid army in overalls.
Then, in 2001, he sought to prohibit the use of English-language terms from public parlance, so banishing "imperialist" terms like "drive-in" and "software."
Undaunted, Rebelo is back, exotic as ever, this time with a fancy job upgrade. How he fits Rousseff's mission to make Brazil a modern and environmentally-sound nation is an open question. But she could start with cabinet change. [ Read the rest .]
It'll be interesting to see whether Rebelo accompanies Rousseff to the next big round of climate treaty talks in Paris in December.
For another view of the appointments and these criticisms, read Thomas Lifson at the American Thinker: "Warmists apoplectic as Brazil president names climate skeptic as science minister."
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The Guardian
January 6, 2015 Tuesday 9:14 PM GMT
White House: President Obama would veto Keystone XL pipeline bill;
Oil pipeline is top priority of new Republican-controlled Congress'If this bill passes this Congress, the president wouldn't sign it'
BYLINE: Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent and Paul Lewis
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 1079 words
Barack Obama would veto a bill aimed at forcing construction of the contentious Keystone XL pipeline, the White House has said, setting up an immediate confrontation with the new Republican-controlled Congress.
The White House, ending weeks of speculation about its response to Republican moves on Keystone, said Obama would veto a bill introduced earlier on Tuesday that aims to take the decision over the pipeline out of his hands.
"If this bill passes this Congress, the president wouldn't sign it," the White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, said.
That position locks the White House on an immediate collision course with the new Congress, after Republicans made it a first order of business to introduce a bill forcing approval of the pipeline.
The bill introduced in the Senate on Tuesday would give immediate approval to a Canadian pipeline project that has been waiting more than six years for a decision from the Obama administration.
The measure has the support of 63 senators - all 54 Republicans as well as some Democrats - enough to override a filibuster in the Senate.
But the Keystone supporters do not have the 67 votes needed to overcome a presidential veto.
Keystone supporters said the bill fast-tracking the Canadian pipeline was critical to keep crude oil moving.
"We need more pipelines to move crude at the lowest cost and in the safest, most environmentally friendly way," John Hoeven, the North Dakota Republican introducing the bill, told a press conference. "That means pipelines like the Keystone XL are in the vital national interest of our country."
TransCanada, the Canadian company building the pipeline, said it was encouraged by the moves in Congress. "We look forward to the debate and ultimately a decision by the US administration to build Keystone XL," the company said in a statement.
However, TransCanada said the administration had seriously delayed the approval process which, the company said, ordinarily took two years. "We are well over the six-year mark reviewing the final phase of Keystone with seemingly no end in sight. The bar continues to move again and again," the company's chief executive, Russ Girling, said in a statement. "It's time to make a decision."
Campaigners see the bill as a first shot in a Republican onslaught against the Democratic president's environmental agenda - from cutting smog to fighting climate change.
"Rather than taking action to support clean energy investments that will spur innovation and create good paying jobs here at home, they have instead chosen to support the Keystone XL pipeline and the false promises made by its proponents," said Tom Steyer, the green billionaire.
Obama rejected Keystone in 2012, over its original route through Nebraska, and has opposed previous bills aimed at forcing through the project. In his remarks on Tuesday, Earnest did not say Obama would never authorise construction of the pipeline, and couched the planned veto of legislation expected to pass the House and Senate in procedural terms.
Full evaluation of the project could not be completed until the final determination of the route of the pipeline, which is now with the Nebraska supreme court.
"This is an important principle at stake here," Earnest said, adding that the protocol for approving the pipeline had to be adhered to. He said it would be "premature" for Obama to authorise the pipeline before the court case and evaluation process had been completed.
With Obama determined to use his veto, Republicans acknowledged on Tuesday it would still be a challenge to get the pipeline off the ground.
Their most likely option now is to try to attach Keystone riders to other legislation that Obama would find it difficult to veto.
A Senate energy committee hearing on the bill, originally scheduled for Wednesday, was postponed. Republican leaders said it would take weeks before the bill is brought to a vote.
The bill would bypass the State Department, which has authority over the Keystone project, and grant immediate approval to TransCanada Corporation to "construct, connect, operate, and maintain the pipeline".
The legislation faces delays from Republicans as well as Democrats pushing to attach various riders to the bill.
Republicans were considering measures that would block or delay Obama's plans to curb carbon pollution from power plants. Such provisions, it is thought, would be even more likely to incur a presidential veto.
Democrats meanwhile were considering a number of potential riders of their own, including measures that would force the Canadian company building the pipeline to keep all of the oil that flows through it in the US and use only US steel in its construction, and another that would expand financial incentives for solar energy.
With Democrats now holding only 46 votes in the Senate, however, these were unlikely to pass.
The final outcome of the bill will almost certainly depend on whether Obama uses his veto power.
The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, has said repeatedly he intends to make Keystone the first order of business in the new Republican-controlled Congress.
The project, designed to deliver up to 830,000 barrels of crude oil a day from the tar sands of Alberta to refineries on the Texas Gulf coast, has become a flash point for the broader debate about climate change.
The pipeline has faced repeated delays since TransCanada first proposed it seven years ago. The State Department will not render its final decision until later this year, after the courts in Nebraska resolve a dispute over the pipeline's route.
The pipeline has been a recurring headache for the White House.
Environmental campaigners say that if Obama is serious about climate change, he must block Keystone and stop Canada from expanding production of the oil from its tar sands that would flow through the pipeline, which is a far dirtier fuel source than conventional crude oil.
The November attempt to force construction of the pipeline - a gamble by the Louisiana Democrat Mary Landrieu - saw a number of Democrats supporting the project but still came up one vote short of the 60 required. The defeat ended Landrieu's hopes of hanging on to her seat in a run-off election.
Republicans believe they have since picked up more votes from new senators such as West Virginia's Shelley Moore Capito and Iowa's Joni Ernst.
But not even TransCanada officials believe there are the numbers in the Senate to overcome a presidential veto - should Obama decide to exercise that authority.
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The Guardian
January 6, 2015 Tuesday 4:18 PM GMT
UK accused of hypocrisy over plans to limit enforcement of EU climate goals;
Britain has been lobbying to reduce EU powers to act on countries' failure to meet agreed emissions cuts of 40% by 2030
BYLINE: Arthur Neslen, Brussels
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 732 words
British lobbying to reduce monitoring of EU countries' action on climate change has sparked outrage among MEPs and environmentalists.
EU states agreed last October to cut their carbon emissions 40% by 2030, but a UK plan co-authored with the Czech Republic proposes that countries' emissions cuts should only be overseen with a 'light touch' regime with a diminished role for Brussels.
The unpublished paper places equal emphasis on business competitiveness and greenhouse gas reductions. It also calls for nuclear power and experimental carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies to be given the same status as renewable sources, such as wind and solar power, and energy efficiency.
"It is very worrying that the UK government is now discussing how to ensure a light touch on the 2030 targets," the Labour MEP Seb Dance told the Guardian. "In the past, the UK has led the way towards decarbonisation but that has to be combined with developing renewable and low carbon alternatives."
"This paper is further proof, if anyone needed it, that the Tory[-led] government has totally given up on being 'the greenest government ever', as they once claimed," he added.
Key to the UK proposal is a shifting of climate governance responsibilities from the EU - which can take countries to court if they breach commitments - to 'national plans' which states themselves would police.
A spokesperson for the UK's Department of Energy and Climate Change said: "Our initial view is that the governance system should help the EU to coordinate efforts to meet its various energy and climate goals, while respecting member states' sovereignty over energy policy and flexibility over how they decarbonise."
Under the British proposal, Brussels would be stripped of powers to act over non-implementation of climate policies. The commission would report to EU leaders on the bloc's combined progress every three years or so, while the European Parliament would be removed from the equation altogether.
Climate campaigners fear that in practice, this would allow fossil fuel-friendly nations such as Poland and the Czech Republic to wriggle out of their obligations at the European Council, where they would possess a veto.
"Fighting climate change is a huge challenge which calls for more, not less regulation," said Brook Riley a spokesman for Friends of the Earth Europe. "It is very hypocritical for the UK to say that urgent action on climate change is needed and then oppose the common EU policies required to deliver it. This is exactly the kind of leave-us-alone approach the UK will be condemning at the Paris climate summit later this year."
Europe's collective offer at that conference will be the pledge of a 40% emissions cut by 2030. Last October, Britain successfully prevented any binding renewable energy or efficiency targets being included, raising questions as to how the greenhouse gas reduction would be achieved.
The new paper advocates EU support for countries that want to use nuclear energy or CCS and calls for the commission "to present a new CCS strategy for Europe as early as possible" in 2015.
CCS is strongly supported by energy companies like Shell. It involves the sequestration and piping of carbon dioxide into underground fissures and currently aids fossil fuel extraction, as well as allowing their continued burning long into the 21 stcentury.
One study by Durham University found that 'enhanced oil recovery' using CCS could allow £150bn of oil to be extracted from the North Sea that would otherwise have been left in the ground.
The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has suggested that CCS may need to contribute up to 22% of global emissions reductions by 2050. But the world's leading energy scientists do not expect it to be commercially viable before the mid to late 2020's, which could be too late for countries that pin their CO2-cutting hopes on it.
"It it is clear that behind the British government position, you have BP, Shell, E.On and EDF," the Green MEP Claude Turmes said. "But why are we bounced into bad politics by a government that may not even exist after May? Where is their leverage?"
The British alliance with a Czech government seen as pro-coal and anti-renewable energy "shows that they have no interest in a better energy policy at all, just renationalising powers and destroying a strong EU [climate] approach," he added.
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The Guardian
January 6, 2015 Tuesday 2:00 PM GMT
Pope Francis plants a flag in the ground on climate change;
The Pope's expected actions continue a tradition of leadership
BYLINE: John Abraham
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 843 words
Make no mistake about it, there is no longer any rationale for division between science and faith. Over the past decades, scientists and persons of faith have learned to dance in a complementary manner, a "non-overlapping magisterium" as the saying sometimes goes. But as prior conflicts were found to be more molehill than mountain, leaders among the scientific and religious communities have explored collaborative ways to answer scientific questions and provide solutions to real-world problems that reflect a universal motivation to care for our fellow humans and honor our religious traditions.
Such collaboration is necessary, particularly in areas where the impacts of science so deeply affect the lives of people around the world. A present example comes from our changing climate. As I've written in these pages before, my work in the developing world has provided me with first-hand experience of how somewhat abstract and theoretical "global warming" studied in my office in the United States is manifested as human impacts, particularly in subsistence agricultural nations. These subsistence countries are already feeling the impacts of climate change. Ironically, those with the least ability to adapt are being impacted beyond their contribution to the problem.
I am a scientist and my motivation for studying climate change is driven by both a desire to understand the Earth's environment, but also to provide information for decision makers. What are the impacts of taking certain actions? How will they affect the future climate of our children? But that is as far as my science hat can take me. The actual decisions we make to deal with climate change must come from the values of our society and the cost-benefit analyses of taking action.
But there are some in our society who specialize in human values, they think about what actions reflect ethical and moral values we hold as a collective society; in some cases, these are religious leaders.
A recent news splash was made of predictions of an encyclical soon to be given by Pope Francis, the spiritual leader of the Catholic Church with its 1.2 billion members. This encyclical is expected to further solidify the Catholic Church's strong stance on climate change and its focus on the impact to people around the globe. As examples of this tradition, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops made early and public statements about the challenge of climate change. Among other statements, in 2011, Pope Benedict XVI strongly supported international climate change action. And now, Pope Francis continues that tradition. But this soon-to-be released encyclical should properly be viewed as a continuation of strong statements he has made since ascending to the papacy.
I asked Dr. Michael Naughton, Professor of Catholic Studies at the University of St. Thomas about the significance of the expected encyclical. He told me,
For Francis, our ecological crisis highlights how important the relationship between faith and science is. On one hand, science enriches faith by protecting it from superstition and ideologies. O n the other hand, faith helps science to see the deeper human implications of the reality in front of it. One of the terms that will most likely to come from Francis' encyclical is 'human ecology,' which sees our ecological crisis in terms of both our natural as well as cultural and social environments.
While it is not clear what will be in the encyclical, it likely will urge Catholics around to world to take action in their own lives to preserve the environment for themselves, others, and for future generations. The urging will be based on both moral and scientific bases. It may surprise people, but the Catholic Church has long had active and informed scientific bodies which have informed the papacy, in fact there is a Pontifical Academy of Sciences which serves such a purpose.
While it remains to be seen what long-term impact there is from this encyclical, it is clear that there is a continued emergence of a science-informed, religiously motivated cause for action. Actions that will help the most vulnerable of this world prepare for, and even avoid, the worst consequences of climate change. When people of faith and people of science work together for a common goal, a tremendous potential is realized.
Professor Naughton added his perspective on this forthcoming action, saying,
Francis will no doubt, in his punchy and prophetic tone, draw our attention to a market system that too often treats the environment like a commodity in what he describes as a "throw away" culture. As he is never tired of repeating, the poor suffer the most from our ecological crisis. He will confront this "logic of the market" with a "logic of gift" that views the earth to be shared with all of humanity-a gift in need of great care and attention.
I couldn't have said it better.
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The Guardian
January 6, 2015 Tuesday 12:27 PM GMT
Scientists connect the dots from identifying to preventing dangerous climate risks;
At the AGU 2014 fall meeting, climate and social scientists gathered to share their latest research
BYLINE: Dana Nuccitelli
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 1297 words
Last week, over 20,000 Earth scientists gathered at the annual American Geophysical Union (AGU) fall conference. They shared their scientific research, ranging from identifying the causes of past climate changes, to estimating the risks of the changes we're causing now, to how we can successfully communicate the need to mitigate those risks.
Richard Alley (the host of Earth: the Operator's Manual ) summarized the scientific community's consensus about the threats of abrupt climate change from various potential "tipping points." Scientists aren't too worried about a huge methane burp from the ocean or shutdown of the thermohaline circulation (which would cause dramatic cooling in Europe) happening anytime soon. On the other hand, a collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet and large associated sea level rise are becoming increasingly worrying.
This tied into paleoclimate research presented by Aaron Goldner. Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were at similar levels to today's ( 400 parts per million ) 15 million years ago during the mid-Miocene period. However, the Earth's climate was very different. Geologic records give us estimations that sea levels were 25-40 meters higher than today, global mean temperatures 3-6°C hotter, and there was very little sea ice relative to today.
As Goldner and colleagues showed in a 2013 paper, climate models couldn't reproduce that hotter climate very well; especially the extreme heat at the poles. However, the Community Atmosphere Model his team used was recently improved, in particular to better simulate cloud properties. Goldner showed that this newer version, which is more sensitive to the increased greenhouse effect, more accurately reproduces the high global and polar temperatures during the mid-Miocene. The difference is that in the newer simulation, more clouds form at the poles, trapping heat, causing the sea ice to melt.
Today, we're already seeing Arctic sea ice vanish at an alarming rate. The worry is that we may be approaching a tipping point that kicks us into a climate regime with significantly less ice, higher sea levels, and hotter temperatures, like the mid-Miocene or mid-Pliocene when atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were similar to today's, but for an extended period of time. We're on the verge of entering a hot climate state not seen in tens of millions of years.
There were many AGU talks about the climate impacts we're already seeing. For example, human-caused global warming is amplifying many types of extreme weather like drought, heatwaves, and storms. There's uncertainty about just how bad these impacts will get, and how fast. Stephan Lewandowsky gave a talk discussing the problem that although more uncertainty translates to greater risk and urgency, people perceive the opposite. People often think we don't need to act until uncertainty is gone, but that means letting the problem get worse in the meantime. As Andrew Dessler said in one of his AGU talks,
Uncertainty is the hammer policy advocates use to smash scientists over the head.
The Communication Problem
Climate and social scientists have struggled to communicate this urgency to the public. While most people accept that humans are changing the climate, few understand the urgency of mitigating these risks. This is particularly a problem for ideological conservatives.
Among social scientists, a consensus is forming that more climate-specific knowledge translates into greater acceptance of the science and support for mitigation. However, facts are more effective when ideological barriers are first weakened. For example, conservatives are more likely to accept the science when presented with free market solutions, as opposed to government regulation.
Scientists John McCuin, Katharine Hayhoe, John Cook, Daniel Bedford, and Scott Mandia reported success in climate education through misconception-based learning. People form mental structures of the world, and debunking a misconception can leave a gap in those structures. As it turns out, people would rather have a complete but incorrect understanding of the world than an incomplete but more correct understanding. Thus, the most effective education and communication must explain why a person's misconceptions were formed and why they're incorrect, replacing the mental gaps with factually correct information.
In April 2015, the University of Queensland will be hosting a free online course ( MOOC ) taking this approach to teaching climate science. At AGU, my colleagues and I recorded many lectures for that MOOC, and John Cook interviewed a 'who's who' list of climate rock stars. In those interviews and during other talks and events, I heard about the attacks many climate scientists have faced for having the temerity to do their jobs.
Ben Santer was attacked for summarizing the evidence behind how we knew humans were driving global warming in the 1995 IPCC report. Michael Mann and Malcolm Hughes spoke of the incessant attacks they've faced since publishing their "hockey stick" study over 15 years ago (a result since replicated dozens of times ). Katharine Hayhoe (quite possibly the nicest person on Earth, and one of the most influential ) was attacked for writing a chapter about climate change for a book Newt Gingrich was writing. Naomi Oreskes, for publishing the first study in 2004 on the climate consensus.
My colleagues and I got a taste of those attacks after we published our follow-up consensus study last year. Fortunately, as Mann and Hayhoe and others noted in a terrific climate science communication session that I had the privilege of speaking in, they've borne the brunt of the storm. Young climate scientists today can do their research and communicate with the public with less threat of being attacked, thanks to those groundbreaking individuals and groups like the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund.
Making Policy Reflect Science
As Hayhoe pointed out in one of her AGU talks, our infrastructure and society are constructed based on the assumption of a stable climate, but we're in the process of destabilizing it. We're not doing enough to protect our investments, security, or future wellbeing.
Andrew Weaver spoke about his decision to shift from science to politics, quipping,
We need evidence-based decision-making. What we have is decision-based evidence-making.
Similarly, Aaron Goldner started working for Senator Sheldon Whitehouse after finishing his doctorate in paleoclimate research. He told me,
After you study past warm climate intervals, it becomes quite clear where the world can go when you continuously add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. I feel like the next 10 years are the most critical in changing our trajectory in terms of temperature change. I decided to follow a public policy path and go to D.C. because it's important to understand the system as a whole, and also the role of a scientist in this political system. Scientists are respected and needed in policy discussions, and I believe I will ultimately be a better scientist the more I understand how to get the best information to the decision makers who can move us in the right direction.
Within the fire hose of information presented at AGU 2014, the connecting thread was clear. Human-caused climate change poses a serious threat; the Merchants of Doubt have obscured that threat in a shroud of disinformation and attacks on climate scientists; but social scientists are making progress in learning how to effectively communicate the urgency of the problem to the public. Their work is crucial, because the next decade is critical in determining which climate path we take.
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The Guardian
January 6, 2015 Tuesday 12:00 PM GMT
Keystone, climate change and the US economy: the truth behind the myths;
Six-plus years of robust debate has led to plenty of speculation about the perceived benefits of the pipeline - some of which are drastically overstated
BYLINE: Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 442 words
America has 2.5m miles of oil and gas pipelines. But none of those pipelines are anywhere near as contentious as the Keystone XL, which would transport tar sands crude oil from Canada to refineries on the US gulf coast. Over the past six-plus years, Keystone has become a stand-in for a broader debate about climate change. It's also the subject of much myth-making about climate change and the economy. Below, a look at some of the most prominent of those myths, and the truth behind them.
Myth #1: Keystone XL won't contribute to climate change
The State Department said the pipeline would not have a significant impact on development of the tar sands or crude oil demand - and so would not have much impact on climate change. But even the State Department's own analysis found found the pipeline, once operational, would cause the equivalent emissions of 300,000 cars a year, and it noted that tar sands were 17% more carbon intensive than the average barrel of US crude oil. Subsequent analyses by the Congressional Research Service have found tar sands up to 20% more carbon intensive than the average barrel of crude.
Myth #2: Keystone will create thousands of jobs
The American Petroleum Institute lobby group claimed in 2009 that Keystone would create up to 343,000 new US jobs over a four-year period, based on demand for new goods and services, and add up to $34bn to the US economy in 2015. However, the non-partisan Congressional Research Service found those estimates were based on an internal study that had not been subject to review. The State Department in its analysis found Keystone would create about 42,000 direct and indirect temporary construction jobs, and about 50 permanent jobs once construction is finished.
Myth #3: Keystone will free the US from undemocratic oil regimes
Canada already supplies up to 33% of US oil imports - more than Mexico and Saudi Arabia combined. "The energy security implications of increased Canadian crude supplies in a global market are, therefore, somewhat unpredictable," the Congressional Research Service found. Most of the 830,000 barrels of oil a day transported by Keystone will be exported. There is a plan for a lateral spur, which will take up to 12% of Keystone XL capacity, for oil from the Bakken shale which covers North Dakota and Montana.
Myth #4: Keystone will lower gasoline prices
Gasoline prices are already at their lowest levels in decades, as any driver knows. Keystone will have no effect on local prices at the pump because there is no direct link between gas prices and local oil production or availability. Gas prices are determined by the international prices for a barrel of oil.
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The Guardian
January 6, 2015 Tuesday 7:00 AM GMT
Five reasons why local government should influence climate change plans;
Local authorities are closer to communities and often more innovative than national governments. Cutting them out of climate negotiations is a big mistake
BYLINE: Annabelle Jaeger, EU Committee of the Regions
SECTION: PUBLIC LEADERS NETWORK
LENGTH: 896 words
Unless we, as an international community, significantly reduce our carbon emissions by the year 2100, temperatures could soar by 4.8°C. The impact is unimaginable.
This is why all eyes are on the next UN climate talks in Paris in 2015 and expectations are high. During the UN preparatory talks in Lima in December 2014, I represented the Committee of the Regions - the EU's assembly of local and regional authorities - and demanded that local government be formally recognised as a key player in all future climate negotiations.
The initial talks were promising but the final text was disappointing, with the reference to local government being removed.
But why should local government shape international climate change agreements? Here are five reasons:
1. The buck stops here
Local government is on the front line and is responsible for taking a wide range of decisions that can make or break the success of any international strategy on climate change.
Local authorities are ultimately responsible for making policy a reality. According to UNDP estimates, more than 70% of climate change reduction measures and up to 90% of climate change adaptation measures are undertaken by local government. Projects delivered locally are designed to reflect local circumstances and it is these tailor-made solutions that allow us to take effective action. It is essential for these local experiences to be fed back to the highest decision-making bodies so that obstacles and potential improvements can be identified, saving time and money.
2. Local leaders are more innovative and ambitious
The economic and social impact of climate change on communities cannot be understated. Local governments are leading the fight against climate change, taking decisive action on transport emissions, urban biodiversity, urban regeneration and waste management.
In Europe, the success of programmes such as the Covenant of Mayors -more than 6,000 local and regional authorities representing 191 million people that have agreed to meet and exceed the EU's 20% CO2 reduction objectives by 2020 - demonstrates that local ambition often overrides the stalling commitment of national governments.
But mitigation is only half the story. The EU's Mayors Adapt initiative has seen Europe's local and regional governments already preparing communities to learn how to live with the consequences of climate change. These climate change leaders are a source of inspiration and their voices must be heard when decisions are being taken on what can be done to combat climate change.
3. No one is better placed to get the public on board
One of the key roles local government can play in contributing to a global climate agreement is public engagement and stimulating local action. What is striking at many international climate conferences is how cut off citizens are from the negotiations and decision-making process.
The changes that need to be made will have a real impact on people's daily lives and it is vital to get the public on board. Local government can be the link between international climate negotiations and the population at large. Tackling climate change can have a wider social impact, especially if local authorities are involved: many initiatives - such as developing green infrastructure or investing in local green energy - bring benefits not only in reducing greenhouse gases but in creating jobs, for example.
4. Strong local leadership can mobilise communities
Strong local leadership and forging partnerships between local governments will cut costs and improve policy delivery. But local government needs support and investment to mobilise communities, businesses and civil society to reduce the impact of climate change. It is these representatives that can bring together economic operators and civil society to turn good ideas into tangible results - cooperatives for local energy production are a good example of this.
Local politicians also facilitate public participation and ensure local people are consulted on projects such as wind farms that affect the landscape. Local coordination must not be neglected by international decision makers. The fight against climate change must be fought by everybody, or it cannot be fought at all.
5. Think local, act global
Local governments can make a difference in international negotiations. While the international process of intergovernmental negotiations has almost ground to a halt, local governments around the world are agreeing on priorities for action. Decentralised cooperation arrangements have been established between regions and towns and cities. This is vital in establishing trust that national governments need to reach an ambitious global agreement.
Annabelle Jaeger is a member of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur regional council and the EU's Committee of the Regions
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The Guardian
January 6, 2015 Tuesday 4:53 AM GMT
2014 was Australia's third warmest year on record, says Bureau of Meteorology;
Seven of the country's 10 warmest years on record have come since 2002, mirroring global trend of rising temperatures
BYLINE: Oliver Milman
SECTION: AUSTRALIA NEWS
LENGTH: 920 words
Australia experienced its third warmest year on record in 2014 with six major heat waves scorching the country, according to the Bureau of Meteorology.
Last year was 0.91C warmer than the long-term average, which is set between 1961 and 1990, the BoM's annual climate statement said. This made 2014 Australia's third warmest year since records began in 1910, behind 2013 and 2005.
With the World Meteorological Organization expected to confirm that 2014 was the globe's hottest year on record, the data from Australia adds to the evidence that the world's warming trend has not "paused".
According to the BoM, seven of Australia's 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 2002. The 10-year average temperature from 2005 to 2014 was 0.55C above the long-term average - the highest on record.
Last year was characterised by "frequent periods of abnormally warm weather throughout the year", the bureau said.
In other findings from the BoM's climate statement:
New South Wales had its warmest year on record, while Victoria had its second warmest year. Every state and territory, apart from the Northern Territory, had a year ranked among the four warmest ever.
Rainfall averaged at 478mm, which is near the long-term average. Parts of northern Australia had higher than normal rainfall, while other parts of Australia experienced drought-like conditions.
Four tropical cyclones hit Australia in 2014, while destructive bushfires ravaged Victoria and South Australia.
Sea surface temperatures were "unusually warm", at 0.49C above average for the year to November.
Nationally, Australian temperatures have warmed by around 1C since 1950, with 2014 continuing this trend.
Over a 24-month period, January 2013 to December 2014 was the warmest on record at 1.05C above the long-term average. This is higher than the next warmest two-year periods of 2004-05 and 2005-06.
Dr Karl Braganza, manager of the BoM's climate monitoring section, said the warming trend, fuelled by the release of greenhouse gases from human activity, was "very clear".
"We're seeing reoccurring heatwaves, long durations of heat but very little cold weather," he told Guardian Australia. "We are getting mild conditions throughout the year - last spring was the hottest on record.
"It's getting hotter but also there are longer durations of heat. There are larger areas of the continent getting covered by this heat, which is a salient point when you are working out bushfire conditions."
Braganza said Australia "flirted" with El Niño conditions throughout 2014, which contributed to the warm year. El Niño is a climatic condition which periodically alters weather conditions in the Pacific, generally bringing drier weather to Australia.
The overall rainfall figure hid significant drought-like conditions, with areas of western Queensland and NSW receiving little or no rain over the past two years.
"There were no relieving rains for the drought-affected inland areas in 2014 and it was really dry in other places, such as around Brisbane," Braganza said. "Breaking that drought will require a lot of rainfall and in western Victoria and South Australia they are now moving into drought conditions."
Sea surface temperatures were 0.49C above the long-term average, the fourth highest on record. The ocean is absorbing a vast amount of the excess heat in the atmosphere, with potentially dire consequences for coral systems such as the Great Barrier Reef.
Dr Sarah Perkins, a research fellow at the University of NSW's Climate Change Research Centre, told Guardian Australia the trends raised concerns about the future of the Great Barrier Reef.
"The oceans are sucking up extra heat and it is also becoming more acidic. When it does that, it destroys the coral. The reef has to worry about ocean acidification as well as rising temperature, so the future for the reef looks pretty bleak."
Perkins, who studies extreme weather events, said Australia was starting to experience heat waves throughout the year.
"People generally associate heat waves with summer, but we're starting to see extreme events occur in autumn and spring, such as the prolonged heat we had in Sydney this past autumn," she said. "We've had an early start to the bushfire season and some of the areas of vegetation are like a tinderbox.
"Heat isn't the only contributor to bushfire risk, but when you have high heat and low moisture, that's a lethal combination for fire."
Perkins said there were "various lines of evidence", including melting ice caps and ocean heat, to show there had been no pause in warming.
Prof Steve Sherwood, director of the Climate Change Research Centre, said if 2014 was not the warmest year globally on record, the next El Niño-influenced year would ensure the record was broken.
"It is remarkable that we continue to get these very hot years in Australia and globally, even though we have not had a strong El Niño for years," he said.
"This represents the baseline warming from greenhouse gases - mainly atmospheric CO2, which has now blown past the 400 [parts per million] mark."
Prof David Karoly, a climate scientist at the University of Melbourne, said the BoM "seem unwilling" to attribute the warming to human influences.
"Unless there are rapid, substantial and sustained reductions of greenhouse gas emissions in Australia and globally, Australia will experience more heatwaves and bushfires as in 2014," he said.
Braganza said the BoM explicitly referred to human-influenced climate change in its State of the Climate report, which it releases once every two years.
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The New York Times
January 6, 2015 Tuesday
Late Edition - Final
The Moral of the Kulluk
BYLINE: By JOE NOCERA
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Editorial Desk; OP-ED COLUMNIST; Pg. 23
LENGTH: 795 words
The cover story of The New York Times Magazine on Sunday, ''The Wreck of the Kulluk,'' by McKenzie Funk, is one of those articles that you can't put down even though you know how it turns out. The Kulluk was an offshore exploratory drilling rig, owned by Royal Dutch Shell, which, in December 2012, ran aground in some of the most inhospitable waters in the world.
Those waters were the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas in the Arctic Circle, more than 1,000 miles from Dutch Harbor, Alaska, the nearest deep-water port. The rig, which had been towed -- with great difficulty -- to the Beaufort Sea, was in the process of being towed out again, barely two months after the drill bit touched the sea floor, before ice formations would make the route impassable. The Kulluk and its tow soon ran into a series of dangerous storms. Although no one died, Funk keeps you on the edge of your seat by describing in detail the hair-raising ordeal, which led to the tow captain of a rescue tugboat cutting the Kulluk adrift to ensure his own men's safety. The Kulluk's crew, meanwhile, was airlifted via helicopter, in a dramatic, and dangerous, rescue.
Funk also does a nice job laying out all the mistakes Shell made. Despite spending $6 billion preparing to explore for oil in this remote part of the world, it didn't plan adequately, and it cut too many corners. According to the Coast Guard, which investigated the Kulluk disaster, not only had Shell's risk management been ''inadequate,'' but there also had been a significant number of ''potential violations of law and regulations.''
I came away from Funk's article, however, with another thought: Even if Shell had done everything right, what were the chances of something bad happening to the Kulluk, or, more broadly, to any drilling program in that part of the Arctic? They were high. Although this area is considered to hold one of the last great oil fields -- with an estimated 23 billion barrels -- is drilling for it really worth the risks?
The first issue is the weather. One of the reasons this remote location is at least theoretically accessible to oil companies is because of climate change. ''There is less ice, and it is receding from the shore,'' said Michael LeVine, the Pacific senior counsel of Oceana, an environmental group dedicated to preserving the world's oceans. But, he adds, climate change is also affecting the wind, the water and the currents. An area that was already remote, cold and dark is something else as well: unpredictable. Companies trying to explore for oil in the region are essentially flying blind.
Then there is the question of whether the government is up to the task of regulating such high-risk ventures. The answer is: probably not. Even after the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico -- and despite some improvements in safety regulations -- government regulation is still way behind the oil industry. ''The technological capabilities and the need for oil companies to drill in more remote places has outstripped the government's ability to keep up with it,'' LeVine told me.
There are a host of important environmental issues: the industry hasn't gotten better at dealing with oil spills since the Exxon Valdez spill 25 years ago, for instance. Yet because the climate is so difficult, the chances of an environmental calamity are increased.
As regular readers know, I am hardly opposed to drilling for oil or gas. Yet this particular high-risk venture seems both foolish and unnecessary. For one thing, the world is awash in oil, thanks to a slowdown in demand and increase in supply because of the fracking revolution. For another, the price of oil is so low as to make new, expensive exploration in the Arctic unprofitable.
Most of all, though, we're just not ready to drill for this oil. As LeVine put it, ''I don't believe we have the technological capability to extract these resources safely.'' To me, that is the real moral of the story of the Kulluk.
Oil companies, of course, are fundamentally built to find oil. Shell had once embraced climate change and the need for renewable energy. But it eventually realized that it lacked the proper expertise, and it got rid of its investments in wind and solar to refocus on oil and gas. Now, like every other big oil company, it must explore for oil in evermore hostile environments, because those are the only fields left untapped. Despite its travails with the Kulluk, Shell has submitted a plan that would have it going back to the Chukchi later this year.
The oil in the Arctic Circle isn't going anywhere. If, two decades from now, we need it, maybe by then the industry and the government will be in a position to drill for it -- and regulate it -- safely. But maybe we'll get lucky. Or smart.
Maybe we'll never need it at all.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/06/opinion/joe-nocera-the-moral-of-the-kulluk.html
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The Guardian
January 5, 2015 Monday 10:57 PM GMT
Resolutions to help you live more mindfully in 2015;
Creating a better tomorrow is a goal we can all agree on. Here are 10 easy steps you can take starting today
SECTION: FOLLOW THE FROG - RAINFOREST ALLIANCE PARTNER ZONE
LENGTH: 1388 words
What will your Earth-minded New Year's resolutions be for 2015? Will you resolve to produce zero garbage? Eat 100% vegan? And never drive a car again?
Easy peezy, right? Wait, come back! Just kidding! As any lifestyle expert can attest, the New Year's resolutions most likely to become habit are those that aim for incremental change. The good news is that collective commitment to small actions can have a big effect.
Below are 10 resolutions that will help build a brighter future. Start small until you feel the habit take hold, then turn it up by increasing the frequency or intensity of your endeavours.
But first, take a look at what ideas readers have shared. Be sure to share your progress (and advice) here by using #FollowTheFrog and #NewYearsResolution on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
1. Walk, bike, or carpool to work at least once a week. Or work at home (yes, you can show this to your boss).
If only everyone would turn their cars into giant lawn ornaments and never drive again. But not only is that unrealistic, for some commuters it's not even possible . Still, consider these stats: if you drive 30 miles to your office, even in a fuel-efficient car, you're releasing 4,500 kg (10,000lb) of carbon dioxide, which is one of several greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming, into the atmosphere annually. Walking, biking or carpooling once a week reduces your carbon output by nearly 1,000 kg over the course of a year. Increase frequency once you find a routine that works.
2. Love to garden? Switch to native plants that save water and protect local biodiversity
The typical suburban lawn consumes 45,500 litres of water each year (not including rainwater). If you replace grass with native plants, you could cut your water use- and water bill - by up to two-thirds, while maintaining habitat for local wildlife. And not only are native plants more resistant to local pests, they tend to grow deeper root systems that help prevent erosion.
3. Light your home efficiently
You've probably heard the buzz - governments around the world are phasing out incandescent light bulbs in favour of energy-efficient options. So now is the perfect time to make the switch to LED lights, which last 25 times longer than incandescent bulbs and don't contain mercury like compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs). Although LEDs cost more up front, the investment will benefit your pocketbook, as well as the planet, over time since water is required to produce electricity. Here's a cool tool to help you calculate your lighting usage.
4. Go vegetarian once a week
Livestock farming causes about 18% of current greenhouse gas emissions - more than every car, train and plane on the planet combined, according to this report released by the UN If you just can't face the prospect of life without beef stew or chicken teriyaki, then start small: go vegetarian - or vegan, if you can - one day a week. In addition to curtailing greenhouse gas emissions, you'll save water: for every burger you pass up, you'll save2,400 litres (634 gallons) of water. Another profound benefit from passing up animal products: farmers often use as much as 7 kg (15lb) grain to produce about one half kg (1lb) beef, which can fill the bellies of two people for a few hours, but the same amount of grain can feed more than 13 people for a day. In other words, the less meat you eat, the more grain you're making available to humans. According to the United Nations World Food Programme, about one in nine people on Earth do not have enough food to lead a healthy, active life.
5. Buy only the food you need
UK households throw out 7 million tons of food and drink each year, more than half of which could have been consumed. And the US wastes 40% of the food it grows, produces and sells. That's a crying shame, when you think about the resources that go into producing it (like 25% of all the freshwater in the US) - and worse, the number of people suffering hunger and malnutrition.
Nearly all of that uneaten food ends up rotting in landfill, accounting for a hefty share of methane emissions, which is another greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change.
If all that doesn't move you to change your food buying habits, consider this: the typical American family of four loses $1,365 to $2,275 per year on food they never eat. Wouldn't you rather save that money and take a vacation?
6. Carry your own glass or stainless steel water bottle - and just say no to plastic
Between 1994 and 2013, the UK bottled water market grew from 690 million litres to just over 2.3 billion. The average American consumes 145 litres of bottled water per year, which adds up to approximately 1,500 plastic water bottles per second. It takes an estimated three litres of water just to produce and transport a single bottle. Then there's the oil used: the manufacture of every ton of polyethylene terephthalate ( PET ), which is typically what water bottles are made of, generates 3 tons of carbon dioxide. Sadly, 66 million of these bottles end up in landfills or in the ocean.
Don't forget, drinking from plastic bottles poses health risks too. So use a reusable container and take your tap water with you.
7. Tweak your toilet tank
If all the old toilets in the US were replaced with water-efficient models, we could collectively save 2,350 billion litres (520 billion gallons) of water per year- that's the equivalent to the amount of water that flows over Niagara Falls in a 12-day period. Can't switch out your old water-hogging toilet? No problem! By placing a 2 litre (half gallon) plastic jug filled with sand, marbles or rocks - inside the tank, you can save 11 litres (2.5 gallons) of water daily, or 335 litres (75 gallons) per month. And while you're at it, check for any leaks from your tank by adding a few drops of food coloring to the tank when it is in resting mode. If any coloring leaches into the toilet, replace the rubber flapper - the part that lifts open in the tank when you flush.
8. Don't run the tap
Turning off the tap while you shave, brush your teeth and lather up in the shower can save up to 340 litres (75 gallons) per week. And by taking shorter showers with a water-saving showerhead, you can reduce your water consumption by 40%.
9. Watch your wardrobe
In the UK, the average consumer wastes £142 a year on items they never wear. The average American spends $1,800 a year on clothes and shoes and goes through 15 kg of new cotton clothing annually. Conventionally grown cotton uses more insecticides than any other single crop, accounting for more than 10% of total pesticide use and nearly 25% of insecticide use worldwide - all of which potentially puts the health of farm workers at risk. But not all organic cotton is created equal, so shop wisely: it could take more than 2,350 litres (520 gallons) of irrigation water to grow 50g (1lb) of organic cotton fibre in India, while organic cotton grown in Brazil is almost entirely rain-fed. When you consider, too, the prevalence of human rights abuses in clothing factories abroad, it just makes sense to stop buying new clothing and shop vintage. Just think, you could up your fashion game with a real 1950s fedora or a silk 1970s shift and be kind the Earth and her people.
10. Support to the Rainforest Alliance
One of the simplest ways to amplify the benefits of your New Year's resolutions is to support organisations such as the Rainforest Alliance that work for sustainable transformation on the ground. The Rainforest Alliance has a proven track record over 25+ years of working with communities to protect biodiversity, curb climate change and improve livelihoods all over the world, such as the forest community of San Juan de Cheni, which has worked hard to regain its footing after Peru's violent civil conflict.
Content on this page is provided by the Rainforest Alliance, supporter of the Vital Signs platform.
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Climate change to Ebola: what happened next? - podcast transcript;
In 2014, we covered pollution from Mexico City to Manila, corruption in Mali and the Ebola crisis in west Africa. But what happened next? Hugh Muir talks to our reporters to find outListen to the podcast
BYLINE: Hugh Muir and Matt Hill
SECTION: GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT
LENGTH: 7042 words
HM: Hugh Muir
JV: John Vidal
SG: Suzanne Goldenberg
JW: Jonathan Watts
EGH: Emma Graham-Harrison
MM: Monica Mark
SB: Sarah Boseley
MA: Morie Amadou
MR: Mustafa Rogers
RS: Dr Ramona Sunderwirth
CDM: Clément Besse Desmoulieres
DS: David Smith
ADS: Alex Duval Smith
AOdB: Anton Op de Beke
CB: Coumba Bah
[Jingle: The Guardian]
HM Hello and welcome to the Global development podcast. I'm Hugh Muir. This month, something different. We'll be returning to some of the people and issues we've talked about this year and finding out what happened next. We'll also be touching on what we can expect in 2015. We've updates on Ebola in west Africa and how the world looks after climate change talks in Peru. Here's what happened after we uncovered corruption in Mali; Nato's pulled out of Afghanistan, how will that impact on development there? All of that coming up and more on this bumper Global development podcast from the Guardian .
And we begin this month's podcast where we left the last: Lima and the Cop 20 climate change talks in Peru. You'll have read the gist of it by now. Pretty hopeful. A key first step but plenty left to do. Let's unpick that summary now with the Guardian's US environment correspondent, Suzanne Goldenberg. She's in Peru now. And our environment editor, John Vidal, he's here with me in London. Hello to both of you.
JV Hello.
SG Hi.
HM Suzanne, let me start with you. We expected a compromise, one that no one was really happy with, that got us closer to a deal. Is that basically what we've got?
SG Oh yeah. I mean we've got an agreement that came out at the eleventh hour that everybody is unhappy with. So if that's the definition of a compromise then this is a compromised deal.
HM Is that what was likely, that everyone was going to come out of this happy? One would have thought not?
SG Oh no, no everyone's unhappy. Everyone's a little bit unhappy.
HM Isn't that what you thought going into it, that's where we would be?
SG You know, what I think happened is that everyone's optimism was boosted going into the talks because there had been this deal between the two biggest carbon polluters, the US and China. And they agreed between them to cut emissions. Money had begun to sort of dribble into the green climate fund. There was a sense of momentum. So then people thought, well, maybe for once we can actually accomplish something at these talks. And then, the inevitable roller coaster arc of these things, we thought the talks would collapse. And they did actually emerge with something that ticked the boxes for the big constituent blocks here. So I think there are some good things that come out of this judging by the very modest standards that we have come to expect from such meetings.
HM John Vidal here in London, all countries will have to make cuts in carbon use - is that enough? Is that enough to make you happy?
JV Yeah. It probably is a very good thing, but frankly these are voluntary cuts, so every country will be able to choose effectively what it wants to do, what it can do. So we're going to get lowest common denominator stuff and we've no idea if that's going to be in total anywhere near enough to get us down to the maximum of one degree or two degree centigrade rise in temperatures, which the cuts will need. I can't personally see it happening. So all countries by end of March are going to have to say what they're going to cut. And then, by November next year, the UN will have crunched those figures and we'll be able to see exactly whether we're on target or not to keep the temperatures down. And I feel we'll be well, well, well away - and there'll be an almighty confrontation in Paris next year.
HM Is voluntary not binding? Who do we have to keep an eye on; who are likely to be the laggards here?
JV Take your pick!
SG Everybody!
HM I suppose it's good that they had some sort of agreed text but it does seem to water down previous commitments, Suzanne, on cutting greenhouse gas emissions. You've written one particular phrase "common but differentiated responsibilities" - what's that about?
SG Basically, 20 years ago, when the international community began dealing with this issue, there was this idea that the countries responsible for the problem - which is the US and Europe, the rich countries, the industrialised world - should take responsibility for climate change, that they should be the ones that should cut emissions. Now what's happened since then is that countries like China, India, Brazil have begun to develop, and they've begun to do so and to grow their economies on a very polluting pattern. In fact, China now produces more greenhouse gas emissions than the United States.
So the United States, and to a lesser extent Europe, has managed to reshape the nature of these talks so that, from hereonin, China, India and other countries are going to have to cut their emissions as well. So that's a big deal, that that language is in there. You also see a sub-clause in there, so common but differentiated responsibilities means that China and the other emerging economies don't have to do as much as the US. And then there's another sub-clause that says, well, they actually do have to do something. So that's a big deal.
HM That's the devil in the detail though, isn't it John, the differentiated responsibilities - one could see people and countries arguing about that until the year dot.
JV Hugh, it's the key to the whole thing because what's happened is they've built up this enormous resentment by the poor countries, which now are absolutely furious that the rich countries are not going to have to lead anymore. And this is unjust. This is a climate injustice of the first order. And so they're not going to let them get away with that in Paris next year.
HM That's interesting, because when you read the headlines you kind of think that's good everyone has a common level of responsibility. But in one way it's just the big countries palming off some level of their responsibilities to smaller ones, isn't it?
JV What you've got is historical responsibility as well. The mess we've got ourselves into now is not actually very much to do with China and India, it's much more to do with what happened 50-100 years ago in Europe and America and the industrialised countries. Now in the past, those countries took historical responsibility and said they would lead the world out of this mess. And now what's happened is, as Suzanne has rightfully said, it's everybody's responsibility.
HM But doesn't that just mean no one's leading?
JV Well, exactly. The poor countries don't mind cutting their emissions, that's not a great problem, I mean they want money to help them and everything like that. But they do mind if the rich countries don't take a lead, and that's what we're not seeing and that will be the faultline later on, I sense.
HM Suzanne, is that the nightmare, that the poor countries go away with a piece of paper and it all looks very good, and then they get home and they read it and they think, "Oh, this is not what we thought it was, this is not as good as we thought it was"?
SG What I found interesting about this particular Cop, which is what they call these annual meetings, was that I don't think you can, and this is a success from US and European diplomacy in a way, in that I don't see that those distinctions quite so clearly between rich and poor countries. You've got the alliance of poor countries that has begun to fracture in all sorts of different ways. So you have big developing countries such as India, China, Brazil and South Africa. Then you've got this group of Latin American countries such as Peru and Mexico and Colombia that are going along with the US line quite clearly, to the extent that they're putting money into climate finance. That they are not in some intermediate rich/poor group where they are helping to pay for other countries.
So you've got India, China the big developing countries; you've got the middle countries; and then you've got the poorest of the poor countries that have also been co-opted a little bit by the United States. So the big divide of rich country/poor country is shifting around a bit. And I think that is why the US and Europe have been able to reshape this conversation into this idea that everybody has to do their fair share rather than [say]: "Look, we've been the cause of the problem."
JV I think the danger is we've got now very little negotiating time left before we get this supposed final deal in Paris. And it's not in anybody's interest to sign up to a deal which is not going to help them in any way. The big other elephant in the room is the finance, the money. And here the rich countries have really come up with derisory offers. Suzanne wrote a very good piece about this.
HM Give us some idea.
SG Basically, it's a quarter of what they raised before. In 2010, 2011, 2012 they managed to get $10bn a year. Now after saying, "Woo-hoo Green Climate Fund", they've managed to get $10bn over four years. And some of that is not new money, some of that is just moving money from one pot to the other, especially with Australia. And yet developing countries are supposed to take from this some kind of reassurance that somehow the rich countries and the middle-income countries are going to mobilise enough money to reach $100bn every single year by 2020. That's a huge gap.
HM What is that gap going to mean, John Vidal?
JV The gap is getting bigger, not smaller - that's the whole point. It means that unless they come up with real, cast-iron assurances by October/November next year, unless we see real money on the table, these talks will collapse. I'm absolutely certain of it.
HM Suzanne, you're leaving Lima this afternoon along with delegates and negotiators from around the world. What happens next?
SG Well, what happens next is that people have until March officially to really show what they're going to do. They have to put forward a figure for emissions reduction targets. Now you've seen the targets coming forward from the US and from the European Union and from China; now the pressure is on for others to begin to put forward those targets. And countries are crunching those numbers and seeing what they can offer. And so by the end of March, hopefully, we'll get an idea of how serious countries are.
HM Quick prediction from you, John Vidal, what do you think will happen in the next year?
JV There's going to be some grotesque arm-twisting, in fact call it bullying, from the rich countries over the poor countries. And money will be offered and there will be blood on the tracks.
HM OK. Suzanne Goldenberg, John Vidal thank you very much. We will be here, we'll monitor and see if those predictions are right, here on the Global development podcast.
JW Hello, this is Jonathan Watts, I'm Latin America correspondent for the Guardian . For me this has been a year that's been a mixture of elections on the political side, of course the World Cup on the sports and entertainment side; but underlying them all and dearest to my heart it's been a story of increasing deterioration of the regional environment. And by that I mean we've seen more and more mining companies, hydroelectric companies, roadbuilders, loggers, drug dealers using the Amazon, the world's biggest forest, pushing through it and transforming some of the world's most biodiverse areas. Even in the best case scenario, all that will have happened is that the rate of deforestation has slowed down; it hasn't stopped, it's just slowed down. So more and more of the Amazon is being cleared. I've been here in Latin America now for two and a half years. The longer I'm here, the more often I'm visiting the Amazon and the more I'm coming to realise just how threatened it is and how it's being broken up by all of these different projects that are now taking place. And we're seeing this transformation not just in Brazil but in Peru and in Ecuador. So the news on the environmental front has pretty much been negative across the border, unfortunately.
Some of the most striking stories of the year, although they didn't always make the front pages, have been about new infrastructure projects. And in particular last week and the week before that, I've seen the two biggest projects in Latin America. The biggest one currently taking place is the construction of the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam in Pará state, Brazil. This is well under way, and by August next year the engineers are saying that they will be able to close off the river and a few months later the first turbine will start to produce electricity, and the whole project will be finished by 2019. There's been a lot of impact already. You can see swaths of area deforested.
The indigenous people have essentially given up the battle. In return, they've been compensated with new motorboats, four-wheel drives, iPods - you name it, they've been given everything that they asked for. But at the same time they're saying, "Well you've given us all these things from your culture but we're losing the essence of our way of life", which is running water and a means of food because they used to fish in the river. So you're seeing a lot of destruction from that project, although it will provide a phenomenal amount of electricity, 11,000 megawatts, which Brazil definitely needs. The argument, of course, is whether that's the best way to get it and environmentalists would definitely say no. But it is a climate friendly, if you like, if not environment friendly way of producing electricity.
The other really big project that I went to report on, although it hasn't yet started, is the plan for a new canal across Nicaragua. This will be a rival to the Panama Canal - it will stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It will be, if it gets underway - and everybody in Nicaragua that I spoke to said it will get underway - very, very much bigger than the Panama Canal. It will be longer, more than twice as long. It will be wider, it will be deeper. And it will involve a greater removal of earth than any other project that has ever taken place, according to the engineers who are planning this. This will be an utterly transformative project; the whole GDP of Nicaragua is no more than $12bn a year. This project alone promises at least $40bn to go into the Nicaraguan economy. So you're going to see a transformative effect that should propel development in Nicaragua, which is the second poorest country in Latin America. But at the same time you're going to have a huge impact on the environment, particularly Lake Nicaragua, which is the biggest source of fresh water in Central America.
So these two projects - and there are many others that I could cite, but let's just concentrate on these two - for me these are absolutely spectacular developments that are changing the face of Latin America. Yes, lifting living standards but at the same time putting a lot of extra pressure on the environment.
EGH My name's Emma Graham-Harrison, I'm international affairs correspondent for the Observer, but I've just moved back to the UK after living in Afghanistan for more than four years.
The way the Afghans participated in the election, the turnout of the people in the polling stations - women and men in bad weather conditions - that was a fantastic slap in the face of enemies of Afghanistan, and a big punch in the face of those who believe Afghanistan is not ready for democracy.
So 2014 was a pretty historic year for Afghanistan because you had the first ever peaceful, largely democratic transfer of power. The outgoing president, Hamid Karzai, had ruled Afghanistan since 2001. A lot of people had expected that he would try to hold on to power one way or another, perhaps do something like Putin and Medvedev did and create a prime ministerial role for himself or arrange for a puppet candidate to win the election. But in fact he relinquished power.
However, things haven't been entirely resolved by the fact that he's handed over power because although you have a new president, Ashraf Ghani, a very interesting man who's a former academic, but he's now got to move from the world of academia and theories into putting them into practice in a very, very difficult environment.
"This is the aftermath of an attack on the Afghan Intelligence Agency in Jalalabad. Six people were killed and over forty wounded when two suicide car bombers ..."
EGH I think he's got two main things on his to-do list: one is don't be defeated by the Taliban, don't let your government collapse. And number two is sort out the country's finances; Afghanistan is almost bankrupt. It's heavily dependent on foreign aid. Well over half of the national budget is provided by donors. The taxation system is very inefficient. The economy's feeble. And he also has to deal with terrible, terrible corruption. I mean, Afghanistan a couple of years ago had the world's biggest bank scandal, if you look at the size of the bank relative to national GDP; a bank called Kabul Bank nearly collapsed. The theft was nearly a billion dollars, $925m had gone missing.
Ghani, one of the very first things he did when he came to office was order the arrest of two of the main people responsible for that; the guy who had been chairman of the bank and another senior official. And that was a very clear way to send out a signal that he was serious about tackling corruption.
"The threat here in Afghanistan was from al-Qaida and al-Qaida training camps. That has been removed, and that is real progress."
EGH But the Taliban definitely see this as a chance to assert themselves militarily to perhaps try and put the Afghan army, the Afghan police on the back foot. You know, very recently, there was a day where Kabul opened the day with a suicide bombing on an army bus that killed several people. And then the day ended with another suicide bombing, this time on a play. One of the very few cultural venues left in Kabul; they were actually performing a play about suicide bombings and the impact of them. And during the performance a teenage bomber detonated a suicide vest, killing at least one person and injuring many more. And the Taliban said afterwards in a statement that they specifically targeted that play because it was spreading lies about jihad and about what they were doing. So I mean you can see with an attack like this the Taliban are sending a very brutal but very sophisticated message.
HM That was Emma Graham-Harrison; and before that Jonathan Watts in Brazil.
Now to Africa. Monica Mark is the west Africa correspondent for the Guardian. She has contributed to many of our reports this year including our coverage of Ebola, and she's on the line now. Monica, how has Nigeria coped with the outbreak?
MM Nigeria was basically able to draw on its polio surveillance system that's in place because it's one of three or four countries in the world where polio is still endemic. So that system could also be used to track people down ... I think tens of thousands of contacts.
HM So it just had a better infrastructure to start with?
MM It had a better infrastructure as well ... The Liberian man when he flew in he went to a private clinic because doctors were on strike for much the same reason that doctors are on strike in Sierra Leone right now: they're not being paid enough and they work in dismal conditions. So doctors happened to be on strike in public hospitals so that meant that only one small clinic was dealing with this Ebola case and they reacted - it's hard to tell what might have been the case if Sawyer had been exposed to a lot of people.
HM Let's broaden out a bit because obviously the worst thing Nigeria needed I suppose was a medical emergency at the same time as all the other problems, particularly the security emergency that there's been throughout a lot of the year. Talk to me a bit about that and how that's evolved?
MM It's been a bad year for security. Nigeria has had a problem with Boko Haram in the north of the country for about five years now, so it's nothing new. It was this year that 200, almost 300, schoolgirls were kidnapped. We've never seen anything on that scale before. So that was pretty terrible. But the thing was in context, those girls being kidnapped, not on that scale, but it's something that's happening every day. It happened earlier this week, I think about 40 women were kidnapped from a village in the north.
HM Once they're kidnapped are they staying kidnapped or are they drifting back and we're just not really monitoring the story properly?
MM Part of the reason why Boko Haram continue unchecked is because they're almost sort of like Nigeria's dirty secret. It's almost as if they want to wash it away. And obviously Nigeria is a country of 180 million people, it's a big country, and people worrying about their own issues on a day-to-day level; infrastructure's bad, there's no electricity, running water is patchy. So they try not to think about what's going on elsewhere because it's just sort of too much.
HM Those girls, we all read about those girls, their plight went around the world, are they still in the clutches of Boko Haram to any large degree, in large numbers?
MM To date, apart from girls who were able to escape in the initial hours of their school being raided, only one girl ... has been reported to have escaped. So yeah, it's not a straightforward situation for the government because obviously they have to consider do they want to set a precedent for doing hostage swaps, and it's very difficult to rescue even just one person who's being held by Islamists who are not worried about killing their hostages; they have nothing to lose by killing them. So obviously if you have 200-odd girls, it's pretty much impossible to successfully rescue them. So it's tough for the government.
But one thing they don't, as far as we can tell, progress hasn't been made is in terms of dialoguing with this group. Again it's hard to dialogue with a group that has the ideals that Boko Haram does. There seem to be moderate elements in the group and it does seem their brutality is kind of making people turn against them who initially may have sympathised with some of their ideals. And the government were not aware that they are reaching out to these elements, more moderate elements and making progress with them.
HM Is this is on the front pages there in Nigeria; isn't there a continuing scandal?
MM It's not front-page news any more, it's just sort of a background ... It is covered, but it's not really front-page news. With the elections coming up, obviously security is going to be one of the main campaigning issues so that might change over the next few months. And what we've seen even just in the runup to the primaries is a spike in bomb blasts going off in major cities rather than rural areas, which is where Boko Haram has been concentrating.
HM Is it really possible that good Goodluck Jonathan's government can go into an election with 200-odd girls kidnapped, not having got them back, and still win an election?
MM In Nigeria that is entirely possible, and it's likely as well that the incumbent will win. Not least because people are sort of, better the devil they know, that's kind of their attitude.
HM Monica, obviously you'll be looking forward to the elections in Nigeria but what else are you looking forward to, what will be the other big stories in the region?
MM It's a big year for elections across Africa, and west Africa in particular. Togo, Benin and Ivory Coast will be particularly interesting to watch. Their first elections since Alassane Ouattara came into power in 2011, that election basically it triggered a sort of bridge that ... civil conflicts that was the culmination of years of conflict that had been building up. So it will be interesting for the first time in a really long time to have a democratic election in Ivory Coast to see how people feel about the incumbent, Ouattara, who was when he came in he was an IMF, French-educated, former IMF director, a real technocrat. Some people had high hopes that he could restore Ivory Coast to the position it had once been in, which was the shining star of west Africa. So it will be interesting to see what issues come up around his election and how he handles that. And particularly in context of Burkina Faso's recent political troubles. Blaise Compaoré who has been president for 27 years tried to extend the constitution and that led to his being swept out. So there's a whole generation of young people in Burkina Faso who have grown up with just one president.
HM I'm sure it will be good and bad, and fortunes will rise and fall, but do you go into 2015 optimistic for Africa?
MM Realistically, it's hard to imagine there's going to be any sort of dramatic changes, but I am hopeful that quite a lot has been learned in what's been quite a tough year, and that that will have a positive impact going forward.
HM Monica, thank you. I'm sure we'll hear from you on our Global Development podcast throughout 2015 but for now, thank you very much.
Let's stay with west Africa, because the Guardian's health editor, Sarah Boseley, has just been in Sierra Leone and Liberia. She's been speaking to local health workers and NGOs on their continuing struggle against the Ebola epidemic. This is her report.
SB In large letters, on a hoarding at a traffic junction is a public health warning. It runs: "Ebola is real. ABC - avoid body contact. NHS - no handshake."
MA "We're trying to bring in some food items as well as non-food items to households that are quarantined. They are locked up, they cannot move out in search of food. So they rely on what we supply them."
SB Mori Amadou is a project manager for Plan International. He distributes food to villages in quarantine. Are people happy to stay in their homes if they get the package of food?
MA There is ... for them to go in search of food to get their daily livelihoods. If they are quarantined and they are given proper support then definitely there is no reason for them to feel bad about staying home in order to prevent the further spread of the infection. That's basically why Plan International is helping with all this food and non-food items with support from ...
SB Is it difficult sometimes to get to these homes because they're built in places that are hard to access?
MA Yes, it is really very difficult - as you saw today. In fact, most of the locations you really have to mind your steps, it's rocky and bumpy and the footpaths are really narrow and they're full of steps. It's really difficult. There's no car access. People have to help carry the load, so bring it as close as the street can take us to, or the car can take us, and then we go meet the people discuss with them, give them their papers, sensitise them on their package and what it entails and the reason why we are giving the package. And then we tell them to ask their neighbours who can afford to come and help them collect their food stock on their behalf.
SB Sierra Leoneans are being asked to make fundamental changes to their behaviour. It goes beyond funerals, where families now know, although they do not all accept, that they must not touch the body of those who have died. A hug or a handshake is now considered dangerous. That is hard in a tactile society.
MR Today, I've already picked two bodies.
SB And what sort of people were they?
MR Male. They are men.
SB In the western areas of Freetown, Mustafa Rogers works for the Red Cross burial teams explaining to families why their loved ones must be taken away.
MR My job is ... beneficial communication. I always talk to the people who've lost their loved ones, encourage them, talk to them - just give them encouraging talks so that they will not feel bad of what is happening now or what has been going on in Sierra Leone, this Ebola crisis situation.
SB And I think you talk to them and also to all the rest of the community about the dangers of Ebola and how to keep safe.
MR Yes I did that because at any time we arrive at a community since this Ebola breakout come in this country, we have other people who have been telling communities about the dangers of Ebola. So when we come as volunteer Safe and Dignified Burial team, we're also emphasise on it again that you should keep away from Ebola, don't touch body contact - we have to tell them, you see, just for them not to come in contact of Ebola. And we break the chain; we try to cut the chain of Ebola so that the country will be free from Ebola.
SB Does the community get very upset when you pick up the bodies or do they accept this now?
MR No, they accept us because we are the volunteers of the Safe and Dignified Burial team. Whenever we reach a community we try to talk to them in a manner so that they will not get annoyed at us. So they appreciate ... very much picking bodies in the communities.
SB This is Dr Ramona Sunderworth, an emergency paediatric physician working in Lunsar.
RS I have a bit of an advantage, since I grew up in Brazil, but it is very hot. Even before you get into ... you're sweating, and then once you get into it you have 10 pieces of equipment that cover you from head to toe, including goggles and masks and gloves - double, triple sets of gloves. So it gets quite wet in there, I must say. And in the tents where the temperature is a good 10 degrees higher than even in the ambient air, it can get quite drippy, I would say.
SB It isn't the usual way round that things are in medicine. The patient doesn't come first, actually, the rest of the community comes first. Because there's no treatment, people have to be kept away if they have the virus so the rest of us are safe. And a lot of the doctors out there struggle slightly with this. This is public health rather than medicine. Obviously, everybody's doing as much as they possibly can for those people who fall ill, but they have no treatments, there are no drugs. And so at the moment all they can do is to keep them apart.
RS We don't stay in there for more than two hours maximum, usually about an hour and a half, maybe an hour 50 minutes - in the middle of the day that's about all one can really be functional in those suits. But a part of it is just staying focused on the job you're doing and being safe, being very aware of where you are, not focusing on the heat. Because the main issue is not the heat, it's the safety of the healthcare providers and the care that you're giving the patients, so that helps forget about the heat for a little while.
SB You can see the emotional danger they're in. They want so much to cure these young people, and the older ones too, and are investing so much by coming here, that the deaths hurt, badly. They can still make the odd joke about Ebola - they need to be able to. One suggests a new way to get rid of persistent but unwanted male admirers back home: give them a kiss on the mouth and remark, "I've just come back from working in an Ebola treatment centre!"
But it's not just Ebola that they're fighting in western Africa. In Liberia, Médecins Sans Frontières, or MSF, is about to distribute malaria tablets to almost two and a half thousand families living in West Point, a slum area of the capital.
Malaria kills more people than Ebola, particularly pregnant women and small children. The symptoms are identical to Ebola - fever, headache, vomiting. That means there is a risk somebody suffering from malaria will end up in an isolation unit where they may pick up the lethal virus from those who really do have it. Claimonbes des Moulier is a logistician with MSF who has planned these early morning hand-outs in incredible detail.
CDM Today's situation went pretty well. We started at 5:30 it's now ten to seven and we almost distributed 2,300 kits, so for 2,300 families. People were well respecting the no-touch policy, which is great to avoid any cross-contamination. This is our main challenge.
SB You have to take some very serious precautions, don't you, before you come into these areas.
CDM The challenge is about gathering people together. We have to make sure that they will not come all together after they reach the distribution spot to make sure they will not push each other, rush, fight and, especially, touch each other and trying to avoid, as much as possible, any contact. This is for all the beneficiaries. But on the other side, for the people that are working on the site, the distributor, the sensitisation team, drivers, supervisor, is to protect themselves from any contact as well. So we are following very strict rules of protection, prevention with some safe area where we are working in. We have some buffer area to avoid any direct contact with the people, especially at the distribution point.
SB And what is the reason for doing this; is it just to do with malaria or is it about Ebola?
CDM It's about both at once. So malaria is still here and is killing a lot of people every year. Also malaria first symptoms - fever and weakness and vomiting - are quite similar to Ebola. So first of all that was to help the Ebola treatment unit to have less people in the ... centre and in the transit centre. Now the idea also is to avoid cross-contamination for people who are suspected of having Ebola, but who actually get only malaria. And in case they are brought to the suspect area, they can be contaminated and become some Ebola cases.
SB MSF tells its staff: don't touch anybody, don't touch anything, don't sit down. It's not as easy as it sounds. A small crowd of women gather as I speak to one or two, and move in close. Then one of them, impatient of my attempts to understand the spelling of her name, grabs my pen and writes it in my notebook. Does it matter? Very likely not, but I felt obliged to spray the pen with chlorinated water afterwards, as well as the hand she touched.
HM Sarah Boseley there. And you can follow her Ebola diary at theguardian.com/global-development.
DS I'm David Smith. I'm the Africa correspondent of the Guardian and I'm based in Johannesburg, South Africa.
2014 the narrative of "Africa rising", as it's often described, really continued. There were many conferences for investors where they liked to hold up the cover of the Economist magazine from 2000, which described Africa as "a hopeless continent" and then about a decade later a headliner "Africa rising" or "the hopeful continent". And particularly in terms of development, I think the two stars that are often held up as models tend to be Ethiopia and Rwanda. Both of these countries have done very well on many of the millennium development goals. Rwanda in particular, where we are slashing maternal mortality and great improvements in education and on other counts.
What of course does not get mentioned at these conferences, even the words are almost taboo, are issues like democracy and human rights. And human rights watchdogs are extremely critical of both the Ethiopian and Rwandan governments.
What we also are very concerned to watch and worry about is the ongoing conflicts in the Central African Republic and South Sudan. In December, it will be one year in South Sudan since the outbreak of civil war and there's been a slight lull in the fighting really because of the weather, due to seasons, but a lot of the international aid agencies are warning that they expect a resurgence in fighting there.
And I should also mention Kenya: the president, Uhuru Kenyatta, had charges against him dropped at the international criminal court. In the meantime, a year after the terrible attack on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, there was no let-up from the al-Shabaab militants. More attacks, dozens of people killed in cold blood, sort of raising questions about the Kenyan military operation in Somalia.
Despite that, actually, you could argue Somalia was very unusually one of the happier notes of 2014. Still some terrible atrocities going on, but actually in Mogadishu itself a gradual incremental change for the better. Journalists love writing stories about the first florist, the first laundrette; this year we saw the first cash ATM in Mogadishu and I think the first postal service for 20 years. But clearly still a long way to go there, despite the glimpses of optimism.
ADS I'm Alex Duval Smith. I did a podcast in September looking at how corruption is affecting development in Mali.
"There's also been some flaws."
ADS Are you referring to the presidential jet?
"Yes the presidential jet. So it's created a lot of talk around it."
ADS The podcast looked at the impact of the purchase by the Malian government of a presidential jet and the extension of a credit facility of $200m for the purchase of defence equipment. This irritated the donors, in particular the IMF, which froze its direct budgetary support to the Malian government. It mainly looks like accountants are now happy with the 2014 books that Mali can present. It's not entirely clear that the government is going to be any more transparent in future, even though it's pledged that it will be.
AodB We, the IMF, we don't generally take issue with specific spending items, but you can imagine if you were a donor you may want to reconsider your budget support.
ADS In the podcast we heard from Anton Op de Beke, who is the representative of the IMF here in Mali, and he's become quite a celebrity. He's seen by local civil society groups as really having produced the biggest shock to Ibrahim Boubacar Keita's government since it was elected in August 2013. Another person we heard from was Coumba Bah. Interestingly, Coumba Bah has now moved on to have quite a prominent role in civil society, leading a good-governance NGO which is making waves.
CB Yes the Malian diaspora send a lot of money in. But I have a feeling that 90% of the money that is sent by diaspora is ... for no business development whatsoever.
ADS I think it's going to be interesting to watch the extent to which aid manages to penetrate northern Mali. There are attempts, constant attempts, to restart work on a road which is EU-funded, which will eventually connect Bamako and Timbuktu on tar - which is very important for the opening up of northern Mali; and in the process of opening up northern Mali, development aid, but also investment can reach the north. At the moment the north is still very much in the hands of smugglers and a parallel economy which essentially dominates the north.
CB But has anybody done an evaluation, an audit, of the productivity and the meeting of a goal. We put 30bn in this agriculture sector to have this much done in rice. Can we go and see if that rice has been produced. And if the rice has been produced, has it been stored properly? What is meant to be shipped out of the country, sold, to have value added, is that being done? But the government just sits and sends you a report.
ADS Since the election of Ibrahim Boubacar Keita at the end of 2013, Mali has emerged very much as a country whose hand is being held by France and the international community, in terms of its sovereignty, its defence and its development aid. The government has no social programmes whatsoever. It would be interesting to see if more pressure was put on the government to live up to, for example, the Abuja declaration, to spend more money on social issues such as health, such as education, which is still very much considered, it seems, by the government as somebody else's problem; in other words the international community's problem.
HM That was Alex Duval-Smith. And you can follow her stories from Mali on Twitter. That's @AlexDuvalsmith. As for our estimable Africa correspondent, David Smith, you can follow him, that's @SmithInAfrica.
And that's it for this roundup of 2014. Remember, all of our programmes from this year are still available on theguardian.com/global-development and on iTunes, SoundCloud and all podcasting apps. We'll be back in January. My name's Hugh Muir. The producer is Matt Hill. Thanks for listening in 2014 and goodbye.
[Jingle: For more great downloads to theguardian.com/audio ]
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January 5, 2015 Monday 12:30 PM GMT
Talk point: what are the top development issues for 2015?;
Next year will be pivotal for global development. Tell us what you'll be fighting for in 2015
BYLINE: Katherine Purvis, Anna Leach
SECTION: GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT PROFESSIONALS NETWORK
LENGTH: 295 words
The United Nations has named 2015 the International Year of Light to bring attention to the crucial role light and light-based technologies play in scientific discovery and human development. Next year has also been labelled the International Year of Soils by the UN's general assembly, to raise awareness of how better soil will improve food security and climate change mitigation in the global south.
The whole community will, of course, be battling to get their causes into the sustainable development goals (SDGs), while the end of the year will be dominated by the highly anticipated climate talks in Paris. Will world leaders agree a deal, or will Cop 20 be another climate change conference that ends in failure? Whatever happens, our community concurs that getting an agreement is essential for the future of the planet:
Apart from these pre-determined events, which issues are you anxious to be included in the development agenda?
For Calestous Juma, a Harvard international development academic, the key issue will be global security. He says that perception that we live in a "crowded world running out of jobs, water, food and opportunities for youth advancement will put the world on edge".
Scott Jerbi at the Institute of Human Rights and Business says one of the most important issues they'll be working on next year is to ensure that the SDGs highlight the role the private sector can play in protecting human rights.
Plan UK's policy and advocacy adviser, Liam Sollis, says the organisation will be pushing for universal health coverage and a "strengthened commitment to sexual and reproductive health and rights".
What will you be working on and what issues will you be pushing? Tell us in the comments thread below.
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January 5, 2015 Monday 7:16 AM GMT
Firefighters battle to contain bushfires - how the day unfolded;
More than 350 firefighters work to assess how many homes have been lost in Adelaide Hills in South Australia
BYLINE: Oliver Milman
SECTION: AUSTRALIA NEWS
LENGTH: 3194 words
block-time published-time 4.27pm AEST
South Australia fires - what you need to know
We're winding up the live blog shortly, so here are the key developments from another day of bushfires in South Australia -
There are 11 live fires in South Australia, with the most serious fire in the Sampson Flat area of the the Adelaide Hills region. More than 12,500 hectares have been burned through by the blaze.
A total of 26 homes have been destroyed or badly damaged, with 90 families now getting state government support.
29 people have been hospitalised, although there have been no deaths.
More than 700 firefighters, aided by 10 water bombing aircraft, have battled the flames. Further support from New South Wales and Victoria will be arriving within the next 24 hours.
South Australia police are investigating the cause of the fire, with an incinerator thought to be the likely source.
Animal welfare workers fear that wildlife has suffered badly from the fires, with possums and koalas treated for burns. Livestock and pets, including cats and dogs, have perished.
The Country Fire Service has said it is focusing on containing the perimeter and that the situation has improved since the weekend. But worsening weather, including 38C heat, is expected on Wednesday.
Jay Weatherill, the South Australia premier, said: "We know we are in a dangerous phase when people are getting fatigued, people have a false sense of security because it appears the worst is over. We've got a bit of a way to go until we can relax."
Meanwhile in Western Australia, lives and homes are still under threat from a bushfire burning in the Perth Hills. A watch and act alert remains in place for people in Araluen Estate in Roleystone.
It was a quieter day in Victoria following a series of worrying fires on the weekend, with no major emergency warnings on Monday.
block-time published-time 4.11pm AEST
Animal rescue teams are expecting few survivors from the Adelaide Hills fires, the ABC is reporting.
Vets and animal welfare workers are moving into the affected area are expecting to find plenty of devastation. Injured sheep are being put down, dogs and cats have already perished and horses are having phone numbers painted onto their backs and hooves so that they can be identified after the fires pass.
"Because of the intensity of the fire, it has caused a lot of destruction so most of the animals haven't been able to survive," said Bev Langley from the Minton Farm Animal Rescue Centre.
"We've had possums coming in with various injuries. Mostly singed feet, damaged tails, eye problems."
block-time published-time 3.38pm AEST
26 homes destroyed/damaged in Adelaide Hills fire so far
South Australian premier Jay Weatherill has just given an update on the bushfire situation. He said that 26 homes have been either destroyed or badly damaged by the fires in the Adelaide Hills.
A total of 29 people have been hospitalised, including one person who had an asthma attack, Weatherill said. He adds that 90 families have been provided financial support.
"We know we are in a dangerous phase when people are getting fatigued, people have a false sense of security because it appears the worst is over," he warns. "We've got a bit of a way to go until we can relax."
The premier says he understands the "frustration" of people who have been barred from the area to check if their properties have burned down but stressed it is a safety issue.
Greg Nettleton, chief of the CFS, says there has been no major change to the shape of the fire and the priority is to contain its perimeter. He says there are now around 700 firefighters battling the flames, with more resources coming in from NSW and Victoria.
"Main aim is to get as much effort onto the ground as possible," he said. "We need to get those resources in there and get people's lives back to normal as quickly as possible."
Gary Burns, South Australia's police commissioner, says he has heard of reports of looting on social media but there have been no reports to police. He adds that the cause of the fire is being investigated. An incinerator seems to be the most likely culprit, Burns says.
block-time published-time 3.04pm AEST
A tale of a couple who managed to escape the flames near Adelaide, from AAP:
Michael and Jodie Koczwara's home was gutted in a bushfire that ripped through the Adelaide Hills, but they're well aware things could have been worse.
The couple, along with Michael's father, planned to stay and defend their Inglewood property when the alarm was raised on Friday.
But the danger ahead quickly dawned on them when their better-equipped neighbours made a hasty retreat.
Packing the bare essentials and their two dogs, they went to stay with Michael's grandmother.
Hours later, the house lay in ruins, a shed had exploded and their paddocks were burnt black.
Speaking at a bushfire relief centre in Golden Grove on Monday, the couple told AAP they were lucky to be alive.
"You start contemplating everything," Michael says.
"If we have a house at the end of the day but I don't have a wife or I don't have a dad, what's the point?"
Jodie said the couple were initially confident their well-maintained home would escape damage.
"But seeing what happened to the house, we know now that we would never have been able to take any cover anywhere," she said.
"We didn't have the skills either, to be honest. We've never fought fire."
Michael, a building surveyor, and Jodie, an admin assistant, both 29, said they didn't really believe they'd lost their home until they heard from police and saw the damage themselves.
Neighbours knew what had happened but couldn't bring themselves to deliver the bad news.
Like others who have lost their homes in the devastating blaze, Michael and Jodie plan to rebuild and start over again.
The couple are heartened by news that their sheep appear to have survived unscathed and hopeful of tracking down their two missing alpacas.
Much of what they lost will be replaceable but some items - like Jodie's wedding dress and Michael's university degree - are more painful to lose.
block-time published-time 2.51pm AEST
Aerial water-bombing & retardant campaign north of One Tree Hill - near Yattalunga #SAfires#SampsonFlat@abcnewspic.twitter.com/gmTr8Rbz52
- Melissa Clarke (@Clarke_Melissa) January 5, 2015
block-time published-time 2.49pm AEST
The ABC's Nick Dole is on the scene in South Australia has just been on air to explain the fire fight:
The main focus is to strengthen the containment lines that firefighters have been working on for the last few days because as you mentioned there is going to be a change in weather conditions on Wednesday. All efforts are being put into building and strengthening those containment lines. A number of aircraft have been brought in from interstate, from Victoria and New South Wales.
Dole says there has been a "lot of frustration" from local residents who haven't been able to see what has become of their properties because they've been stopped at roadblocks. He adds that conditions could worsen on Wednesday.
One of the key concerns for Wednesday is the shifting wind from the north, which potentially could push the fire further into areas to the south of where it's currently burning. And the other big problem is that storms are forecast on Wednesday.
Now that's kind of a double edged sword, because it might bring some rain hand that would certainly be welcome for firefighters. But if we get any dry lightning that could potentially cause more flare-ups of this blaze in what is already a dangerous situation.
block-time published-time 2.12pm AEST
Marsupials on the mend and road signs getting blurry. Some tell tale signs of a bushfire.
AMWRRO opens South Australian clinic to bush fire victims. Please donate: http://t.co/L2JqlbQ3WM#koala#SAFirespic.twitter.com/gDZCFciLKa
- ASRProjects&Research (@seabirdrescue) January 5, 2015
Scorched road sign in #AdelaideHills from #SampsonFlat bushfire. @9NewsAdel#9Newscomau#SAFirespic.twitter.com/tlUdhiSc37
- Edward Godfrey (@EdwardGodfrey9) January 5, 2015
block-time published-time 1.56pm AEST
The concept of climate change fuelling bushfire risk is fairly simple to grasp - warmer temperatures mean elongated fire seasons, creating more dry, burnable vegetation when fires do ignite.
With that in mind, let's look at how the Bureau of Meteorology has charted rainfall in temperature over the past three months (of course, climate change trends are taken over a longer timeframe).
Australia mainland rainfall in the three months to 31 Dec 2014. Shows whether rainfall was plentiful based on historical records. Photograph: BoM
As you can see, the area around Adelaide, as well as parts of Victoria, have had very little rain (record lows in some cases).
How about temperature? The past three months have been on the high side around Adelaide and much of Victoria, up to 2C above the long-term trend (which is calculated to be between 1961 and 1990).
Australia mainland temperature anomaly in three months to 31 December 2014. Photograph: BoM
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 2.00pm AEST
block-time published-time 1.27pm AEST
Lives and homes in danger from WA bushfire
From AAP:
Lives and homes are still under threat from a bushfire burning in the Perth Hills.
A watch and act alert remains in place for people in Araluen Estate in Roleystone.
"There is a possible threat to lives and homes as a fire is burning in the area and conditions are changing," the Department of Fire and Emergency Services said.
"You need to leave or get ready to actively defend."
The fire, which started on Sunday afternoon, is burning in inaccessible bushland along Canning Dam Road near McNess Drive and has been burning towards Heritage Drive.
Although the bushfire is stationary, easterly wind speeds have increased and firefighters are managing flare-ups, DFES says.
It means homes west of the fire on Heritage Drive, Protector Grove and Sophia Grove may be threatened.
DFES says the flames are under control but not yet contained, and burning embers are likely to be blown around homes.
The bushfire has burnt through about four hectares.
The cause of the blaze is unknown.
block-time published-time 12.59pm AEST
Bushfires blaze through the Adelaide Hills - in pictures
A round up of some of the most striking pictures of the fires and their aftermath can be found here.
A CFS volunteer reacts as rain starts to fall at One Tree Hill Photograph: Brenton Edwards/AFP/Getty Images
block-time published-time 12.50pm AEST
Earlier, South Australian premier Jay Weatherill said there is "not much" that could be done to mitigate bushfires. But as my colleague Daniel Hurst reported last night, the federal government is looking to prevention as well as treatment when it comes to natural disasters -
The federal government has signalled it wants to reduce spending on natural disaster recovery and shift its focus to reducing the risks before an event strikes.
The Greens renewed their calls for the government to take strong action against climate change while fire crews worked to contain blazes in South Australia and Victoria on Sunday.
The justice minister, Michael Keenan, did not directly respond to the climate change criticism, but said the government would speak to state and territory leaders about shifting spending from post-disaster support to upfront mitigation activities.
Keenan and his South Australian counterpart, Zoe Bettison, announced emergency grants of up to $280 per adult and $140 per child, up to a maximum of $700 per family, would be available to people affected by the Sampson Flat bushfire for essential items such as food and clothing.
The Greens, like they have done in the last couple of summers, have been on the front foot in calling for greater focus on climate change, which is, scientists say, increasing the frequency and severity of bushfires.
"Every year we are going to face these extreme weather events, which are going to cost lives and infrastructure, and enough is enough," said Greens leader Christine Milne.
"Look at what is happening to people, communities, our environment, loss of infrastructure and for goodness sake abandon your nonsense about climate variability.
"Accept global warming is real and let's get on with working together to plan for resilience in the face of extreme weather events."
block-time published-time 12.38pm AEST
Situation in Perth
While our focus has been mainly on South Australia and Victoria, we are also keeping an eye on what is happening in Western Australia. My Perth-based colleague Calla Wahlquist reports:
Residents in the Perth hills are on alert for a possible flare up of a fire at Roleystone, which began late Sunday afternoon.
The fire is burning in inaccessible bushland near Canning Dam Road and McNess Road in the Araluen Estate. It's under control, but firefighters are concerned the hot weather on Monday - it's expected to reach 41 - and strong easterly winds have caused it to flare up. The Department of Fire and Emergency Services said there's a possible threat to homes.
Roleystone was one of the areas hardest hit in the 2011 Perth Hills bushfire, which destroyed 72 homes.
block-time published-time 12.08pm AEST
Thankfully, there have been no lives lost in the current South Australia and Victoria bushfires. But a number of animals have suffered badly.
As my colleague Bridie Jabour noted here on the weekend, more than 40 dogs and cats perished when fire tore through the Tea Tree Gully boarding kennel and cattery in the Adelaide Hills on Saturday morning, the Adelaide Advertiser reported. Firefighters managed to save about 45 animals from the building.
Meanwhile, wildlife sanctuaries are at risk from the flames, such as the Humbug Scrub Wildlife Sanctuary in the Adelaide Hills.
"This is a remarkable woman. Lost her home but was overjoyed at finding her 40 orphaned roos alive pic.twitter.com/6jmQwNMoMT " Dear friend.. X
- Mandi Whitten (@MandiWhitten) January 3, 2015
A fundraising page has been set up here.
More generally, the University of Adelaide Veterinary School at Roseworth is open to treat injured animals. You can call them on 08 8313 1999 or email vet_reception@adelaide.edu.au
Meanwhile, the Animal Welfare League of Australia are taking calls on 08 8348 1300 and Pets and their People vet surgeries are offering free consultations for pets (excluding horses) that have been injured in the fire.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 12.11pm AEST
block-time published-time 11.43am AEST
No total fire ban in Victoria today.
The Country Fire Authority bushfire risk and fire ban rating for 5 January 2015. Illustration: Country Fire Authority
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 11.44am AEST
block-time published-time 11.37am AEST
Important websites and phone numbers
If you're in South Australia, it's worth keeping an eye on the Country Fire Service's regularly-updated page of fire warnings to see if there any in your area.
The CFS' emergency hotline is 1300 362 361. If your home has been lost or damaged, or if you have suffered trauma, the bushfire recovery hotline is 1800 302 787.
If you want to volunteer to help the families displaced by the bushfires, you can do so here.
In Victoria, the page of latest warnings can be found here.
The Country Fire Authority's bushfire information line in Victoria is 1800 240 667.
block-time published-time 11.20am AEST
It looks set to be a difficult bushfire week for South Australia, judging by the predicted weather conditions.
The Bureau of Meteorology has forecast an Adelaide temperature of 38C on Tuesday and Wednesday, dropping to 33C on Thursday. Combined with strong winds, the bushfire risk is set to strengthen, if anything, in the coming days.
Jay Weatherill, South Australia's premier, took a helicopter tour of the affected area yesterday and said that around 1,100 properties lie are within the fire ground.
"This is obviously a worrying time for residents," Weatherill said earlier today. "This is by no means over, we are really racing against time to get as much of this contained before we get the hotter weather and stronger winds."
Weatherill then praised the firefighters attacking the blazes from land and air before, rather unfashionably these days, taking a glance at the bigger picture.
"Unless you want to talk about clearing the Adelaide Hills, there's not much we can do to mitigate bush fires," he said. "We are going to be experiencing more bush fires of greater severity."
This is, of course, a reference to climate change. Or climate variability, as it now regularly referred to in officialspeak.
block-time published-time 10.44am AEST
To give you an idea of the location of the fires near Adelaide...
Satellite hotspot view of bushfires near Adelaide (icon size not related to fire boundary) http://t.co/SBJXrspxXTpic.twitter.com/PxKF0qwikA
- Nick Evershed (@NickEvershed) January 4, 2015
The above map shows a satellite view of the fires near Adelaide from the MyFireWatch website. Each icon is a hotspot detected by satellite, coloured by age. It's important to note that the size of the icon is static, which can make fires appear larger at greater zoom levels.
To give a better idea of the sheer area being eaten up by these fires, here's the fire zone at Sampson Flat overlaid upon a map of Adelaide, to show scale.
This photo blew my mind. How the Sampson Flat fire would look if it happened in metropolitan Adelaide. pic.twitter.com/19pGgeEaGi
- Angela Malusa (@angemalusa) January 4, 2015
The Sampson Flat fire - affecting One Tree Hill, Humbug Scrub, Parra Wirra Recreation Park, Mount Crawford, Kersbrook, Birdwood, Gumeracha, Kenton Valley, Cudlee Creek area and Inglewood - is one the Country Fire Service is particularly concerned about this morning.
CFS advises #bushfire at #Sampson_Flat in Mount Lofty Ranges may threaten your safety. #WAMhttp://t.co/2qJ0dXzwvq
- Country Fire Service (@CFSAlerts) January 4, 2015
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 11.10am AEST
block-time published-time 10.32am AEST
Welcome to the Guardian live blog as hundreds of firefighters continue their battle against bushfires in South Australia and Victoria on Monday.
There are nine main bushfires currently raging in South Australia, according to the state's Country Fire Service, with firefighters attempting to control flames threatening homes in the Adelaide Hills.
So far, 12 homes have been lost to fire in South Australia, although that number may rise further as the damage is assessed. More than 12,000 hectares have been burned through, with 1,000 homes losing power in what has been described by the CFS as the worst fires since the Ash Wednesday fires in 1983, which killed 28 people.
The situation appears to be slightly less serious in Victoria, with a welcome drop in temperature on Saturday night, following a day when it reached 40C, helping the situation.
There are no emergency warnings in Victoria at present, although there are two fires close to the town of Horsham, in the state's west. Fires near the town of Moyston, also in the west of the state, have been brought under control, while residents had to flee Hastings, south east of Melbourne, before a blaze was tamed by firefighters.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 10.47am AEST
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January 4, 2015 Sunday 9:43 PM GMT
Twelve homes destroyed as South Australia battles bushfires for third day - as it happened;
At least 12 homes have been lost and 22 people injured in bushfires burning just outside Adelaide as Victorians returned to the homes they were evacuated from on SaturdayMonday morning:Firefighters in Adelaide Hills battle to control blazes before conditions worsen
BYLINE: Bridie Jabour
SECTION: AUSTRALIA NEWS
LENGTH: 3251 words
block-time published-time 4.09pm AEST
Summary
Just before I sign off for the day I'll lay down what we have learnt today as the fires continue to burn in the Adelaide Hills. The fires are under control for the moment with the Country Fire Service's downgraded "watch and act" advice remaining throughout the day.
The South Australian premier, Jay Weatherill, has confirmed 12 houses were destroyed in the fires and there are concerns for 20 more.
Twenty-two people, mostly firefighters, have been injured in the fires but there have been no human fatalities.
Many animals have died though with the Tea Tree Gully boarding kennel and cattery and Humbug Scrub animal rescue shelter both burning.
In Victoria, people evacuated from their Mornington Peninsula homes were allowed to start returning this morning.
The federal government has signalled a shift in the focus of its disaster funding from recovery to mitigation.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 6.12pm AEST
block-time published-time 3.42pm AEST
The federal government has signalled it wants to shift its disaster funding focus from recovery to mitigation, Daniel Hurst reports here.
Only 3% of federal government disaster funding goes towards mitigation and justice minister, Michael Keenan, has indicated the government wants to change that.
I actually think we do need to look at how we are going to make sure we are spending the money we do spend on disasters in Australia in the most effective way.
block-time published-time 3.31pm AEST
The premier, Jay Weatherill, has addressed media after touring the bushfire-affected areas of the Adelaide Hills by air.
I have seen fire licking at the edges of a number of houses that are being stoutly defended.
Weatherill praised the efforts of firefighters and said it was miraculous how many houses had been saved. He said the fire was a long way from over and smoke was making it difficult for the fire bombers to get into the area.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 3.39pm AEST
block-time published-time 3.00pm AEST
Here are some more images of the aftermath of the bushfires in the Adelaide Hills.
Fire damage to property surrounding the Adelaide Hills district of Cudlee Creek. Photograph: Russell Millard/AAP Fire damage to property surrounding the Adelaide Hills district of Cudlee Creek. Photograph: Russell Millard/AAP Fire damage to property surrounding the Adelaide Hills district of Cudlee Creek. Photograph: Russell Millard/AAP
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 4.13pm AEST
block-time published-time 2.54pm AEST
My colleague Daniel Hurst has filed a story on bushfire funding which I will link to when it goes live. In the meantime he has dug up some very interesting statistics and facts around government funding of disaster relief:
In April 2014 the government commissioned a review into the funding system, including Natural Disaster Relief and Recovery Arrangements (NDRRA), under which the commonwealth reimburses up to 75% of the state and territory recovery bill.
The Productivity Commission's final report is expected to be released early this year, but the draft version said federal government spending on mitigation was only 3% of what it spent after disasters in recent years.
The Productivity Commission's draft report said natural disasters since 2009 had claimed more than 200 lives, destroyed 2,670 houses and damaged another 7,680.
The report said increased costs of natural disasters had "mainly been driven by population growth, increased settlement in areas that are exposed to disaster risks and increased asset values" but also warned that "projections suggest that climate change could increase the frequency and intensity of some extreme weather events and potentially natural disasters".
Over the past decade the federal government had spent about $8bn on post-disaster relief and recovery, the report said, with another $5.7bn earmarked over the four-year budget cycle. State and territory governments had spent $5.6bn on relief and recovery over the past decade.
Between 2009-10 and 2012-13, the federal government spent just $115m on mitigation work through the National Partnership Agreement on National Disaster Resilience.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 3.29pm AEST
block-time published-time 2.38pm AEST
We have launched a gallery of the trail of ash and ruin the bushfires are leaving which you can view by clicking here.
Firefighters battle scrub fires as fires continue to burn through the Adelaide Hills, in Kersbrook, near Adelaide. Photograph: DAVID MARIUZ/AAP
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 2.42pm AEST
block-time published-time 2.20pm AEST
The Greens leader, Christine Milne, has used the bushfires to call for action on climate change, my colleague Daniel Hurst reports:
Milne said the government "really must put their climate denial behind them" because such an approach was "costing the country dearly".
Every year, we are going to face these extreme weather events which are going to cost lives and infrastructure. Enough is enough. The Abbott government has to stop climate denial and help to get the country prepared to adapt to the more extreme conditions.
The climate change council put out this report in 2012, specifically on South Australia. It was based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report and on CSIRO reports saying we are going to face more high fire danger days, more extreme hot days, heatwaves, fire danger days and we have to get ready for it.
Getting ready for it means looking at the adequacy of our emergency services, increasing the number of firefighters, improving our health response, our emergency response. We have to do these things. But if you refuse to acknowledge you have got a problem, you don't prepare for it and then the situation is worse."
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 3.26pm AEST
block-time published-time 2.05pm AEST
The fire in Sampson Flat which started the bushfire in the Adelaide Hills began at the back of a property and the tenant has rejected suggestions an incinerator was the cause, AAP reports.
The man says he is devastated that people have lost their homes but says the fire broke out at the rear of a shed and got out of control because of poor vegetation management on the property before he took up residence.
"We have been here four months and we have never even used the incinerator since we have been here," the man told the Sunday Mail on the condition of anonymity.
But police say the cause of the blaze is still being investigated and the incinerator remains part of inquiries by detectives.
"We're looking at the incinerator; how it ignited in the incinerator is another aspect that we're looking at," the police commissioner, Gary Burns, said on Sunday.
"Detectives are talking with the homeowners and obviously there will be forensic evidence that they will be looking at."
Burns said there was a range of charges that were possible in relation to fires that were lit where bans were in force.
"Lighting fires on banned days is an offence in itself," he said.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 3.25pm AEST
block-time published-time 1.55pm AEST
The fires have moved quickly, according to police, and people are being evacuated from One Tree Hill and Humbug Scrub road in the Adelaide Hills.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 2.17pm AEST
block-time published-time 1.50pm AEST
Some images from ABC journalists who are on the ground in South Australia covering the bushfires
Fire front gaining pace towards homes at Humbug Scrub in #AdelaideHills@abcnewspic.twitter.com/J7SanEGeJF
- Nicola Gage (@Nicola_Gage) January 4, 2015
Where it all began. Blackened hills at Sampson Flat. @abcnewsAdelaidepic.twitter.com/olC4yEgIVP
- Tom Fedorowytsch (@tomfed) January 4, 2015
Interstate teams help with fire front at Humbug Scrub in #AdelaideHills#bushfire@abcnewspic.twitter.com/U3HD47fLPY
- Nicola Gage (@Nicola_Gage) January 4, 2015
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 2.18pm AEST
block-time published-time 1.26pm AEST
More than 1,000 properties in the Adelaide Hills remain without power because of the impact of the major blaze still burning out of control, AAP reports.
SA Power Networks says 859 properties at Cudlee Creek, Houghton, Lower Hermitage, Paracombe and Upper Hermitage have no electricity.
Another 171 properties in the Gould Creek, Humbug Scrub and Sampson Flat areas are also without service.
SA Power Networks says its crews are working on safe access to the fire grounds and detailed inspections of power assets will be required before repairs can be conducted and power restored.
No estimate of the time when services will be restored has been provided.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 3.22pm AEST
block-time published-time 1.03pm AEST
The South Australian premier, Jay Weatherill, has been photographed returning from surveying the bushfires by air. An ABC reporter, Matthew Doran, says Weatherill saw houses still under direct threat from the fires.
Premier Jay Weatherill has just surveyed the area by air - says many houses still under direct threat @abcnewspic.twitter.com/JHafvTQJEM
- Matthew Doran (@MattDoran91) January 4, 2015
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 3.22pm AEST
block-time published-time 1.00pm AEST
We are starting to receive more photos from this morning in South Australia as the bushfire damage is surveyed and the fires keep raging.
Volunteer Country Fire Authority fire fighters relax after fighting bushfires across the Adelaide Hills. Photograph: RUSSELL MILLARD/EPA Farmer Sam Randell checks bushfire damage to his property in Gumeracha in the Adelaide Hills. Photograph: Russell Millard/AAP
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 1.25pm AEST
block-time published-time 12.43pm AEST
The federal justice minister, Michael Keenan, is now addressing media in Perth.
He says the commonwealth has made RAAF base Edinburgh in Adelaide available to allow large water tankers to replenish and refuel while fighting the fires.
He also says the government is looking at spending money on mitigating such disasters as the bushfires.
We have asked the Productivity Commission to look at the way we respond and that's one of the recommendations. We have a small amount of money being spent on mitigating the threat of a disaster and the vast majority of the money spent on dealing with the after-effects. Clearly we need to have a conversation with the states whether we can spend that money more effectively to mitigate the effects of a disaster before they occur.
Asked whether the government has a moral duty to future generations to address climate change, Keenan uses it to kick Labor and the Greens over the budget.
I think the question of the budget is a vitally important one. The idea we would be spending today and leaving debt for future generations I think is immoral. The idea it's up to future generations to fund our spending now is deeply unfair to them.
He says the federal government will work with the states to set up compensation schemes for victims of the bushfires and firefighters.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 3.21pm AEST
block-time published-time 12.21pm AEST
People who were evacuated from their homes in Victoria's Mornington Peninsula yesterday have begun returning to survey the damage.
No homes were damaged in the fire, which started behind a factory in the Hastings area.
Tiarne Dooley was evacuated and told the ABC she thought she had lost her home:
It was terrifying. The not knowing what was happening; do you still have a house to go back to? Are you going to be allowed to go back to your house? We watched on from my mum's place around the corner with this massive amount of smoke. It looked like our house was gone for sure, and when we came back it wasn't.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 3.19pm AEST
block-time published-time 12.10pm AEST
Here is a map of where the fires are in South Australia, where they started and their status. It's created by Google and can be viewed here.
Google map of fires in South Australia.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 3.19pm AEST
block-time published-time 11.52am AEST
As media are being allowed into bushfire affected areas we have more images coming through of the damage.
Aftermath of the #SAFires near Humbug Scrub & #SampsonsFlat@abcnewspic.twitter.com/Q0bIsc1xni
- Melissa Clarke (@Clarke_Melissa) January 3, 2015
block-time published-time 11.44am AEST
The communities in Adelaide still at risk of the bushfires are Sampson Flat, One Tree Hill, Humbug Scrub, Millbrook Reservoir, Kersbrook, Gumeracha, Birdwood, Mount Crawford and Kenton Valley.
A top of 31C is expected today in the fire zone and winds are forecast to reach 40km/h.
There are 400 firefighters working to contain the fire, 80 fire trucks and 14 aircraft.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 3.18pm AEST
block-time published-time 11.28am AEST
This is an amazing live heatmap which shows the temperatures around the world in real time. You can click here to view it and see it moving but it has also been screenshot on Twitter. Look how hot South Australia and Victoria are.
It's really quite warm in South Australia right now http://t.co/71s8ZRKFiQpic.twitter.com/EiAZT5w9Bj
- Ketan Joshi (@KetanJ0) January 3, 2015
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 11.30am AEST
block-time published-time 11.13am AEST
The South Australian premier, Jay Weatherill, has arrived at the One Tree Hill incident control centre to get a briefing from the Country Fire Service and police on the bushfires, according to the ABC.
This means media should receive another update in the next few hours.
SA premier @JayWeatherill has just arrived at One Tree Hill incident ctrl centre to get a briefing on latest from #SampsonFlat@ABCNews24
- James Bennett (@James_L_Bennett) January 4, 2015
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 3.16pm AEST
block-time published-time 10.59am AEST
In the midst of the devastation being wrought by the bushfires it seems there is at least one person trying to make a quick buck.
Police are investigating reports someone was door-knocking in Adelaide's northern suburbs on Saturday asking for donations on behalf of the Country Fire Service (CFS), the South Australian police commissioner, Gary Burns, has confirmed.
He said police checked with CFS and they had no such activity under way (presumably because they're busy fighting bushfires).
So it's just one activity of one person at this stage and obviously is quite deplorable.
People who have lost homes or who want to make donations can contact the South Australian bushfire recovery hotline on 1800 302 787.
Burns also said he hoped to have residents returning to their homes today but asked for people to be patient.
The aim for us is to return people to the area as quickly as possible, provided we've got clearance from the CFS in terms of reducing risk to those residents. So when people turn up to our control points we'd ask them to have a little bit of patience. The police on those control points will be very empathetic and sympathetic to their situation but also are very conscious of the issues surrounding their own safety.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 3.16pm AEST
block-time published-time 10.41am AEST
Photographers in South Australia have captured some confronting images over the past few days of the fires that have burnt in the Adelaide Hills.
Photo taken on 2 January shows the bushfire producing heavy smoke in the Adelaide Hills area. Photograph: Hewitt Wang/Xinhua Press/Corbis Embers glow against the smoke-filled sunset near Gumeracha in the Adelaide Hills on Saturday. Photograph: Brenton Edwards/AFP/Getty The Tea Tree Gully boarding kennels and cattery, where dozens of pets perished during bushfires in the Adelaide Hills on Saturday. Photograph: Brenton Edwards/AFP/Getty
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 3.14pm AEST
block-time published-time 10.16am AEST
There is no human toll from the bushfires in South Australia and Victoria, thankfully, but there have been a high number of animal deaths.
More than 40 dogs and cats perished when fire tore through the Tea Tree Gully boarding kennel and cattery in the Adelaide Hills on Saturday morning, the Adelaide Advertiser reported.
Firefighters managed to save about 45 animals from the building.
Ingrid Justice was forced to flee her home and the Humbug Scrub animal rescue shelter she runs on Saturday.
She took with her the animals she could, but left behind were 600 kangaroos, emus and birds with their fate not yet known.
We have lots of fires but never like this, we've never had to evacuate before. Apparently it's like a war zone up there, the CFS tells us," she told the Adelaide Advertiser.
In Victoria a dog and cat boarding business near Inglewood burnt to the ground with firefighters confirming pets inside were casualties. It is not yet known how many animals were inside.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 3.12pm AEST
block-time published-time 9.55am AEST
A photographer for the Adelaide Advertiser, Dylan Coker, captured this image yesterday when fires in the Sampson Flat were burning out of control.
There is no denying the amazing work our @CFSAlerts volunteers do...powerful photo by @theTiser Dylan Coker #SAFirespic.twitter.com/ngk9RB1qxZ
- Bianca De Marchi (@bianca_demarchi) January 3, 2015
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 3.11pm AEST
block-time published-time 9.52am AEST
The Sampson Flat fire in the Adelaide Hills has been downgraded from the highest emergency level to a watch-and-act message but the blaze is still burning on several fronts.
The South Australian police commissioner, Gary Burns, said about an hour ago that police were aiming to return some residents this morning.
But he said police would not be rushed and safety would be the priority.
"The aim for us is to return people as quickly as possible," he said. "When people turn up to our control points, we'd ask them to have a little bit of patience."
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 3.10pm AEST
block-time published-time 9.48am AEST
The South Australian premier, Jay Weatherill, has given a press conference in Adelaide.
My colleague Daniel Hurst reports:
Twelve homes have been destroyed by fire in South Australia and there are fears the figure could grow.
But Weatherill said there were no reports of missing people or serious injuries.
Providing an update alongside emergency services on Sunday morning, he said:
I can confirm that 12 homes have been destroyed and it's feared that a further 20 homes have also been lost.
Weatherill said the danger was not over and people needed to remain vigilant.
He said there were "massive risks" from falling trees and active power lines.
Weatherill said the weather had cooled but the conditions were expected to worsen on Wednesday.
The Country Fire Service said it would focus on Sunday on containing the spread of the fire, and checking major roadways to ensure they were safe for people to use to return to their properties.
Police said they were hoping to allow people back into affected areas on Sunday morning, but this would depend on safety assessments.
People who have lost homes or who want to make donations can contact the South Australian bushfire recovery hotline on 1800 302 787.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 3.08pm AEST
block-time published-time 9.46am AEST
We open the live blog as South Australia faces the third day of its worst bushfires in 30 years. Twenty-two people have been injured and at least 12 homes lost in the Sampson Flat fire in the Mount Lofty Ranges.
Conditions have eased slightly with lower temperatures forecast for Sunday although strong winds continue to blow.
block-time updated-timeUpdated at 3.09pm AEST
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The New York Times
January 4, 2015 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
Playing Dumb on Climate Change
BYLINE: By NAOMI ORESKES.
A professor of the history of science at Harvard and the author, with Erik M. Conway, of ''The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View From the Future.''
SECTION: Section SR; Column 0; Sunday Review Desk; OPINION; Pg. 2
LENGTH: 1067 words
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- SCIENTISTS have often been accused of exaggerating the threat of climate change, but it's becoming increasingly clear that they ought to be more emphatic about the risk. The year just concluded is about to be declared the hottest one on record, and across the globe climate change is happening faster than scientists predicted.
Science is conservative, and new claims of knowledge are greeted with high degrees of skepticism. When Copernicus said the Earth orbited the sun, when Wegener said the continents drifted, and when Darwin said species evolved by natural selection, the burden of proof was on them to show that it was so. In the 18th and 19th centuries, this conservatism generally took the form of a demand for a large amount of evidence; in the 20th century, it took on the form of a demand for statistical significance.
We've all heard the slogan ''correlation is not causation,'' but that's a misleading way to think about the issue. It would be better to say that correlation is not necessarily causation, because we need to rule out the possibility that we are just observing a coincidence. Typically, scientists apply a 95 percent confidence limit, meaning that they will accept a causal claim only if they can show that the odds of the relationship's occurring by chance are no more than one in 20. But it also means that if there's more than even a scant 5 percent possibility that an event occurred by chance, scientists will reject the causal claim. It's like not gambling in Las Vegas even though you had a nearly 95 percent chance of winning.
Where does this severe standard come from? The 95 percent confidence level is generally credited to the British statistician R. A. Fisher, who was interested in the problem of how to be sure an observed effect of an experiment was not just the result of chance. While there have been enormous arguments among statisticians about what a 95 percent confidence level really means, working scientists routinely use it.
But the 95 percent level has no actual basis in nature. It is a convention, a value judgment. The value it reflects is one that says that the worst mistake a scientist can make is to think an effect is real when it is not. This is the familiar ''Type 1 error.'' You can think of it as being gullible, fooling yourself, or having undue faith in your own ideas. To avoid it, scientists place the burden of proof on the person making an affirmative claim. But this means that science is prone to ''Type 2 errors'': being too conservative and missing causes and effects that are really there.
Is a Type 1 error worse than a Type 2? It depends on your point of view, and on the risks inherent in getting the answer wrong. The fear of the Type 1 error asks us to play dumb; in effect, to start from scratch and act as if we know nothing. That makes sense when we really don't know what's going on, as in the early stages of a scientific investigation. It also makes sense in a court of law, where we presume innocence to protect ourselves from government tyranny and overzealous prosecutors -- but there are no doubt prosecutors who would argue for a lower standard to protect society from crime.
When applied to evaluating environmental hazards, the fear of gullibility can lead us to understate threats. It places the burden of proof on the victim rather than, for example, on the manufacturer of a harmful product. The consequence is that we may fail to protect people who are really getting hurt.
And what if we aren't dumb? What if we have evidence to support a cause-and-effect relationship? Let's say you know how a particular chemical is harmful; for example, that it has been shown to interfere with cell function in laboratory mice. Then it might be reasonable to accept a lower statistical threshold when examining effects in people, because you already have reason to believe that the observed effect is not just chance.
This is what the United States government argued in the case of secondhand smoke. Since bystanders inhaled the same chemicals as smokers, and those chemicals were known to be carcinogenic, it stood to reason that secondhand smoke would be carcinogenic, too. That is why the Environmental Protection Agency accepted a (slightly) lower burden of proof: 90 percent instead of 95 percent.
In the case of climate change, we are not dumb at all. We know that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, we know that its concentration in the atmosphere has increased by about 40 percent since the industrial revolution, and we know the mechanism by which it warms the planet.
WHY don't scientists pick the standard that is appropriate to the case at hand, instead of adhering to an absolutist one? The answer can be found in a surprising place: the history of science in relation to religion. The 95 percent confidence limit reflects a long tradition in the history of science that valorizes skepticism as an antidote to religious faith.
Even as scientists consciously rejected religion as a basis of natural knowledge, they held on to certain cultural presumptions about what kind of person had access to reliable knowledge. One of these presumptions involved the value of ascetic practices. Nowadays scientists do not live monastic lives, but they do practice a form of self-denial, denying themselves the right to believe anything that has not passed very high intellectual hurdles.
Moreover, while vigorously denying its relation to religion, modern science retains symbolic vestiges of prophetic tradition, so many scientists bend over backward to avoid these associations. A vast majority of scientists do not speak in public at all, and those who do typically speak in highly guarded, qualified terms. They often refuse to use the language of danger even when danger is precisely what they are talking about.
Years ago, climate scientists offered an increase of 2 degrees Celsius (or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) as the ''safe'' limit or ceiling for the long-term warming of the planet. We are now seeing dangerous effects worldwide, even as we approach a rise of only 1 degree Celsius. The evidence is mounting that scientists have underpredicted the threat. Perhaps this is another reason -- along with our polarized politics and the effect of fossil-fuel lobbying -- we have underreacted to the reality, now unfolding before our eyes, of dangerous climate change.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/opinion/sunday/playing-dumb-on-climate-change.html
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The Guardian
January 3, 2015 Saturday 4:08 AM GMT
Values-led business: the top five stories of 2014;
Mindfulness was this year's buzzword, as companies explored whether a spiritual revolution, rather than an economic one, might ennoble businessWhat are we in for in 2015? Read more reflections and predictions
BYLINE: The Editors
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 489 words
A distraction from real issues or an important tool for reforming business? Whatever you consider it, the concept of mindfulness was on the brain in 2014. Our most popular stories on business values most often dealt with this new trend, which is popping up everywhere, from Google's boardroom to the halls of parliament.
Readers flocked to Jo Confino's various stories about Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, whose teachings have drawn the attention of political leaders and CEOs worldwide. Even older stories on mindfulness had many eyes on them, indicating that sustainable business readers are actively seeking out information on the subject.
Beyond mindfulness, our readers were also eagerly watching Google. Whether it was a story on Google CEO Larry Page's path to leadership or a piece on the company leading the way on climate change, readers gathered and commented.
Finally, a discussion about companies' role in politics rounded out the hot topics. In particular, we saw the slow slide of conservative lobbying group Alec. As voices in sustainability - on the Guardian and elsewhere - called on companies to dissolve ties with the group for its environmental stance, big players such as Google, Microsoft, Facebook and eBay answered by doing just that (while Overstock recently rejoined the group ).
Here were the five most popular values-led business stories this past year:
1. Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh: only love can save us from climate change
A leading spiritual teacher warns that if people cannot save themselves from their own suffering, they cannot be expected to worry about the plight of Mother Earth
2. Ebay joins Google and others in dumping Alec over climate stance
The online retailer is the latest tech giant to leave the right-wing lobbying group over its position on climate change
3. How Google's Larry Page became a responsible entrepreneur
Four early influences helped shape the Google CEO's world view and turn him into a change agent, writes Carol Sanford
4. Google's head of mindfulness: 'goodness is good for business'
Chade-Meng Tan, the search engine giant's Jolly Good Fellow, on meditation, acceptance and the power of positive business
5. Beyond environment: falling back in love with Mother Earth
Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh explains why mindfulness and a spiritual revolution rather than economics is needed to protect nature and limit climate change
Get involved!
Tell us about your favorite values-led business stories from 2014. Was there an article that had a particularly strong message, that gave you a fresh perspective or that you found especially useful professionally? We'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below or via Twitter @GuardianSustBiz.
The values-led business hub is funded by SC Johnson. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled "brought to you by". Find out more here.
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The New York Times
January 3, 2015 Saturday
Late Edition - Final
New Zealand Glaciers Ebb; Tour Guides Play Catch-Up
BYLINE: By MIKE IVES
SECTION: Section B; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1032 words
FOX GLACIER, New Zealand -- This town of about 300 residents trades on its namesake: a giant slab of ice and snow a short drive from the main street. Guided glacier hiking began here in 1928 and is a main reason for the area's popularity as a destination for international travelers.
But a local tour operator, Fox Glacier Guiding, has been unable to take tourists onto the ice on foot since April, when glacial retreat caused a river to change course, blocking access to a popular hiking trail. And at another glacier about 14 miles down the road, the operator Franz Josef Glacier Guides lost hiking access in 2012, also because of retreating ice.
Now, air landings by helicopter are the only way to set foot on the glaciers, which lie at the confluence of the Southern Alps and the Tasman Sea on the west coast of New Zealand's South Island. As a result, both companies have made helicopter tours their primary product, increasing business for local helicopter operators.
Around the world, climate change is having uneven economic effects on tourism operators whose businesses depend on ice and snow.
It has, for example, hurt some ski areas while potentially benefiting competitors whose higher elevations make them less vulnerable to snowmelt, said Daniel Scott, a geographer at the University of Waterloo in Canada who studies links between climate change and tourism.
In Peru, if the rapidly shrinking Pastoruri Glacier disappears, tourists may take their business -- typically about $15 per person for a glacier walk -- to places where glacial ice is still accessible, said Carlos Ames of Aventura Quechua, a guide company in the mountain city of Huaraz. But in the short term, he added, Pastoruri's retreat has created new jobs for horse- and mule-mounted guides, because some tourists think they cannot complete the lengthening, high-altitude glacier hike unassisted.
And in Greenland, glacier-oriented tourism is growing because visitors are eager to see the effects of climate change, said Malik Milfeldt, a senior tourism consultant for Visit Greenland, a government-financed promotional company. Revenue from tourist-friendly activities like dog sledding, ice carving and Nordic skiing have dropped as winter weather has grown more unpredictable.
''What benefits one hurts the other,'' Mr. Milfeldt said.
In New Zealand, most of whose 4.4 million people live on two main islands, tourism directly accounted for 3.7 percent of gross domestic product in the year ending March 31, 2013, or $5.7 billion at today's exchange rates, according to government data. A 2007 study prepared for Development West Coast, a nonprofit organization in the coastal town of Greymouth, estimated that glacier-related tourism on the South Island's scenic west coast directly contributed at least $77 million a year to local economies.
Two of the glaciers there, Fox and Franz Josef, have advanced several times since they were first measured more than a century ago, scientific figures show. But both have retreated farther in the last five years than they advanced in the preceding 25 years, and scientists predict the retreat will continue over the long term.
''There is no doubt that the retreat has been caused by climate change,'' Brian Anderson, a glaciologist at Victoria University in the capital of Wellington who studies both glaciers, said in an email.
Since April, a hiking trail to Fox Glacier's icy terminal face has stopped a few hundred feet short of its target, blocked by a small river and some rocks and boulders that the retreating ice left behind.
In a 2014 academic survey of tourism in New Zealand's glacier region, about two-thirds of respondents said they would still travel to the Fox and Franz Josef area, even if the glaciers were accessible only by air. About one-fifth, however, said they would not be willing to pay for a helicopter flight to walk on them.
From a business perspective, that does not bother Bede Ward, the general manager of Glacier Explorers, which offers boat tours on a lake near the Tasman Glacier on the South Island. He said the number of his annual customers had soared in the last six years, to 25,000 from 7,000, primarily because tourists want to see icebergs break off the glacier and fall into the lake.
''I guess you could say global warming is having a positive effect for Glacier Explorers,'' Mr. Ward said by email.
But at Franz Josef Glacier Guides, the number of staff members has dwindled to 35 from 60 since 2012, the year that walking access was cut off, according to Craig Buckland, the company's operations manager. Rob Jewell, the chief executive of Fox Glacier Guiding, said the loss of hiking access since April had taken a ''significant'' toll on business.
Both companies have embraced helicopter tourism in hopes of making up revenue that guided hikes once provided.
Noise from glacier-bound helicopters could annoy some tourists, said Wayne Costello, an official with the Conservation Department in the town of Franz Josef. But he said tour guides could also use glacial retreat as a ''touchstone'' for teaching tourists about climate change.
''It's a really important chance for us to connect with people and say, 'Actually, if you value your environment, this is what's happening in the world, and these are the impacts of humans living on the planet,''' Mr. Costello said at his home.
On a recent morning, tourists from several countries gathered at a helipad in Fox Glacier before a half-day trek on the glacier.
Smitha Murthy and Keerthy Prasad, software engineers from Bangalore, India, were exploring Fox Glacier as part of their 11-day New Zealand honeymoon.
After a short ride in a bright red helicopter, they were walking, wide-eyed, through a canyon with 25-foot ice walls, the newlyweds recalled after their tour.
Mr. Prasad, 29, said he had planned the tour with help from a Bangalore travel agent. At over $300 per person, it was more than double what the couple had paid to bungee-jump elsewhere in New Zealand.
But Mr. Prasad and Ms. Murthy, 24, had no regrets about the price.
''It's a once-in-a-lifetime experience,'' Mr. Prasad said. ''It's probably not worth the money to do it again. But the first time, it's really worth it.''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/03/business/international/new-zealand-glaciers-ebb-and-tour-guides-play-catch-up.html
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GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: As glaciers retreat on South Island, getting to some of the popular sites requires a helicopter ride, no longer a hike. (B1)
June Hurford, a bakery owner, and Rob Jewell, left, chief executive of Fox Glacier Guiding, wonder how the glaciers' retreat will affect their tourist-dependent livelihoods. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY GUY FREDERICK FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (B4)
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The Guardian
January 2, 2015 Friday 6:44 PM GMT
Sustainable business 2014: countdown of our top stories from 20-11;
Climate change, extinct snails and exploitation of women were all hot topics in 2014 as we count down the top stories of the year. Here are 20 to 11
BYLINE: Jennifer Kho and Anna Codrea-Rado
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 509 words
Food was a key theme in the 20 most read sustainable business stories of 2014, with stories on coffee flour, baby formula and "zero deforestation" food production making the list. Another was technology, with articles about new battery tech and solar-powered water tech featuring in the first tranche of our top stories list.
The rest, though, made up a mixed bag. There were concerning stories about an extinct snail, and another about female exploitation; hopeful stories about the role of emotion in fighting climate change, and US businesses that support bicycling; and a reality check about when sustainability isn't good for business.
What do you think of the first half of our top 20 stories? Tell us about your favorite GSB articles from 2014. Was there a piece that gave you a fresh perspective or that was particularly useful professionally? Share your thoughts in the comments below or tweet us @GuardianSustBiz.
20. An ex-Starbucks entrepreneur wants you to eat your coffee
By making it possible to eat coffee cherries, startup Coffee Flour aims to reduce waste and create a new food source.
19. Baby formula has no place in a sustainable future
Baby formula isn't the best option for babies or the world they enter. Do we need a new global treaty to phase out its use?
18. Cement company blows up limestone hill and renders snail extinct
The Malaysian snail is among hundreds of species to become extinct as a result of fishing, logging, mining, agriculture and other activities to satisfy our growing appetite for resources.
17. The feminist T-shirt scandal exposes an entire system of exploitation
With allegations of low worker wages and poor conditions for the women who made the feminist T-shirt, is the scandal a lesson in the perils of "commodity feminism"?
16. Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh: only love can save us from climate change
A leading spiritual teacher warns that if people cannot save themselves from their own suffering, they cannot be expected to worry about the plight of Mother Earth.
15. Wilmar's 'no deforestation' goal could revolutionize food production
After years of lobbying, the world's largest palm oil company has promised to end deforestation and exploitation - will it set a new threshold for responsible food production?
14. Lithium sulphur graphene - a battery breakthrough?
A new battery under development promises to store twice as much energy and power an electric vehicle for more than 300 miles.
13. Four reasons US business leaders want to import Danish-style cycling
At long last, cycling is being supported by American business - not out of environmentalism, but because it's delivering profit.
12. Let's be honest: real sustainability may not make business sense
Considerations such as "what do you really care about" and "who do you serve" - not profit - should be drivers of sustainability.
11. Is solar-powered desalination the answer to water independence for California?
From the Isle of Man to Saudi Arabia, renewable desalination is gaining interest around the world as a solution to water scarcity and food crisis.
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The Guardian
January 2, 2015 Friday 12:00 PM GMT
2015 will be the year brands take a public stand on social issues;
Instead of just touting their own sustainability, this year brands will focus on gender equality, racial justice, climate change and more The ultimate missed marketing opportunity: climate changeThree steps to better storytelling for brandsRead more predictions for the new year
BYLINE: Jonah Sachs
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 1028 words
2015 will be the year of the pro-social brand.
Pro-social brands are the next step for companies looking to morally engage with consumers. Driven by marketers who are moving beyond claims of sustainability and into strong stands on relevant social issues, this trend picked up momentum in 2014. It will be positively explosive in 2015.
So what's the difference between sustainable and pro-social brands?
A traditional sustainable brand expects that customers will laud and applaud it for its charitable giving and its actions on key environmental issues. It's the classic, safe, (usually) apolitical "vote with your dollars" approach: sustainable brands tell stories that cast them in the role of hero and expect audiences to simply play the role of starry-eyed hero-worshipper.
In the past, marketing based on sustainability or triple-bottom line approaches has been shown to drive a certain amount of loyalty. However, brands have also learned that they reach a point of diminishing returns.
The most ethical shoppers care about these issues, but the majority of customers hardly notice the claims of cleaner supply chains, fair trade or carbon offsetting. And even if they do notice, many have lost trust in such claims. Even much-admired one-for-one programs, such as those pioneered by Toms shoes, have lost their novelty.
This isn't to say that the era of brands striving to behave ethically is over or should end: cleaning up supply chains and pushing for fair trade are more essential than ever. But making these activities the core of a brand's promise is not enough. What's more, the failure of these sorts of marketing approaches often discourages brands from continuing these programs.
Social issues transform ethics
The pro-social trend will accelerate the urgency for ethical behavior. At the same time, it will transform how companies - and customers - live those ethics.
Pro-social brands are more politically disruptive and inspiring than basic sustainable brands. Instead of focusing on what a brand has done internally to drive a better world, pro-social brands look outward to take a stand on key moral issues.
When they weigh in, they publicly prove that these issues have reached a tipping point of acceptability - and, in so doing, they increase the rate of change. A perfect example is the issue of same-sex marriage. In 2014, the Huffington Post reported on 27 major companies that boldly came out in favor of marriage equality. Taking this position wasn't a safe stand, but it was a highly viral one.
When a brand puts a stake in the ground on a controversial topic, such as carbon pricing, gender equality, racial justice, or even excessive corporate power, it sticks its neck out, adding fuel to a cause and challenging its customers to rally behind it.
The brand becomes far more participatory, making room for its customers to take on a heroic role by fighting for a more altruistic, tolerant, selfless world. The pro-social brand doesn't say: "Look what we've done. Now buy our stuff." Instead it says: "We're willing to take a stand. Stand with us."
I've written a few times in the Guardian this year about how brands like Always, Airbnb and Fat Tire are building participatory tribes around key pro-social values. I also called for brands to take bold, political stands on climate change. Not long afterward, major corporations - including Coke and Pepsi - joined forces on Collectively.org to call for political action on the issue.
Do brands have a place in politics?
That said, there are a couple of obvious pitfalls to the pro-social trend. For one, some think the last thing the US needs is more corporations meddling in the political process. And for that matter, it's worth asking if consumers really need big brands telling them what to think on key social issues.
I think there's an important distinction to be made here. Pro-social branding is not about meddling in electoral politics; rather, it's about taking an accurate read of the pulse of today's culture. For decades, society has been trending toward wider empathy, diversity and citizen engagement. Pro-social branding helps to amplify that movement.
This connection between beliefs and consumption isn't new: since the mid-20th century, brands have served as tools for people to express their identities and values. True pro-social brands will stay away from the ballot boxes themselves while encouraging citizens to raise their voices.
Avoiding hypocrisy
A second often-voiced concern is that, by making customers the heroes of brands' stories, companies will be able to absolve themselves of cleaning up their own acts. Should we encourage corporations to offload responsibility on citizens?
I don't believe that is much of a danger here. If pro-social brands take bold stands on an issue - as Ben and Jerry's did on campaign finance, for instance - they take a huge risk if they then brazenly violate that stand in their own actions.
For example, if Facebook were to speak out in favor of same sex marriage or Always were to take a stand against discrimination toward girls, they would then be obligated to follow up on their statements in their own activities to avoid hypocrisy. If they then practiced discriminatory behavior behind the scenes, they would set themselves up for major embarrassment.
In effect, taking a controversial pro-social stand becomes a public commitment to better behavior. Thus, a pro-social brand is a sustainable brand - just a more involved and committed one.
How big will this trend go? I predict that the most sensationally viral and impactful marketing campaigns of 2015 will be bold, political and highly in tune with the twitterverse. And I expect their message will extend beyond: "We're sustainable. Buy from us."
Jonah Sachs is the CEO of branding agency Free Range Studios, and author of Winning the Story Wars: Why Those Who Tell (and Live) the Best Stories Will Rule the Future.
This piece is part of the values-led business hub, which is funded by SC Johnson. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled as advertising features. Find out more here.
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The Guardian
January 1, 2015 Thursday 6:25 PM GMT
The Guardian view on Paris 2015: the world's last best chance to reach an agreement on cutting carbon emissions;
The pope, President Obama and President Xi are all on the same side. But it doesn't guarantee victory
BYLINE: Editorial
SECTION: COMMENT IS FREE
LENGTH: 722 words
This time last year the water was lapping at front doors from Godalming in Surrey and Tonbridge in Kent, they were still clearing up after a tidal surge along the east coast in early December, the Scottish lowlands were on full flood alert and there were ominous signs of the catastrophe looming for the Somerset levels. No single weather event is evidence of climate change, but the freak weather of those months left no one in any doubt of what an extreme weather event would look like. There was nothing more for the climate change scientists to add.
This time next year, the Paris summit that holds out the best hope for a broad, UN-brokered agreement on cutting carbon emissions will be over. It is of universal importance that a deal is struck that is ambitious and achievable. There are several reasons why that looks more possible now than it has done for years. President Barack Obama clearly hopes that he can make climate change part of his legacy. He is reportedly ready to use his powers to override Congressional opposition to his proposal for a cut in carbon emissions, by 2025, of between 26% and 28% over the 2005 level. The US readiness to make a commitment was matched by China's president Xi Jinping, for the first time, offering a date for "peak" carbon emissions of 2030. The agreement, announced in November after the two leaders met in China, was welcomed by the UN's climate change chief, Christiana Figueres, who said it would make a real contribution to the success of the Paris conference. And the EU has agreed to a 40% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 compared with 1990, as well as to new targets for the generation of renewable energy.
There was progress at Lima, the final preparatory summit for Paris, where a new series of objectives was outlined. They leave a lot to the imagination but the process of eroding some of the biggest of the roadblocks to a deal in December is under way. So, although there is still no obligation on the developing countries of Brazil, Russia, India or China to cut emissions, they have accepted the need for a cap and the world is no longer divided into developing and developed countries. And while it proved impossible to agree a system of measurement or monitoring, there is an obligation on all 190 or so countries to produce a plan in the next three months to cut emissions.
But climate change is above all a matter of equity - equity between rich world and poor world, equity between generations. A deal in Paris demands moral leadership. This Christmas, Pope Francis showed that he for one is willing to provide it. He has promised that he will take the rare step of issuing an encyclical, a letter to the world's Catholic bishops to be read from every pulpit emphasising the responsibility of all Catholics to take action, on scientific as well as moral grounds. He will drive home his argument at a summit of world religious leaders, and then in an address to the UN general assembly. However equivocal scientists may feel about having God on their side, it is unlikely to damage their prospects of success.
Paris has been 20 years in the making. As the former EU commissioner for climate action, Connie Hedegaard, has emphasised, negotiators will be sipping their champagne in the last-chance saloon for UN-led action. At Copenhagen in 2009, Ms Hedegaard pulled, if not victory, then real progress from the jaws of defeat when all the major carbon emitters accepted there must be curbs, and it is through her efforts that there is the change for a new agreement to be signed off this year. Regrettably, her successor, Miguel Arias Cañete, the Spanish former director of two oil companies, may not bring quite the same energy and commitment to the role.
The essentials for an effective deal are easy to spell out. There must be clarity and certainty, so that every country knows what has to be done, and business can see where to invest. It must be a deal for the long term, fair to all its participants, with funding to allow transition to new low-carbon technologies, and to underwrite adaptation for those countries that will be worst affected by the impacts of global warming. There will be plenty of argument over whether this is a treaty or a protocol or a binding instrument with legal force. In the end, what matters is an agreement - of any kind.
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The Guardian
January 1, 2015 Thursday 3:00 PM GMT
Sustainability 2015: the devil will be in the detail;
2014 saw many welcome examples of sustainability, but Tensie Whelan believes successful implementation of policies lies in understanding nuance Read more end-of-year reflections and 2015 predictions
BYLINE: Tensie Whelan
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 722 words
My colleagues in the sustainability field and I have long hoped for the day when consumers, producers, companies and governments around the world would recognise and adopt the sustainability imperative. In many ways, that day is here.
Sustainability ambitions are soaring around the world. Many government initiatives to fight climate change and deforestation were announced this year, including a raft of new ones at COP20 in Lima. Companies increasingly integrate sustainability into their value chains and triple bottom line accounting into their corporate governance. Powerful emerging technologies hold the promise of new, powerful sustainability impacts.
But we still have a lot to learn about how to align our practices with these ambitions and getting the details of implementation right. Technology could help, but we have to learn to manage it effectively.
2014 saw the rise of drones as a commercial, non-military technology, collecting massive real-time data about forests, water resources and crops. This year, Rainforest Alliance worked to bring digital communications and data sharing to rural farmers so they can learn best practice from each other and provide feedback to companies on how their sourcing policies are working. Used correctly, this kind of data could help fight deforestation and water resource depletion, minimise agricultural chemical use, raise yields on existing cropland and spread sustainable practices.
We haven't yet decided how to regulate these technologies, or who gets to control these big data streams. Some big companies are already figuring out how to capture and exploit farm monitoring data for their own profit. In The People's Platform, Astra Taylor documents how the internet's promise of democratisation and open access for all has been redirected towards making billions for a few giant gatekeepers at the expense of the commons. If we want big data to help scale up sustainable practices and choices, and serve the common good, we have to adopt policies to channel it in that direction. I hope 2015 will be the year we get serious about that.
2014 was a watershed year for recognising the critical role of forests, agriculture and land use in fighting climate change and protecting biodiversity. The UN Climate Summit and COP20 called for halving deforestation by 2020 and ending it by 2030. In terms of cutting greenhouse gas emissions, that would be like taking all the world's cars off the road.
While it's thrilling to see the UN process, governments and companies around the world embracing the goal of ending deforestation, it's important to remember that ambition is one thing, but learning how to implement it is another. To achieve it, we need to do the hard, detailed work of transforming farming, ranching and forestry practices that drive deforestation.
In Latin America, because of poor grass management, it takes a hectare (2.47 acres) of land to support one cow. With 200m cattle in the Amazon basin, and beef demand set to double, we must learn to produce more on existing ranchland using sustainable methods. Rainforest Alliance has certified the first sustainable ranches in Brazil to a new standard that can support up to six head of cattle per hectare while eliminating deforestation and other negative impacts.
Declaring deforestation-free policies won't change the fact that there's no such thing as zero deforestation in forest supply chains. Virtually all forest products entail cutting trees, but we can achieve net-zero deforestation if we source them from producers who protect high value areas, manage working forests sustainably and replant trees.
My wish for the coming year is that consumers, policymakers and businesses become increasingly familiar with these kinds of nuances and apply them to implementing sustainability goals. In 2014 we saw many welcome signs that sustainability ambitions are growing. My hope is we'll continue the hard, detailed work of learning how to realise those ambitions in 2015.
Tensie Whelan is president of Rainforest Alliance.
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The Guardian
December 31, 2014 Wednesday 8:15 AM GMT
2014: not such a bad year after all;
The international news agenda tends to focus on things that go wrong. Here we present a selection of the year's good news stories, as a counterbalance to the ravages of war, violence, disease, natural disasters, corruption et al
BYLINE: Guardian staff
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 3080 words
Climate change
From the Great Hall of the People in Beijing and a field behind a Peruvian army base in Lima to Sixth Avenue and Japan's second city, this year put climate change back on the map.
A combination of more pressing economic concerns and the fallout from the disastrous Copenhagen summit in 2009 has meant that cutting the greenhouse gas emissions driving dangerous global warming has not been high on many world leaders' agendas over the past few years.
One leader, however, has almost singlehandedly changed that as he builds his legacy. Barack Obama tightened rules for US coal power plants in June, but much more significantly he helped forge a deal between Washington and Beijing on emissions, adding a fresh sense of momentum to international negotiations.
The deal saw the US promise to cut emissions by 28% from 2005 levels by 2025, a rate faster than its current goal for 2020. China, which overtook the US as the world's biggest emitter nearly a decade ago, said for the first time that it would peak its emissions, by 2030.
"2014 was the year climate change landed back on the global political agenda," said Michael Jacobs, a climate adviser to former British prime minister Gordon Brown. He called the announcement by Obama and Xi Jinping remarkable.
"The subject of climate change does not easily induce optimism, but there is now a genuine possibility that a new global legal agreement could be signed in Paris in December next year."
More impetus came in the form of an EU pledge to cut its emissions by 40% by 2030.
Despite the encouraging politics, climate change continued at an alarming rate. In September, the most recent data on the emissions being pumped out globally from power plants, factories and cars showed the world is currently on track for the worst predicted levels of warming: 3-5C above pre-industrial levels, rather than the 2C considered a "safe" threshold.
Germany looks set to miss its carbon reduction target for 2020, but at least renewables appeared likely to have been the country's main source of energy in 2014 for the first time in history. With a number of new wind parks opening in November, analysts expect renewables to account for more than the 27% target the EU has set for 2030. The Schleswig Holstein region in the country's windy north was expected to cover its entire energy needs from renewables in 2014.
Public approval remains high. According to a survey by the pollster Allensbach in June, support for the "energy transition" project remains stable at 70%, with only 15% of Germans opposed. Adam Vaughan and Philip Oltermann
Egypt
In June, just two days after being sworn in as Egypt's president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, visited a rape victim in hospital. The photo-op that followed was in some ways troubling. The woman was being used as a prop in a publicity exercise, and while her own face was blurred in the images released to the press, that of her relative was not.
Sisi's presence was, however, a minor victory for Egyptian women's rights campaigners. It was the first time an Egyptian president had acknowledged the problem of endemic sexual violence so publicly. Whether the government's intentions are sincere or not, at least it wants to be seen to be addressing the issue.
In an otherwise bleak year for human rights in Egypt, this was one of a number of moves in 2014 that brought small gains for gender equality. The government criminalised sexual harassment for the first time, leading to the country's first convictions on such charges. Weeks later, Cairo University became the country's first state university to institute a policy on sexual harassment.
The policy was only written, however, after the university's head had claimed a female student was at fault for her own mob harassment.
The overdue national legislation was seen as a welcome first initiative against a social ill that has typically been either ignored, or blamed on the victim. UN figures suggest that 99% of Egyptian women experience regular harassment in the street. The vague and brief amendment to the penal code was, however, still a long way short of a comprehensive law to govern all aspects of sexual violence, and campaigners wonder how often and how effectively it will be applied in practice.
Change is happening, albeit slowly. In February, Hala Shukrallah was elected as the first female leader of an Egyptian political party. "What we're seeing here is that something truly on-the-ground is happening," Shukrallah said of the significance of her election. "It's a reflection of the changes in the people's psyche." Patrick Kingsley
FGM
Before the UN day of action against female genital mutilation in February, few people were campaigning against - or even knew about - a brutal practice that affects more than 130 million women and girls around the world. Little was known about the blood loss, infections, problems during childbirth, extreme pain and loss of sexual pleasure associated with having their genitalia cut. In 2014, however, something unusual happened. An issue that had largely ignored became front page news.
The Guardian's End FGM campaign was at the vanguard of the push. With the website Change.org it backed a petition by Fahma Mohamed from the anti-FGM charity Integrate Bristol calling on the then education secretary Michael Gove to tackle FGM in schools. After it gathered more than 230,000 signatures, Gove met campaigners and agreed to write to schools about the dangers of the practice, which is carried out in communities from 29 different countries in Africa and the Middle East.
In May the campaign moved across the Atlantic - taken up by Jaha Dukureh, a 25-year-old mother of three whose petition pushed the Obama administration to promise to carry out a much-needed US prevalence study and set up a FGM working group. Empowered and impassioned by the campaign, Dukureh decided to return to her home country of the Gambia. In October she helped organise the first ever Youth Summit on FGM, which pushed the government to publicly state that it was "committed to end all forms of gender based violence against women and girls, including FGM", and to promise a national action plan.
Prosecutions have proved tricker. In the UK, the Crown Prosecution Service took no further action in 10 out of 12 cases referred to it by police. The first FGM trial, of doctor Dhanuson Dharmasena, 32, and another man who cannot be named, is due to start in January at Southwark crown court. In Egypt a landmark case again the first doctor charged with FGM ended in his acquittal.
Towards the end of the year, the UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon launched a joint UN Population Fund-Guardian programme to change how FGM is reported. Five international reporting grants to allow journalists in Kenya focus on FGM were announced, which Ban said he hoped could act as a template for other African countries. Alexandra Topping
France
2014 was arguably a vintage year for French sportswomen breaking into fields that were previously exclusively male.
In June, Andy Murray surprised fans and commentators when he appointed the French tennis champion Amélie Mauresmo as his coach. The double grand slam champion and former world number one is only the second woman to coach a top-10 world tennis player.
Martina Navratilova, the winner of 41 grand slam singles and doubles titles, said of Mauresmo's appointment: "It widens the field and widens the possibilities. The ball doesn't know if you're male or female. The strategy is the same.
"If a guy like Murray doesn't care, why should anyone else care?"
The appointment of the first woman as head coach of a male professional football team in France, however, ended up being almost as complicated as the offside rule. Portuguese-born Hélèna Costa joined the second division club Clermont Foot 63 in May, making her - on paper at least - the first and only female manager in the highest two divisions of any professional European league.
"As a woman, it's made me happy," Véronique Soulier, the president of the club's supporters' association, told journalists.
Six weeks after making sporting history though, and on the eve of the start of the season, Costa walked out before overseeing a single match. She suggested her ground-breaking appointment had fallen foul of some old-fashioned sexism, telling a Portuguese newspaper that her male colleagues had sidelined her and left her convinced she was just a "face" to attract publicity to the club.
Shortly afterwards Clermont Foot 63 appointed Corinne Diacre, a former women's football international, as manager. Diacre, a midfielder with 121 caps, was chosen from 45 applicants for Costa's job, but it was not until September that her team won its first match.
France already boasts the only woman trainer of a French championship rugby team after the appointment of Audrey Zitter to the second division Montpellier team, the Diables Rouges or Red Devils. Zitter grew up in a family of rugby players and is married to a former international. Kim Willsher
Germany
Germany's 7-1 defeat of Brazil in the World Cup semi-finals may have been the most talked about moment of the competition, but their eventual triumph had a more personal meaning for many supporters. The win was the first for a unified Germany, adding to West Germany's three titles, and the moment was particularly significant in the year that the country celebrated 25 years of reunification.
It was fitting that one of the country's most popular sites for watching the games was the "Fan Mile" at the Brandenburg Gate, an area that had been a deserted strip of death during the division of Berlin. In July, thousands gathered in the former no-man's-land to watch each match, and later to give the victorious team a hero's welcome.
In November, it was the scene of further celebrations as Germans marked the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall with concerts, speeches and the release of 7,000 illuminated balloons placed along the former path of the wall.
The country's chancellor, Angela Merkel, who was working as a scientist in East Berlin in 1989, spoke of her own experience of crossing to the west. She told crowds "there was just this incredible feeling of happiness".
Despite the optimism, Germany's east-west divide has not completely disappeared. Twenty-five years on, the former GDR lags behind in income and employment rates. Its GDP is two-thirds that of the rest of the country, but there are signs of improvement. The government's annual report on the state of unification showed that the mass migration from east to west had almost stopped.
Germany has also been praised this year for its social equality, after capping rent rises in inner-city areas and abolishing university tuition fees. Moves to introduce Frauenquote to ensure women hold at least 30% of executive positions have been applauded, and the country has retained its status as the eurozone's economic powerhouse.
Merkel has urged other divided nations to take inspiration from Germany's success. In a speech at the Berlin Wall memorial, she told hundreds of thousands of visitors that the events of 1989 "showed us that the yearning for freedom cannot be forever suppressed".
"The collapse of the wall showed us that dreams can come true, that nothing has to remain as it is. It's a message of encouragement to tear down other walls, walls of dictatorship, violence, ideologies and enmity," she said. Catherine Edwards
India
After swords into ploughshares come plastic bags into fuel. A team of Indian scientists have discovered how to transform the rubbish that litters almost every open space in the emerging South Asian economic powerhouse into something that could power a car.
"It's a double advantage," said Raghubansh Kumar Singh, a chemical engineer at the National Institute of Technology, in the eastern Indian state of Odisha. "India is short of energy, and there are plastic bags everywhere which are not biodegradable which ... cause lots of problems to the environment. We can solve this problem."
The process involves heating the waste to between 400 and 500C over china clay, commonly found in India. The constituents of the plastics break down, producing around 700 millilitres of oil derived from every kilo which can be mixed with traditional diesel or petrol. "We have tested on engines in laboratories with no problem at all. It's effective and very, very cheap," Singh said.
The Indian effort is one of a number of bids to find commercially viable ways of converting the vast quantities of plastic bags cluttering up the planet into fuel. Researchers in the US and Japan are also working to perfect technology which could produce significant amounts of fuel.
Bags make up a sizeable portion of the giant patches of "plastic soup" in the world's oceans. Trillions are manufactured every year and at least 80% are thrown away after use. According to the Delhi government's website, the city, which is home to 17 million people, generates 574 tonnes of plastic waste each day.
Singh said his work had attracted considerable commercial interest. "Many people are approaching us with possible investments," he said. Jason Burke
Somalia
A blind man traces his finger over braille, smiling as he spells out the words "Mogadishu rising". A man jogs along a gorgeous coastline, construction workers mix cement and hammer nails, cafe patrons relax over cake and coffee, and hopeful young people repeat the mantra over an upbeat soundtrack: "Mogadishu rising".
The video was released on YouTube to promote the third TEDxMogadishu, an event with speakers including an architect, business entrepreneur, martial arts teacher, singer-songwriter, women's rights activist and creator of a video series known as the Mogadishu Diaries. Workshops were also held at four universities.
Mogadishu, once the last place in the world to look for joy, provided some solace during a relentlessly grim 2014. There can be no downplaying the persistent mortal dangers - in February a UN convoy and the presidential palace suffered deadly attacks - but the city's residents continue to show defiance, resilience and hope.
The Somali capital is enjoying a construction boom, with demand far outstripping supply and rental prices trebling in some neighbourhoods. An apartment in the new Safari complex reportedly costs nearly £222,000. The market is being buoyed by professionals pouring back from the Somali diaspora.
Al Jazeera recently reported that the international airport, once abandoned, " is now a beehive of activity " with 70 flights arriving daily and new terminals under construction. "A can-do attitude is currently gripping Somalia," the report said. "Mogadishu's skyline is ever changing."
Since the Islamist militant group al-Shabaab was chased out of the city in 2011, there have been tentative, incremental steps towards a normal urban life. Cafes and restaurants have opened, embassies have returned and beaches have become popular again. In the past couple of months Mogadishu has introduced its first cash machine, its first independent art fair and the first postal service for more than 20 years.
One of the engines of the revival is Turkey, a leading donor and ally whose firms are upgrading Mogadishu's air and seaports, and building schools, hospitals and mosques. Recep Tayyip Erdogan was the first leader from outside Africa to visit Mogadishu in nearly 20 years and Turkish Airlines became the first international airline to return.
No one is pretending that Mogadishu will be on the tourist map any time soon. Al-Shabaab still controls swaths of Somalia's countryside and settlements from which it continues a guerrilla-style campaign. But it has been losing ground and in September its leader, Ahmed Abdi Godane, was killed in a US air strike. Its hold on the capital is long gone, and in a year of global turmoil Mogadishu could claim, just for once, to be trending in the right direction. David Smith
Spain
On a cold night in early December, the Madrid-based art collective luzinterruptus jammed 200 syringes in a piece of lawn next to Spain's health ministry.
Each syringe was filled with a white light, creating a small patch of illumination that glowed bright in the dark night. The installation represented the battle being waged by many in Spain to maintain the quality of the country's healthcare system in the face of crippling austerity measures, the group said.
It's a battle that's all too familiar to Rafael Matesanz. Tapped to lead the country's national transplant organisation in 1989, Spain was a laggard in transplants when he came into the job. Two decades later, Matesanz and his team have helped transform Spain into a world leader. In 2014, as the country's health service reels from cuts, Spain racked up a record-breaking year for organ donations and transplants.
"In 2013, we carried out more than 4,200 transplants," said Matesanz. "This year we'll be around 4,400." Spain's donation rate, one of the highest in the world, has risen to more than 36 per million in the past year, he said. The EU average is 19 per million.
Much has been written about the Spanish model over the years, including its innovative use of highly trained hospital coordinators who approach families at the moment of deciding when to donate. Matesanz has become an in-demand speaker, as health authorities in Canada, Portugal and the UK turn to his team for advice on how to implement similar reforms, and the World Health Organisation has adopted the Spanish organisational model.
In recent years, however, as Spanish authorities signed onto austerity measures to combat the economic crisis, the country's transplant system has not been spared. The organisation's training budget was reduced by 20% while, across the board, the country's annual national health budget took a (EURO)7bn (£5.5bn) cut in 2012. "The reality is that we have fewer doctors, fewer nurses and less money than we had four or five years ago," said Matesanz.
Countering the cuts is the fact that the country's transplant system has become a source of pride, he said. "So everyone who works in the system gives it their best. We're now doing more with less, which is ideal for a crisis like this one."
Twenty-two years after they first began to set the standard for transplants, Matesanz and his team continue to eye improvements. "We want to get to 5,000 donations," he said, pointing to their recently completed five-year plan as a roadmap. "These are realistic goals. We're not dreaming." Ashifa Kassam
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December 31, 2014 Wednesday
Late Edition - Final
A Nation's Pride, Chided
BYLINE: By HENRY FOUNTAIN
SECTION: Section B; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1378 words
OSLO -- This has not been a particularly good year for Statoil, the huge state-controlled oil company that has had a commanding presence in Norway's economy and society for more than four decades.
In the spring, Statoil cut 1,000 jobs, or 4 percent of its work force. In September, it postponed a much-criticized project in the Canadian tar sands for at least three years. On Oct. 29, reflecting collapsing oil prices and a steep tumble of its stock, it reported its first quarterly loss since 2001. And in November, it announced disappointing results from the year's program of drilling for new oil and gas in the Norwegian Arctic.
But it is not just the vicissitudes of oil markets and exploratory wells that are causing difficulties for Statoil. In an era of climate change, the company -- and by extension Norway's entire oil and gas industry, which accounts for nearly a quarter of the country's gross domestic product and contributes to greenhouse gas emissions worldwide -- is coming under increasing pressure from within its own borders.
The activism goes beyond conventional environmental concerns to issues of the company's pervasive presence in Norwegian life.
At the University of Bergen and other schools, for instance, professors and students have protested Statoil's financing of academic research, worth about $12 million annually. And musicians and artists have campaigned against the company's widespread sponsorship of cultural events and organizations, which has included cash awards to performers whom Statoil calls ''Heroes of Tomorrow.''
''Basically, you're a billboard for an oil company,'' Martin Hagfors, a musician, said in an interview in his studio in Oslo's lively Gronland district. ''And if you have any sense that we need to change direction, you can't be a billboard for an oil company.''
The tensions are playing out in Parliament, too. In June, majority and opposition parties pressured Statoil to agree to provide electricity to several North Sea oil fields from land, using clean hydroelectricity delivered by cable rather than greenhouse-gas-emitting gas generators offshore.
''There's a growing concern that Norway is basing its welfare to such a large extent on something that is increasing global warming,'' said Rasmus Hansson, who last year became the first member of the Green Party to be elected to Parliament. ''It's a moral issue.''
Statoil, which was concerned about costs and delays, fought back, and a compromise was eventually reached that will cut emissions by up to 23 million tons of carbon dioxide over the lifetime of the fields. The episode was seen as a milestone for Parliament, which normally rubber-stamps most Statoil projects.
''It was a very important thing to do at the time we did it,'' said Terje Aasland, a member of Parliament with the Labor Party, the largest opposition party.
''Climate change is coming closer and closer every day,'' he added. ''I think people are more concerned about the future.''
Some Norwegians are even starting to discuss the idea of an eventual transition from oil and gas, an idea that would have been a nonstarter just a few years ago.
But there are conflicting impulses. This month, the government announced a huge increase, to $250 million, in the money it was giving to the United Nations to help poorer countries fight the effects of climate change. But just a few days before that, a Finance Ministry panel recommended that Norway's giant sovereign wealth fund, which invests the proceeds from the petroleum riches, not divest itself of its holdings in oil and coal companies, despite pressure from the opposition party.
How Norway wrestles with these and other issues may provide a preview of what is to come in other oil-rich countries, including the United States.
Criticism of Statoil does not come easily, for the company has long been a source of affluence as well as national pride. Since it was founded in 1972 to exploit the extensive hydrocarbon deposits in the Norwegian continental shelf, Statoil, which is two-thirds owned by the government, has pumped hundreds of billions of dollars into federal coffers, including the wealth fund. Oil and gas exports have helped make Norway, which has a population of five million, one of the wealthiest nations in the world, with a median household income of more than $62,000.
Even some of its fiercest critics acknowledge that Statoil has a special status among Norwegians.
''We're very proud of Statoil,'' said Truls Gulowsen, head of the Norwegian chapter of Greenpeace, which is fighting the company's plans in the Arctic, Canada and elsewhere. ''It's also ours. Therefore we should have a say in which projects and which strategic direction our company that we all love is going to take.''
Among the world's oil giants, Statoil's environmental reputation is better than most. The company supports a carbon tax. It has been a leader in developing ways to store carbon dioxide underground to keep it out of the atmosphere. And its per-barrel emissions from producing oil in the North Sea are among the lowest anywhere.
''People tend to think we're very good at what we do,'' said Hege Marie Norheim, Statoil's senior vice president for sustainability.
But as production has fallen in old North Sea fields, Statoil has looked elsewhere for oil and gas, including Canada -- where production of tar sands oil has a much higher carbon footprint -- and environmentally sensitive areas in the Arctic.
That has environmentalists and others fuming. ''Statoil, the cleanest oil company, our Norwegian pride, why are you getting yourself involved in really dirty business?'' said Mr. Gulowsen of Greenpeace.
Most of Statoil's oil and gas, including the 30 percent that comes from outside Norway, is burned in other countries. So while Norway itself is greener than many other countries -- almost all of its electricity, for example, comes from hydropower -- it is indirectly responsible for a disproportionate share of the world's carbon dioxide emissions.
If and when governments around the world put stricter limits on emissions, Statoil could be forced to leave some of its oil and gas in the ground. Market factors -- a long period of depressed oil prices, for instance -- could have the same result. Either way, the impact on Statoil, and on Norway's economy, could be severe.
So it makes sense, critics say, for Statoil and other Norwegian companies to begin planning for an era of less or even no oil. Mr. Aasland, the Labor politician, argues that Statoil could use its offshore expertise to develop more wind power or other alternative energy sources.
''We can use the knowledge and people in the oil industry,'' Mr. Aasland said. ''There's a big opportunity over time to diverge from oil and gas to a more green economy.''
Statoil, not surprisingly, does not think it should be the one to leave any oil and gas behind.
''We think that's not part of our contribution,'' Ms. Norheim said. ''On the contrary, the oil that should be produced from now to the end should, to a very large extent, come from Norway, because it's good oil. It's safe and secure and delivered from us with low carbon emissions.''
As for transforming the company into one with more of a focus on renewable energy, Ms. Norheim said that was unrealistic. ''We are good at what we do, but we're not good at everything,'' she said.
So for now, despite the depressed oil market and talk of more emissions limits, Statoil is still very much an oil and gas company.
In November, in the middle of the more sobering news, Statoil announced that a new field, the Johan Sverdrup -- one of the biggest North Sea discoveries in recent years and the crucial field in the electrification dispute with Parliament -- could produce as much as $200 billion in revenue over the next 50 years.
''Make no mistake, the oil and gas sector is still pushing on,'' Mr. Hansson, of the Green Party, said. ''The practical policy is to make Norway even more dependent on oil and gas.''
And no one is quite certain what Norway's future would look like if that were to change.
''It's really hard for people to see a society without the oil industry,'' said Ingrid Skjoldvaer, deputy chairwoman of the environmental group Nature and Youth. ''How is that going to work? What are we going to live off then?''
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/31/business/international/norwegians-turn-ambivalent-on-statoil-their-economic-bedrock.html
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GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: The Statoil-operated Snoehvit liquefied natural gas plant on Melkoeya island, Norway. The company is coming under pressure for the environmental damage caused by the oil and gas it produces. (PHOTOGRAPH BY NERIJUS ADOMAITIS/REUTERS) (B1)
The Norwegian rock band El Cuero plays in Oslo at a festival sponsored by Statoil, which has a program to support the arts in Norway. The oil company's backing has made some artists uneasy. Left, students at the University of Bergen protest Statoil and urge divestment from fossil fuels. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY INGAR HAUG STEINHOLT/SCANPIX
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December 31, 2014 Wednesday
While Much of the U.S. Shivers, Alaskan Fourth Graders Bemoan a Warm, Snowless December on YouTube
BYLINE: ANDREW C. REVKIN
SECTION: OPINION
LENGTH: 713 words
HIGHLIGHT: While most of the lower 48 states shiver, fourth graders in an Eskimo town in Alaska videotape their warm weather woes.
While most of the lower 48 states are shivering their way into 2015, in much of Alaska the concern is persistent warmth.
Fourth graders at the Kuinerrarmiut Elitnaurviat school in Quinhagak recently caught the attention of some news outlets and climate scientists with a clever video bemoaning a warm and snowless December. The town of about 660 residents, mostly Yup'ik Eskimos, is a mile from the Bering Sea coast.
The video was shot by James Barthelman, a teacher who had a YouTube hit with his class four years ago - Handel's 'Hallelujah' chorus featuring students flipping cards with the lyrics.
Much of southern Alaska has been unusually warm, with Anchorage poised to record its warmest year on record. But efforts to tease out the impact of human-driven global warming in the region are complicated by the big influence around the Bering Sea of natural variations in ocean conditions, including the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.
I saw the video after Mike MacCracken, chief scientist for the Climate Institute, brought it to the attention of the American Meteorological Society's Committee on Effective Communication of Weather and Climate Information (I'm one of several journalist members).
He described the student video as a "powerful way of communicating how the climate is changing." I expressed some doubts, noting how much variability there is in Alaskan conditions, so I asked him for a bit more. In his reply, MacCracken (whom I've sought out on climate science since 1985) stressed he's talking about the value of the video in conveying how long-term trends will play out in Alaska:
While winter (or other seasonal) conditions typically vary from year to year, the first effect of climate change is to raise the baseline around which the variations occur. For regions that have winter conditions below normal, the increase in the baseline will more and more often lead to variations taking the temperature to above freezing. This is happening along the coast of Alaska, especially as the sea ice forms later and later each year, creating a situation where the waves from winter storms are no longer being held down by the sea ice, but not actively eroding the shoreline.
The second aspect of climate change that is likely affecting Alaska more and more is the apparent tendency of warming in the Arctic and warmer sea surface temperatures in the Pacific to contribute to larger waves in the jet stream. The resulting larger waves, which also seem to persist for longer because they move more slowly west to east, tend to push warm air into the Arctic (e.g., over Alaska) later and later into the year, leading to very warm conditions and the later and later freezing of the land surface and later accumulation of snow. While this may initially seem beneficial, transportation and movement of wildlife across the tundra is made much easier when the land surface (and rivers) are frozen over.
Such large variations of the climate likely won't occur every year over the next few decades given the limited global warming to date, but it would seem likely such conditions will occur more and more frequently as global warming continues, disrupting both social systems and ecosystems.
For more on Alaska's variable, but warming climate, scan "Climate of Alaska: Past, Present and Future," a recent presentation by Uma S. Bhatt, an associate professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Here are her takeaway points:
- Alaska has warmed but not in a simple manner.
- Alaska represents a complex location climatologically, impacted by various circulations.
- Climate research results are not always easy to explain in a simple way. We usually add many caveats!!
- Conclusions based on the preponderance of evidence suggest humans have impacted the climate. Controversy arises as people translate the science into policy change?
Quinhagak, interestingly, is the site of a prototype octagonal, foam-insulated home designed by the Cold Climate Housing Research Center. (Winter in the area is plenty cold, even if December hasn't been.)
For more on Quinhagak and climate change, you can read an interesting 2011 article by two University of Alaska, Fairbanks, researchers working with locals to map changes in permafrost, coastlines and other landscape features.
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December 31, 2014 Wednesday
Tracing the Roots of Pope Francis's Climate Plans for 2015
BYLINE: ANDREW C. REVKIN
SECTION: OPINION
LENGTH: 1344 words
HIGHLIGHT: A closer look at Pope Francis’s planned push on climate change in 2015.
One of the highlights of my year, perhaps my career, was being able to participate in "Sustainable Humanity, Sustainable Nature: Our Responsibility," a four-day Vatican workshop aimed at shaping strategies for human advancement that are attuned to the planet's limits, organized by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and Academy of Social Sciences last May.
Now there are signs that the themes and conclusions developed in those sessions are helping to shape Pope Francis's planned push for serious international commitments in 2015 to curb greenhouse gases and gird communities, particularly the poorest, against climate-related hazards.
A first step will come in less than three weeks, when, during his visit to the Philippines, the pope is scheduled to have lunch with some survivors of the typhoon that devastated Tacloban in 2012. The scope of the human calamity there was as much a result of deep poverty and poorly governed urban growth as the ferocity of Typhoon Haiyan.
The social and environmental roots of that disaster provide just the context the Vatican needs for reinforcing its case that sustainable human progress will come as much through attacking poverty and fostering fairness as boosting environmental protection.
Those twin themes resonated throughout the Vatican meeting and have built since then, particularly in a speech delivered in London on November 7 by Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, who, as chancellor of both pontifical academies, was the chief organizer of the Vatican sustainability workshop.
That speech sketches out much of the pope's plans on climate change for the coming year. (You probably saw John Vidal's article on the pope's climate plans in the Guardian last Saturday, or the heaps of coveragethatfollowed, but if you dig in a bit, you'll see that nearly every point in the story came from Sorondo's lecture.)
In the speech, Sorondo carefully placed Francis's steps in the broader context of Vatican actions going back to Pope Paul VI in 1975. Here are some excerpts, with a link to the full prepared text:
The basics:
Today solid scientific evidence exists that global climate is changing and that human activity based on the use of fossil materials contributes decisively to this trend. Coupled with an economy based on profit and on the games finance plays in order to profit from money itself, without a clear orientation to the production of goods, this leads to social exclusion and the new forms of slavery such as forced labour, prostitution, organ trafficking, and the use of drugs as a method of corruption. Therefore, a program in the light of the Populorum progressio and Pope Montini's further interpretations must include climate stabilization, the sustainable development of the natural environment and social inclusion focused on the centrality of the human being and the common good.
On the obligations that attend the Anthropocene:
[J]ust as humanity confronted "revolutionary change" (Rerum Novarum) in the19th century at the time of Industrialization, today we have changed the natural environment so much that scientists, using a word coined by our Academy, tend to define our era as the Anthropocene, that is to say, a period of time in which human action is having a decisive impact on the planet due to the use of fossil fuels. If current trends continue, this century will witness unprecedented climate change and the destruction of the ecosystem, with tragic consequences for us all.
Human action that doesn't respect nature has a boomerang effect on human beings, creating inequality and increasing what Pope Francis has defined as "globalisation of indifference" and "economics of exclusion" (Evangelii Gaudium), which endanger solidarity and present and future generations.
On the world's wealth and energy gaps:
Advances in measured productivity in all sectors - agriculture, industry and services - enable us to imagine an end to poverty, shared prosperity, and a further increase in life expectancy. However, unjust social structures (Evangelii Gaudium) have become an obstacle to the appropriate and sustainable organization of production and to the equitable distribution of its fruits, which are both necessary to achieve those objectives....
For example, 50 percent of the available energy is used by less than a billion people, whereas its negative impacts on the environmental affect three billion people who do not have access to it. These three billion people, in fact, have so little access to modern energy that they are forced to cook, heat and light their homes using methods harmful to their health.
A warning, but also "a message of hope and joy":
Today we need to establish a mutually beneficial relationship: the economy needs to be imbued with true values, and respect for God's creation should promote human dignity and well being.
On these issues, all religions and all people of good will can agree. Today's young people will embrace them to create a better world. The message of the Pontifical Academies is an urgent warning because the dangers of the Anthropocene are real and the injustice of the globalization of indifference is a serious issue. Yet, our message is also one of hope and joy. This is exactly what the Blessed Pope Paul VI wanted to achieve with his project of the civilization of love: a healthier, safer, fairer, more prosperous and more sustainable world is within our reach. The believers among us ask the Lord to give us our daily bread as food for the body and soul.
The papal game plan, including a possible encyclical and a meeting of all faiths this year:
Following the lead of the great recent Popes, especially Paul VI, Pope Francis has a unique role as a religious leader and moral guidance to protect, preserve, sustainably develop the natural environment and achieve that social inclusion that can no longer be postponed. The problem of climate change has become a major social and moral problem, and mentalities can only be changed on moral and religious grounds.
Therefore, our Academics supported the Pope's initiative to publish an Encyclical or another such important document on climate and social inclusion to influence next year's crucial decisions.
In fact, the idea is to convene a meeting with the religious leaders of the main religions to make all people aware of the state of our climate and the tragedy of social exclusion starting from the biblical message that man is the steward of nature and of its environmental and human development according to its potential and not against it, as Paul IV intended.
Thus, the prophetic message of Paul VI continues to be valid even in this new era that humanity is beginning. It is connected to the programmatic expression that he used at the end of the 1975 Jubilee Year, when he urged everyone to promote "the civilization of love" as its successful culmination. In terms of public and social life, and relationship with nature, this civilization of love is the coronation of the period of grace and good will of the Second Vatican Council, or rather the beginning of a new era of grace and good will, which history unfolds before us.
I encourage you to read the full speech on the website of The Tablet, a weekly Catholic magazine.
I smiled when I read that last section about the prospect of a "civilization of love." The other central theme permeating Sorondo's talk - and the meeting last May - was the role of values, more than data, in shaping humanity's choices.
Here's how I described this theme in the summation I delivered on the final day at the Vatican:
It says much that even some of the most accomplished scientists at this meeting articulated that progress on climate, energy, equity, education and conservation of living resources will be driven by values and faith more than data and predictive models.
In a discussion over dinner, Walter Munk, at 96 one of great oceanographers of modern times, spoke not of gigatons of carbon or megawatts of electricity: "This requires a miracle of love and unselfishness," he said.
Almost all you need is love. Here's to Pope Francis, and Walter Munk.
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December 30, 2014 Tuesday 2:00 PM GMT
Time is running out on climate denial;
But is it running out fast enough?
BYLINE: Dana Nuccitelli
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 642 words
From a strictly logical perspective, it's hard to understand how we can be doing so little to slow global warming. Greg Craven summarized why by examining the extreme possible outcomes in his viral climate 'decision grid' video.
In short, if we take action to slow global warming, the worst case scenario involves draconian government regulations that trigger an economic recession. If we don't, the worst case scenario involves an economic recession too, but also a host of other global and societal catastrophes.
Although Craven doesn't look at the probabilities of these worst case scenarios, they're also heavily weighted towards the case for taking action to curb global warming. There are lots of options to slow global warming that don't involve drastic government regulation, and that can even be beneficial for the economy. If we decide that we've gone too far in cutting carbon pollution, it's relatively easy to scale back government policies.
On the other hand, evidence from past climate change events indicates that triggering tipping points pushing the climate into a dramatically different state is a real possibility. Unlike government policies, as the latest IPCC report noted, many climate change impacts will be irreversible.
In other words, if we take too much action to curb climate change, the worst case scenario (upper left grid) is easily avoided. If we don't take enough action, we may not be able to avoid some of the worst consequences in the bottom right grid.
Of course there's a wide spectrum of possible actions and outcomes between the extremes. However, the more action we take to reduce carbon pollution, the fewer harmful climate change consequences we'll trigger.
Support for climate action is broad and growing
In fact, there are few groups that don't support significant action to curb carbon pollution. The US military views climate change as a serious threat. The Pope is rumored to be planning a major effort to encourage an international agreement on climate policy targets in 2015. A growing number of faith groups support climate action, viewing it as an issue of stewardship. Even a majority of non-Tea Party Republicans agree that the planet is warming and support an international treaty that requires the United States to cut its emissions of carbon dioxide 90% by the year 2050.
More climate scientists are beginning to speak up. At the fall AGU conference, I spoke in a great session to a room full of about 200 climate scientists who were eager to learn about effective science communication. And more policymakers are starting to listen to them. The presidents of the two largest carbon polluting countries recently agreed to curb their emissions, and a couple of Republicans in the House of Representatives recently voiced concerns about climate change.
So far, most of those House Republicans have been unwilling to do anything to slow global warming, and in fact have tried to undermine President Obama's efforts to tackle the problem. However, the EPA greenhouse gas regulations are here to stay. Republicans' best option to rid America of these government regulations is to replace them with a small government, free market alternative.
Extreme weather events will only become more intense, and tackling climate change is becoming a generational issue. 61% of Republicans under the age of 50 support government action to cut carbon pollution. Conservative policymakers in the USA, Australia, and Canada are among the last major holdouts obstructing action to curb climate change, but in the face of physical reality and growing public will, that's not a sustainable political position.
The longer they hold out and the more carbon pollution we pump into the atmosphere, the greater the risks of dangerous climate consequences. Climate action is inevitable, but the clock is ticking.
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December 30, 2014 Tuesday 8:00 AM GMT
How athletes are fighting climate change;
Sports people who spend time with the earth every day are well-placed to spread the word about the need for climate action
BYLINE: Eleanor Ross
SECTION: CONNECT4CLIMATE PARTNER ZONE
LENGTH: 939 words
Athletes witness climate change first hand. They spend time with the earth, running and cycling over its land, swimming in its waters. World-class competitors who practice, train, and compete can tell you that their training grounds are often unbearably hot, or too warm for snow and ice to stay around during their training seasons. Well positioned to speak out and be heard, athletes are doing just that.
A diverse group of athletes and sports professionals training and competing in the heat and humidity of Brazil joined Sport4Climate, when the initiative was kick-started by Connect4Climate and Forum das Americas in June 2014. The initiative invites athletes to make others aware of climate change and over the past six months, more and more sports people have added their names to the call for action. In November Denis Smith ran the New York City Marathon for Sport4Climate, announcing: "I dedicate this race to future generations for which we should save the world."
When the athletes join the programme, they make a pledge to lead by example and adopt a sustainable lifestyle. They vow to teach others how to tackle societal problems with environmental solutions and help motivate policymakers to make clean energy available. They also promise to encourage coaches and club leaders to measure their carbon footprint and adopt sustainable technologies - all tall orders for young people consumed with athletic training.
But the Sport4Climate athletes are committed. Antonio Garnero, Brazil's 2014 cycling champion, says he's never been more concerned about climate change. "Brazil is going through a severe drought. Whole lakes and water reservoirs are disappearing, rivers are drying up and in many areas the population is left with no access to water for days."
Not surprisingly Garnero's personal goal is to convert motorists to bicyclists. "It's healthier for cyclists and the planet, which is exactly what Sport4Climate stands for," he says. "São Paulo is taking some big steps in that direction. It is amazing to see and use the cycle routes that are popping up; knowing that people here are using bicycles both as a physical activity and as a mean of transportation gives me great hope."
Sport4Climate boasts supporters that include football players, swimmers, coaches, paralympians, kitesurfers, and former Olympians. "It's really important that we get the message out about our planet's climate situation, so that people can really engage with this," says Brazilian kite surfer Milla Ferreira.
The athletes' concern for the health of the planet is justified. In the World Bank's Turn Down the Heat report, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Climate Analysis found that without action, global temperatures are on track to rise to four degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times by the end of the century, and that a 1.5 degree Celsius warming is already locked into the Earth's atmosphere. As a result, the likely consequences of warming in places such as Latin America, the Caribbean, the Middle East and north Africa, and parts of Europe and central Asia will be more frequent bouts of extreme heat, less reliable water sources, spreading diseases, and rising sea levels.
It's not just those in hot climates who are seeing how warmer global temperatures are affecting their training grounds. Winter Olympians - skiers, sledders, and speed skaters - are also urgently trying to spread the word. During the Winter Olympics held in Sochi, Russia, in 2014, more than 100 Olympians publicly blamed global warming for the unseasonably warm weather. A group of skiers noted that snowfall and wintry conditions were becoming more erratic and inconsistent.
Subsequently the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, conducted a study to investigate temperatures at the winter Olympics since the games began in 1924. Researchers found that the temperature had increased from an average of 0 degrees Celsius in the 1920s to 7.8 degrees Celsius at each of the games held after 2000. The study also found that, by conservative estimates, only 11 of the 19 cities that previously hosted the winter Olympics would be cold enough to host the games again.
When snowboarder Jeremy Jones noticed that ski resorts were closing from a lack of snow he organised Protect Our Winters (POW), a collective of 53 professional snow sport athletes who are determined to keep winters snowy and cold. "Pro athletes are incredible influencers," says Chris Steinkamp, POW's executive director. "They can easily break through the political clutter with unique and powerful stories of what they're seeing, of the impact on their careers, and of the mountain communities where many of them live. You can't argue with an Olympian who says 'What do you mean you don't believe it's happening? We're seeing it first hand!'"
The POW athletes are also targeting the younger generation. The Hot Planet/Cool Athletes programme takes pro-athletes into high schools to speak to students about what they're seeing and inspire them to get involved. In three years they've reached 25,000 students. "It's one thing for students to hear about climate change in their science class, but when pro skier Ingrid Backstrom walks into a classroom, they listen," says Steinkamp. "It's incredibly powerful."
2015 will be a big year for people and planet and athletes will be part of the movement. Sport4Climate was announced to more than 100,000 current and former Olympians through the World Olympians Association encouraging more athletes to add their voice for climate action.
Content produced and managed by Connect4Climate
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The Guardian
December 28, 2014 Sunday 6:30 PM GMT
The Guardian view on the Rosetta space mission;
The research we need to solve global problems must be begun a generation or more ahead
BYLINE: Editorial
SECTION: COMMENT IS FREE
LENGTH: 519 words
Right now, a European spacecraft is circling a dark, icy object called comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko after a 10-year, 6bn-kilometre journey. The encounter between Rosetta and the comet, and the little lander Philae on the comet's surface, happened because, in 1980, in the infancy of the European Space Agency, scientists met in Strasbourg to work out what such an agency might do. One recommendation was a landing on Titan, one of the moons of Saturn. Another was a comet rendezvous and an asteroid flyby. The Europeans partnered with Nasa to reach Saturn and in 2005 to drop a European lander called Huygens through Titan's hydrocarbon clouds.
The comet mission took a little longer. That too, was originally to be a partnership with the Americans. But in 1993 the ESA decided do it alone. Nobody who endorsed the project could be accused of doing so for short-term gain: some of its begetters had no hope of living to see it happen. It happened because people were prepared to think decades ahead and at distances of 673m kilometres, because that is where the spacecraft - which flew by two asteroids on its journey - made its rendezvous with the comet.
Rosetta was designed to answer questions framed in the 80s, built with engineering experience gained in the 90s and fitted with technology perfected around the millennium: it is a testament to old technology. It is also a testament to cooperation. The ESA and eight separate nations backed the venture, and it involved more than 50 contractors from 14 European countries and the US. It is a triumph for the policy of open borders: scientists from Newcastle or Milton Keynes could go to Darmstadt in Germany or Frascati in Italy and form partnerships with colleagues from Max-Planck institutes or from the great French research universities. But most of all, it is a tribute to the long view, the willingness to embark on something that would deliver rewards to scientists not even born when it was first proposed.
Nor is Rosetta an isolated example: the link between fossil fuel emissions and global warming became clear because of a set of meticulous daily measurements of carbon dioxide begun by one scientist in Hawaii in 1958: the Keeling curve traced the increasingly steep concentrations of the greenhouse gas and triggered the first real alarms about climate change. Research into the planet and its climate is now based on international partnerships, and these too benefit from the long view.
The big problems faced by humanity - population growth, climate change, rising sea levels, precarious energy supplies, threats to food security, and biodiversity loss - are truly international, and won't be solved in any one person's lifetime. The ESA was launched in 1975 in a very different Europe, when Franco still controlled Spain, and a military junta had just given up power in Greece. At a time when politicians seem to want to close borders, constrain the movement of people and ideas, and encourage short-term commercial gain, the agency is a reminder of the power of cooperation, and Rosetta is a distant beacon for open borders and the long view.
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The Guardian
December 28, 2014 Sunday 2:00 PM GMT
Almost 7,000 UK properties to be sacrificed to rising seas;
Properties worth over £1bn will be lost to coastal erosion in England and Wales over the next century, with no compensation for homeowners, as it becomes too costly to protect them· After the floods: one year on, memories continue to haunt residents
BYLINE: Damian Carrington
SECTION: ENVIRONMENT
LENGTH: 836 words
Almost 7,000 homes and buildings will be sacrificed to the rising seas around England and Wales over the next century, according to an unpublished Environment Agency (EA) analysis seen by the Guardian. Over 800 of the properties will be lost to coastal erosion within the next 20 years.
The properties, worth well over £1bn, will be allowed to fall into the sea because the cost of protecting them would be far greater. But there is no compensation scheme for homeowners to enable them to move to a safer location.
In December 2013, a huge tidal surge flooded 1,400 homes along the east coast and saw numerous homes tumble into the ocean. Earlier this month, the environment secretary, Liz Truss, visited Lowestoft on the anniversary of the surge, which flooded the town.
"Last winter's storms saw the eastern seaboard overwhelmed," said coastal community campaigner Chris Blunkell, who lives on the North Kent coast at Whitstable. "If government won't defend all people living on the coast, then it must make sure that they can move elsewhere, and that means compensating them for their loss. It's wrong that the costs of climate change should be borne by the most vulnerable."
Coastal erosion expert Professor Rob Duck, at Dundee University, said: "It is a very difficult issue, but we can't defend everything at all costs. There are just not the resources to do it and keep on doing it. But it is not just about money, often people have lived in places for generations and there is a lot of history and memories."
The local authority in which most homes are expected to be lost in the next 20 years is Cornwall, with 76. Cornwall also tops the list for homes lost in 50 years, with 132. Looking 100 years ahead, six local authorities are expected to lose more than 200 homes each: Great Yarmouth (293), Southampton (280), Cornwall (273), North Norfolk (237), East Riding of Yorkshire (204) and Scarborough (203).
Duck said the east coast from Yorkshire down to Essex is "soft and vulnerable" and that the stronger storms and rising sea level being driven by climate change will increase their vulnerability. A recent EA document stated: "It is widely accepted that [climate change] will lead to an acceleration of coastal erosion due to more aggressive marine conditions."
The EA analysis assumes that funding for shoreline management plans - a mix of holding the line and managed retreat - is maintained. Without this, the number of properties lost within 100 years would increase tenfold to over 74,000. The central estimate for properties lost even with continued coastal defence is 7,000, but the EA analysis found there is a 5% chance this could rise to almost 9,000 if the weather was particularly extreme.
Currently, the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) states that "there are more than 200 homes at risk of complete loss to coastal erosion in the next 20 years". But the newly revealed EA analysis puts the number at 295, and at 430 in the extreme case.
"It is not feasible or affordable to protect every household now or in the long term, especially given the likely consequences of sea level rise," said the EA and Defra, in a recent response to enquiries from Friends of the Earth. The EA and Defra added: "There is no statutory recourse to compensation for property lost or damaged due to coastal change."
"Compensating coastal communities affected by climate change is simply a matter of social justice," said Friends of the Earth's Guy Shrubsole. "At the moment, the government is dumping these costs on individual households and vulnerable communities."
"During last year's tidal surge, the biggest since 1953, some people on the east coast were evacuated from their homes and given a biscuit in the church hall," said Blunkell. "Yet Londoners could sleep easy protected by the Thames Barrier. A biscuit for some and a barrier for others is unjust, and such injustice will grow with rising sea levels."
A Defra spokeswoman said: "We are spending more than £3.2bn over the course of this parliament on flood management and protection from coastal erosion - half a billion more than in the previous parliament." The first year of this parliament had a high flood defence budget set by the previous government, which was subsequently cut by about a quarter by the coalition.
"Our first ever long-term investment strategy for flood defences will see a further 15,000 houses better protected from coastal erosion by the end of the decade," the Defra spokeswoman added. She said grants were available to "assist local authorities with the immediate costs associated with the loss of a home to erosion". The EA said these were up to £6,000 to cover demolition and removal costs.
The EA implements flood and coastal defence plans under the budget given to it by Defra. An EA spokesman said: "We work with local authorities, which lead on shoreline management plans, to identify erosion risk management schemes, coastal erosion monitoring and further research on how we best adapt to these changes."
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The New York Times
December 28, 2014 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
A Former Ground Zero Goes to Court Against the World's Nuclear Arsenals
BYLINE: By MARLISE SIMONS
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Foreign Desk; Pg. 6
LENGTH: 1122 words
THE HAGUE -- Tony de Brum was 9 years old in 1954 when he saw the sky light up and heard the terrifying rumbles of ''Castle Bravo.'' It was the most powerful of 67 nuclear tests detonated by the United States in the Marshall Islands, the remote Pacific atolls he calls home.
Six decades later, with Mr. de Brum now his country's foreign minister, the memory of those thundering skies has driven him to a near-Quixotic venture: His tiny country is hauling the world's eight declared nuclear powers and Israel before the International Court of Justice. He wants the court to order the start of long-promised talks for a convention to ban atomic arsenals, much like the treaties that already prohibit chemical, biological and other weapons of mass destruction.
Mr. de Brum says the initiative is not about seeking redress for the enduring contamination and the waves of illness and birth defects attributed to radiation. Rather, by turning to the world's highest tribunal, a civil court that addresses disputes between nations, he wants to use his own land's painful history to rekindle global concern about the nuclear arms race.
The legal action is expected to run into plenty of legal and political obstacles. Even if the court decides in favor of the Marshall Islands, it has no way to enforce its decision. Prospects of any nuclear power heeding such a ruling anytime soon, experts say, are, obviously, exceedingly slim. But some say the action will shine a light on a serious but neglected issue.
''This case will help clarify where we stand in arms control law and perhaps sharpen the obligation to disarm,'' said Nico Schrijver, who heads the law school at Leiden University in the Netherlands and is not involved in the case. ''It has merit in a time of growing international tension. But I see a host of legal hurdles ahead.''
In its first written arguments, presented to the court this month, the Marshall Islands contended that the nuclear powers had violated their legal obligation to disarm. Specifically, the arguments said, by joining the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, five countries -- the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China -- undertook to end the arms race ''at an early date'' and to negotiate a treaty on ''complete disarmament.''
Three other nuclear nations that did not agree to the treaty -- India, Israel and Pakistan -- and a fourth that withdrew from it -- North Korea -- are required to disarm under customary international law, the Marshall Islands' case claims. The existence of Israeli nuclear weapons is universally assumed, but Israel has not acknowledged having them.
''All the nuclear weapons states are modernizing their arsenals instead of negotiating, and we want the court to rule on this,'' said Phon van den Biesen, the leader of the islands' legal team, who first asked the court to hear the case in April.
The civil suit comes as nuclear arms are increasingly being linked to other pressing international issues, such as the prosecution of war crimes and crimes against humanity and the effort to combat climate change.
Meeting in Vienna this month, humanitarian law experts from 160 nations reiterated that the threat from nuclear arms or other weapons of mass destruction was incompatible with human rights principles. Scientists have stepped up warnings that using even a small percentage of the world's nuclear arsenal would radically change the atmosphere and could cause drops in temperatures and large-scale crop failures.
More than a dozen international law experts have donated time to assist the tiny Marshall Islands, a string of atolls with 70,000 inhabitants. Rick Wayman, the director of programs at the California-based Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, said that a coalition of 55 international peace and other activist groups were backing the initiative.
One of the key questions that the court's 15-judge bench is likely to consider is whether modernizing existing arsenals amounts to a new arms race forbidden under existing agreements. The United States and Russia, which control most of the world's nuclear weapons, have cut old stockpiles and agreed to further reductions under a 2010 bilateral accord. But both countries, along with China, are now engaged in major upgrading of their missile systems. Pakistan and India have been in an arms race for more than 15 years.
The court is also being asked to establish a new disarmament calendar. The Marshall Islands' suit asks that the nuclear powers begin negotiations on a disarmament treaty one year after the court's ruling. But, as John Burroughs, director of the New York-based Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, noted: ''There have never even been any multilateral negotiations to eliminate nuclear weapons since the 1968 nonproliferation treaty.''
One big question is whether the judges would go beyond an opinion they issued in 1996. Asked to advise the United Nations General Assembly, the judges said unanimously that the obligation existed ''to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion'' negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament. Experts say the bench may be more divided this time.
It is far from clear how the judges will vote. Although the bench is meant to be independent, six of the 15 judges come from nuclear powers -- the five original nations plus India. Heikelina Verrijn Stuart, co-author of ''The Building of Peace,'' a comprehensive history of the International Court of Justice, said that politics have usually trumped international law and that in the majority of the court's cases, judges have ruled in favor of their country of origin. ''Most states simply do not accept a higher legal authority,'' she said, adding, ''however there is no reason to suggest that the I.C.J. judges are in any way instrumental to the politics of their country of origin.''
Among the nuclear powers, only Britain, India and Pakistan have recognized the court's jurisdiction as compulsory; the others choose whether to opt in. So far, only China has replied, stating that it will not accept the court's jurisdiction in this case, said Mr. van den Biesen, the lawyer.
Mr. de Brum is not discouraged, arguing that his nation is justified in taking action because it has suffered the effects of nuclear testing and is now threatened by rising sea levels.
From a climate summit meeting in Lima, Peru, in mid-December, he sent an email emphasizing the parallel between climate change and nuclear issues. ''They both affect the security and survival of humanity,'' Mr. de Brum wrote. ''Finally it comes down to this: What would it gain mankind to reach a peaceful resolution of the climate change threat, only to be wiped out by a nuclear misunderstanding?''
Hearings in the case are expected in the coming year.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/28/world/a-former-ground-zero-goes-to-court-against-the-worlds-nuclear-arsenals-.html
LOAD-DATE: January 4, 2015
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GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: TESTS AND CONSEQUENCES: A nuclear test in the Marshall Islands, one of 67 conducted by the United States in the area. A doctor, right, examined a resident exposed to radiation. (PHOTOGRAPH BY ATOMIC ENERGY COMMISSION)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
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496 of 500 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
December 28, 2014 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
A Former Ground Zero Goes to Court Against the World's Nuclear Arsenals
BYLINE: By MARLISE SIMONS
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Foreign Desk; Pg. 6
LENGTH: 1128 words
THE HAGUE -- Tony de Brum was 9 years old in 1954 when he saw the sky light up and heard the terrifying rumbles of ''Castle Bravo.'' It was the most powerful of 67 nuclear tests detonated by the United States in the Marshall Islands, the remote Pacific atolls he calls home.
Six decades later, with Mr. de Brum now his country's foreign minister, the memory of those thundering skies has driven him to a near-Quixotic venture: His tiny country is hauling the world's eight declared nuclear powers and Israel before the International Court of Justice. He wants the court to order the start of long-promised talks for a convention to ban atomic arsenals, much like the treaties that already prohibit chemical, biological and other weapons of mass destruction.
Mr. de Brum says the initiative is not about seeking redress for the enduring contamination and the waves of illness and birth defects attributed to radiation. Rather, by turning to the world's highest tribunal, a civil court that addresses disputes between nations, he wants to use his own land's painful history to rekindle global concern about the nuclear arms race.
The legal action is expected to run into plenty of legal and political obstacles. Even if the court decides in favor of the Marshall Islands, it has no way to enforce its decision. Prospects of any nuclear power heeding such a ruling anytime soon, experts say, are, obviously, exceedingly slim. But some say the action will shine a light on a serious but neglected issue.
''This case will help clarify where we stand in arms control law and perhaps sharpen the obligation to disarm,'' said Nico Schrijver, who heads the law school at Leiden University in the Netherlands and is not involved in the case. ''It has merit in a time of growing international tension. But I see a host of legal hurdles ahead.''
In its first written arguments, presented to the court this month, the Marshall Islands contended that the nuclear powers had violated their legal obligation to disarm. Specifically, the arguments said, by joining the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, five countries -- the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China -- undertook to end the arms race ''at an early date'' and to negotiate a treaty on ''complete disarmament.''
Three other nuclear nations that did not agree to the treaty -- India, Israel and Pakistan -- and a fourth that withdrew from it -- North Korea -- are required to disarm under customary international law, the Marshall Islands' case claims. The existence of Israeli nuclear weapons is universally assumed, but Israel has not acknowledged having them.
''All the nuclear weapons states are modernizing their arsenals instead of negotiating, and we want the court to rule on this,'' said Phon van den Biesen, the leader of the islands' legal team, who first asked the court to hear the case in April.
The civil suit comes as nuclear arms are increasingly being linked to other pressing international issues, such as the prosecution of war crimes and crimes against humanity and the effort to combat climate change.
Meeting in Vienna this month, humanitarian law experts from 160 nations reiterated that the threat from nuclear arms or other weapons of mass destruction was incompatible with human rights principles. Scientists have stepped up warnings that using even a small percentage of the world's nuclear arsenal would radically change the atmosphere and could cause drops in temperatures and large-scale crop failures.
More than a dozen international law experts have donated time to assist the tiny Marshall Islands, a string of atolls with 70,000 inhabitants. Rick Wayman, the director of programs at the California-based Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, said that a coalition of 55 international peace and other activist groups were backing the initiative.
One of the key questions that the court's 15-judge bench is likely to consider is whether modernizing existing arsenals amounts to a new arms race forbidden under existing agreements. The United States and Russia, which control most of the world's nuclear weapons, have cut old stockpiles and agreed to further reductions under a 2010 bilateral accord. But both countries, along with China, are now engaged in major upgrading of their missile systems. Pakistan and India have been in an arms race for more than 15 years.
The court is also being asked to establish a new disarmament calendar. The Marshall Islands' suit asks that the nuclear powers begin negotiations on a disarmament treaty one year after the court's ruling. But, as John Burroughs, director of the New York-based Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, noted: ''There have never even been any multilateral negotiations to eliminate nuclear weapons since the 1968 nonproliferation treaty.''
One big question is whether the judges would go beyond an opinion they issued in 1996. Asked to advise the United Nations General Assembly, the judges said unanimously that the obligation existed ''to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion'' negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament. Experts say the bench may be more divided this time.
It is far from clear how the judges will vote. Although the bench is meant to be independent, six of the 15 judges come from nuclear powers -- the five original nations plus India. Heikelina Verrijn Stuart, co-author of ''The Building of Peace,'' a comprehensive history of the International Court of Justice, said that politics have usually trumped international law and that in the majority of the court's cases, judges have ruled in favor of their country of origin. ''Most states simply do not accept a higher legal authority,'' she said, adding, ''however there is no reason to suggest that the I.C.J. judges are in any way instrumental to the politics of their country of origin.''
Among the nuclear powers, only Britain, India and Pakistan have recognized the court's jurisdiction as compulsory; the others choose whether to opt in. So far, only China has replied, stating that it will not accept the court's jurisdiction in this case, said Mr. van den Biesen, the lawyer.
Mr. de Brum is not discouraged, arguing that his nation is justified in taking action because it has suffered the effects of nuclear testing and is now threatened by rising sea levels.
From a climate summit meeting in Lima, Peru, in mid-December, he sent an email emphasizing the parallel between climate change and nuclear issues. ''They both affect the security and survival of humanity,'' Mr. de Brum wrote. ''Finally it comes down to this: What would it gain mankind to reach a peaceful resolution of the climate change threat, only to be wiped out by a nuclear misunderstanding?''
Hearings in the case are expected in the coming year.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/28/world/a-former-ground-zero-goes-to-court-against-the-worlds-nuclear-arsenals-.html
LOAD-DATE: February 3, 2015
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GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: TESTS AND CONSEQUENCES: A nuclear test in the Marshall Islands, one of 67 conducted by the United States in the area. A doctor, right, examined a resident exposed to radiation. (PHOTOGRAPH BY ATOMIC ENERGY COMMISSION)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2014 The New York Times Company
497 of 500 DOCUMENTS
The New York Times
December 28, 2014 Sunday
Late Edition - Final
A Former Ground Zero Goes to Court Against the World's Nuclear Arsenals
BYLINE: By MARLISE SIMONS
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Foreign Desk; Pg. 6
LENGTH: 1128 words
THE HAGUE -- Tony de Brum was 9 years old in 1954 when he saw the sky light up and heard the terrifying rumbles of ''Castle Bravo.'' It was the most powerful of 67 nuclear tests detonated by the United States in the Marshall Islands, the remote Pacific atolls he calls home.
Six decades later, with Mr. de Brum now his country's foreign minister, the memory of those thundering skies has driven him to a near-Quixotic venture: His tiny country is hauling the world's eight declared nuclear powers and Israel before the International Court of Justice. He wants the court to order the start of long-promised talks for a convention to ban atomic arsenals, much like the treaties that already prohibit chemical, biological and other weapons of mass destruction.
Mr. de Brum says the initiative is not about seeking redress for the enduring contamination and the waves of illness and birth defects attributed to radiation. Rather, by turning to the world's highest tribunal, a civil court that addresses disputes between nations, he wants to use his own land's painful history to rekindle global concern about the nuclear arms race.
The legal action is expected to run into plenty of legal and political obstacles. Even if the court decides in favor of the Marshall Islands, it has no way to enforce its decision. Prospects of any nuclear power heeding such a ruling anytime soon, experts say, are, obviously, exceedingly slim. But some say the action will shine a light on a serious but neglected issue.
''This case will help clarify where we stand in arms control law and perhaps sharpen the obligation to disarm,'' said Nico Schrijver, who heads the law school at Leiden University in the Netherlands and is not involved in the case. ''It has merit in a time of growing international tension. But I see a host of legal hurdles ahead.''
In its first written arguments, presented to the court this month, the Marshall Islands contended that the nuclear powers had violated their legal obligation to disarm. Specifically, the arguments said, by joining the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, five countries -- the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China -- undertook to end the arms race ''at an early date'' and to negotiate a treaty on ''complete disarmament.''
Three other nuclear nations that did not agree to the treaty -- India, Israel and Pakistan -- and a fourth that withdrew from it -- North Korea -- are required to disarm under customary international law, the Marshall Islands' case claims. The existence of Israeli nuclear weapons is universally assumed, but Israel has not acknowledged having them.
''All the nuclear weapons states are modernizing their arsenals instead of negotiating, and we want the court to rule on this,'' said Phon van den Biesen, the leader of the islands' legal team, who first asked the court to hear the case in April.
The civil suit comes as nuclear arms are increasingly being linked to other pressing international issues, such as the prosecution of war crimes and crimes against humanity and the effort to combat climate change.
Meeting in Vienna this month, humanitarian law experts from 160 nations reiterated that the threat from nuclear arms or other weapons of mass destruction was incompatible with human rights principles. Scientists have stepped up warnings that using even a small percentage of the world's nuclear arsenal would radically change the atmosphere and could cause drops in temperatures and large-scale crop failures.
More than a dozen international law experts have donated time to assist the tiny Marshall Islands, a string of atolls with 70,000 inhabitants. Rick Wayman, the director of programs at the California-based Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, said that a coalition of 55 international peace and other activist groups were backing the initiative.
One of the key questions that the court's 15-judge bench is likely to consider is whether modernizing existing arsenals amounts to a new arms race forbidden under existing agreements. The United States and Russia, which control most of the world's nuclear weapons, have cut old stockpiles and agreed to further reductions under a 2010 bilateral accord. But both countries, along with China, are now engaged in major upgrading of their missile systems. Pakistan and India have been in an arms race for more than 15 years.
The court is also being asked to establish a new disarmament calendar. The Marshall Islands' suit asks that the nuclear powers begin negotiations on a disarmament treaty one year after the court's ruling. But, as John Burroughs, director of the New York-based Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, noted: ''There have never even been any multilateral negotiations to eliminate nuclear weapons since the 1968 nonproliferation treaty.''
One big question is whether the judges would go beyond an opinion they issued in 1996. Asked to advise the United Nations General Assembly, the judges said unanimously that the obligation existed ''to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion'' negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament. Experts say the bench may be more divided this time.
It is far from clear how the judges will vote. Although the bench is meant to be independent, six of the 15 judges come from nuclear powers -- the five original nations plus India. Heikelina Verrijn Stuart, co-author of ''The Building of Peace,'' a comprehensive history of the International Court of Justice, said that politics have usually trumped international law and that in the majority of the court's cases, judges have ruled in favor of their country of origin. ''Most states simply do not accept a higher legal authority,'' she said, adding, ''however there is no reason to suggest that the I.C.J. judges are in any way instrumental to the politics of their country of origin.''
Among the nuclear powers, only Britain, India and Pakistan have recognized the court's jurisdiction as compulsory; the others choose whether to opt in. So far, only China has replied, stating that it will not accept the court's jurisdiction in this case, said Mr. van den Biesen, the lawyer.
Mr. de Brum is not discouraged, arguing that his nation is justified in taking action because it has suffered the effects of nuclear testing and is now threatened by rising sea levels.
From a climate summit meeting in Lima, Peru, in mid-December, he sent an email emphasizing the parallel between climate change and nuclear issues. ''They both affect the security and survival of humanity,'' Mr. de Brum wrote. ''Finally it comes down to this: What would it gain mankind to reach a peaceful resolution of the climate change threat, only to be wiped out by a nuclear misunderstanding?''
Hearings in the case are expected in the coming year.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/28/world/a-former-ground-zero-goes-to-court-against-the-worlds-nuclear-arsenals-.html
LOAD-DATE: February 3, 2015
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: TESTS AND CONSEQUENCES: A nuclear test in the Marshall Islands, one of 67 conducted by the United States in the area. A doctor, right, examined a resident exposed to radiation. (PHOTOGRAPH BY ATOMIC ENERGY COMMISSION)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper
Copyright 2014 The New York Times Company
498 of 500 DOCUMENTS
The Guardian
December 26, 2014 Friday 8:24 PM GMT
Why there's more to sustainability than 2015's big global events;
Businesses are no longer waiting for international edicts. Change now comes from the top, middle and bottomRead more end-of-year reflections and 2015 predictions
BYLINE: Aron Cramer
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 688 words
2015 promises two big milestones for sustainability: the launch of the new sustainable development goals (SDGs) in New York in Autumn, and the COP21 climate talks in Paris in December. All eyes are on these processes, which promise to shape the future of sustainable economic development and climate change.
For business, however, the outcomes in New York and Paris will constitute just the beginning of the story. It is no longer the case that grand international agreements set in motion binding regulations agreements for companies to simply comply with. Today change comes simultaneously from the top down, the middle out and the bottom up. As business gears up for a critical year, the wisest strategies will take all these elements into account.
Top down
Make no mistake, even though the SDGs and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) won't solve sustainable development and global warming, they are crucial enablers of progress and business leaders should make their voices heard.
In the coming year, individual businesses have a stake in encouraging governments to establish ambitious policies that create the right incentives for companies to shift to low-carbon models. Business for Social Responsibility has co-founded We Mean Business, a coalition of seven business organisations focused on sustainability that are are helping to advance just such policies.
It is our strong hope that the SDGs will provide clear direction on the key elements of widely shared prosperity and that the Paris summit will deliver new commitments to ensure global temperatures do not exceed the 2C mark.
Middle out
Business also has an opportunity to help construct solutions from the middle out. Waiting for national governments to agree is a fool's game. Indeed, France is steering COP21 towards a network of commitments from multiple sources. Business has much to offer this model, and there are already many cases of companies making essential contributions to new models and frameworks that enable faster, deeper progress.
For example, dozens of companies are piloting integrated reporting as part of the International Integrated Reporting Committee. Several hundred companies have called for a price on carbon, in concert with the World Bank, with many also applying a price in their internal operations.
The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights has launched an informal network of companies and civil society organisations that are making that international agreement a reality through application and learning. These examples reflect a much-needed global laboratory that encourages innovation in new models - the kind of thing that would take governments much longer to establish.
Bottom up
Finally, the rise of the sharing economy and the circular economy are reframing the debate on sustainability. Innovation is leading to new companies, new collaborations and new ways of delivering value that decouple economic growth from the depletion of natural resources.
Plenty of industries have experienced this kind of disruption already - utilities, cars, hotels and hospitality - and these examples will only multiply, changing the face of every sector in years to come. Figuring out how to maximise the sustainability benefits of these changes is the design challenge of the 21st century.
As we enter 2015, the true test for any business is whether it is contributing to a just and sustainable world by using all of the resources at its disposal. This means engagement in traditional policy processes, joining diverse coalitions of action and applying the creative power of the private sector to come up with new ideas that meet the needs of a resource-constrained but thoroughly connected world.
Aron Cramer is president and CEO of Business for Social Responsibility (BSR)
Join the community of sustainability professionals and experts. Become a GSB member to get more stories like this direct to your inbox.
LOAD-DATE: December 26, 2014
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
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The Guardian
December 26, 2014 Friday 8:13 PM GMT
Top business sustainability trends of 2014;
In a tricky political climate, US corporations took steps in the right direction this year on climate change, farming, labor rights and wasteRead more end-of-year reflections and new year's predictions
BYLINE: Marc Gunther
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 1058 words
It's been a tough year for brand USA. There was a horrific torture report, police violence against blacks, a dysfunctional Congress - and a troubled middle class. Even our fun and games are not as much fun as they used to be: just look at the NFL and its dismal record on brain damage and domestic violence.
In that context, corporate America had a good 2014. (Of course, in that context, just about everybody had a good 2014.) There was progress on the big issues that face big business, as well as the rest of us: climate change, food and forestry, labor rights in global supply chains and the circular economy.
Corporates are stepping up to do their part. Collectively, they are not moving far enough and fast enough, but they are moving in the right direction. These days, that deserves two cheers, if not three.
Among the year's highlights:
Climate change policies drive cleantech
Here was one exception to the rule that the federal government can't get much done. Using his executive authority, President Obama imposed strong rules limiting climate pollution from coal plants, then traveled to Beijing where he and Chinese President Xi Jinxing pledged to curb their nations' greenhouse gas emissions, albeit not for a while.
Their agreement led to the Lima Accord, a breakthrough in the sense that, for the first time, industrialized and emerging economies both promised to curb emissions. It's unavoidably a voluntary approach to the climate crisis, and the emissions reductions that it generates may turn out to be too little too late. But as governments act, they will surely drive low-carbon innovation in rich and poor countries alike.
That's where business comes in. As the costs of wind and solar energy continue to fall, corporate purchasing of clean energy is reaching new heights, creating a virtuous cycle where demand drives scale, which lowers prices, which then spurs more demand.
During Climate Week in September, companies including IKEA, Swiss Re, Mars and BT, organized by the Climate Group, launched RE100, an initiative to encourage big companies to use 100% renewable power. That week, too, Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, currently the world's most valuable company, took a strong stand in favor of climate action. No longer can the US Chamber of Commerce or the fossil fuel industry claim to speak for all of American business.
One respected analyst, Shayle Kann of Greentech Media, says that by 2020, solar power will become cost competitive in more than half of the US, growing the solar market to 100 gigawatts-100 times larger than it is today. If it happens, that would be a game-changer.
More companies pay attention to farming and forestry supply chains
It's no accident that big food companies like Unilever and Mars are sustainability leaders. Their global supply chains expose them to significant climate risks and resource constraints. Rising temperatures and falling water supplies, for example, threaten cacao growers in west Africa. So Mars is leading research to help farmers increase the quality and performance of cocoa plants, and better control pests and disease. Meanwhile, Unilever says all of its palm oil will be sustainably sourced by 2015.
Retailers and food companies, meanwhile, are pushing sustainability programs down to the farm level. Walmart is working with 15 of its biggest suppliers to optimize fertilizer use and tilling practices in corn and soy farming. Field to Market, a broad coalition of growers, brands and retailers, is defining, measuring and advancing the sustainability of commodity crops. Under pressure from Oxfam America, General Mills and Kellogg promised to measure, publish and reduce emissions across their entire supply chains.
Last fall, more than two dozen countries and as many companies also endorsed the New York Declaration on Forests, pledging to halve deforestation by 2020 and end it by 2030. A growing number of the world's largest buyers of soy, palm oil and cattle have committed to exclude deforestation from their supply chains. Among them are such powerhouses as Asia Pulp & Paper, once a target of activists, and Cargill, which sells $135bn worth of commodities a year.
Factories get safer
Every apparel company that did business in Bangladesh knew that factory conditions there were unsafe (and some had taken steps on their own to remedy problems), but it took the collapse of Rana Plaza, which killed approximately 1,100 workers in 2013, to spur the global garment industry to action.
Since then, brands and retailers have organized a pair of coalitions - the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, backed primarily by European companies and labor unions, and the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, a North American group - to inspect and, in some cases, remedy conditions at about 6,000 factories. Everyone involved in the effort says factories today are safer; no one will say they are safe enough.
No one tragedy spurred competitors like Apple, Microsoft, Google and HP to form the Electronics Industry Citizenship Coalition, but they, too, have strengthened industry-wide efforts to audit suppliers to protect workers (and the environment) in the developing world.
The circular economy grows
The circular economy is the most exciting idea in corporate sustainability, and it's spreading fast : companies are finding ways to take back, refurbish, reuse or recycle products that would otherwise be thrown away, creating a closed-loop, zero-waste circular system of production to replace the old-fashioned take-make-waste linear model.
At Disney World, food waste is being converted into energy. Novelis is betting its future on recycled aluminum, although beverage companies have been slow to follow. Coffee waste is being turned into flour by an ex-Starbucks exec. "Don't let fashion go to waste," says H&M, the global clothing retailer that takes backs clothes in all of its 3,100 stores.
In a truly circular economy, powered by renewable energy, economic growth could be decoupled from environmental limits. It's a safe bet that we won't get there in 2015 or 2025 or even 2035. But we will surely get closer.
This piece is part of the supply chain hub, which is funded by the Fairtrade Foundation. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled as advertising features. Find out more here.
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The Guardian
December 26, 2014 Friday 8:11 PM GMT
2015: the year businesses recognize that climate change is real;
With new climate policies, civil unrest and supply-chain disruptions in 2014, more businesses are becoming activistsTop business sustainability trends of 20142015: the beginning of the end for climate skepticsMore end-of-year reflections and new year's predictions
BYLINE: Aman Singh
SECTION: GUARDIAN SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS
LENGTH: 1410 words
It would be an understatement to say that a lot happened in 2014.
There was pervasive civic and social unrest across the US, bringing issues like racism and justice to the forefront yet again, as well as a historic agreement with China to mitigate carbon emissions. Meanwhile, India enacted a law requiring companies to spend 2% of their net profits on social development, the Philippines suffered yet another big typhoon, and the Ebola crisis killed more than 7,000 people in west Africa. Then there were the media shakeups, including buyouts at the New York Times, a mass exodus at the New Republic and a shift in Bloomberg's top ranks. But front and center in my universe as a close - and often vocal - observer and practitioner of corporate social responsibility and sustainability was climate: call it the "water-energy nexus," the "resources dilemma," or another variant. But in 2014, every sector of our industrial economy felt the weight of climate change.
More significantly, many more people began to interweave the repercussions of a changing climate with issues - like poverty, urbanization, lifestyles, economic standards and community development - that had previously appeared as separate prongs on any impact chart. (Remember the cute versions of the " triple bottom line " separating social from environmental and economic issues?)
And, as a result, we saw the needle move.
Corporations like Unilever set ever more aggressive and inclusive goals and created marketing plans to persuade others to join. CVS Caremark disrupted its sector by announcing that it would stop selling tobacco and would rebrand itself as CVS Health to better align its brand with its goals.
And for policymakers, the year saw clear action from US President Obama, bolder commitments from the European Union and new willingness to understand climate science - and shift its energy plan accordingly - from India.
So as we head into what promises to be the most tumultuous year yet for sustainable business, here are some of the themes I expect to dominate our decisions and strategy whiteboards.
1. More businesses recognize that climate change is real
Based on its annual data, CDP forecasts the impact of a warmer planet and climate change will be felt in as little as four to five years. Take a look at its Global Water Report for example, or the S&P 500 Climate Leaders report, which rates companies on climate readiness and market volatility for the first time.
Expect these forecasts to assume practical proportions and get embedded much more strategically into risk management and business development plans. And plan to become best friends with your investor relations department and the chief financial officer's office. Some companies are already putting an internal price on carbon, for instance, to educate their investments (think Microsoft ).
Others are starting to marry emissions with market performance, community health, urbanization and the sundry other elements that, ultimately, dictate growth. Keep an eye out for new standards from the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board - which just issued provisional standards for 10 service industries, for example - and for Bob Willard's Future Fit Business Benchmark.
2. Companies align their strategies with 'Sustainable Development Goals'
The next phase of the UN's Millennium Development Goals, fittingly termed the Sustainable Development Goals, shift priorities from insular goals like reducing poverty and increasing hygiene to more inclusive and integrated ones that push for systemic change like the rule of law, dignity and prosperity for all. The implications are significant.
And business is being called on to provide active support for the first time. This presents an unprecedented opportunity to tie businesses' growth to their communities and the environment. For the first time, capitalists are welcome and actively needed at the table. This marks a key acknowledgement that determining our path forward as an interconnected economy will require the tensile strength of every single sector.
So how do you make sure your business is syncing its growth plan with the new UN goals? How do you get past the loftiness and map the real changes that are needed against the trajectory of your business plan?
You'll want to start by investing in some scenario planning.
If a majority of your supply chain works in Bangladesh, for example, you'll need to ask: are you equipped to handle disruptions from hurricanes and floods in the region and the consequential loss of life and infrastructure? If not, might investing in water conservation or employee and consumer empowerment initiatives make your business more resilient?
If your 10-year plan includes expanding in Africa, you should view the Sustainable Development Goals as a critical roadmap to help align your strategy with the continent's social and environmental priorities and realities.
This type of scenario planning ensures not only that your business model is resilient, but also that your employees, customers and communities will play a critical role in your decisions.
3. Businesses switch from advocacy to activism
Apple CEO Tim Cook made the news in 2014 for many reasons beyond the launch of the iPhone 6. Among the highlights was his Climate Week speech advocating more aggressive action from his peers on climate change. On stage in New York, he noted he "wanted [Apple] to be one of the pebbles in the pond that creates the ripple" on climate change and the environment.
He wasn't alone.
Unilever CEO Paul Polman has spoken often and loudly on the need for businesses to align their missions and growth models with action on climate and other key issues. "In the absence of politicians, we need to move faster," he said. "Climate change is a great opportunity for business ... the needle is starting to move in the US. The tornadoes and hurricanes are starting to drive the message home for people. ... [T]he urgency cannot be watered down."
As rhetoric and action begin to align across boardrooms, expect more business leaders to step out of their corner offices to spark more sustainable business practices, whether through regulation - Nike and Starbucks support Obama's climate rule - or through well-funded lawsuits, investor-led demands, strategic partnerships or remapped business models.
As the crescendo for more action builds, you'll want to ask the right questions to rebuild your narrative, remap your strategy and ensure your business is nimble enough - and able to collaborate sufficiently with its employees, consumers and other stakeholders - to remain an active participant in the next 25 years of economic development.
4. More big supply chain disruptions
While the Rana Plaza fire was not the first of its kind, the 2013 disaster continued to catalyze action across the apparel industry this year, with new partnerships and commitments in recent months. In 2014, the electronics industry had a similar moment when a report by nonprofit Verité found forced labor in Malaysian factories.
You can expect these disruptions to continue.
My advice to sidestep them? Forecast into the next two decades, not two years.
5. A growing focus on future-proofing
One term that has stuck in my mind in recent months - and one I plan to use ever more rigorously - is future-proofing. How will you use the next 12 months to ensure your long-term viability as an organization, as an economic contributor, as a consumer, as an employee, as a leader and as an informed decision maker?
For me, my mantra is clear. Tell the whole story, help our executives and leaders connect the dots, identify the context, and empower stakeholders through knowledge. When I started writing about these issues, I committed to connecting the dots. Always.
A decade later, that hasn't changed.
And remember, joy is contagious. But so is skepticism. Stay clear. Steer carefully - and lead gracefully - onwards.
Aman Singh is a vice president in Edelman's Business + Social Purpose team in New York and the founder of Singh Solutions,an advisory firm that offers CSR and sustainability reporting and communication strategies services. She previously served as CSRwire's editorial director.
This piece is part of the values-led business hub, which is funded by SC Johnson. All content is editorially independent except for pieces labelled "brought to you by". Find out more here.
LOAD-DATE: December 26, 2014
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